OVER a century ago, a group of some of the lowest-paid manual workers got organised, held mass rallies to raise awareness about their poverty pay and dire working conditions, marched on Parliament and took strike action. These valiant workers took on their unscrupulous bosses and won.

At a time when 90 per cent of all trade unionists were men and less than 10 per cent of female workers were union members, the matchwomen’s successful display of industrial strength was trailblazing.

A newspaper report from the 1880s in the TUC archive notes that when questioned about the death of a match worker suffering from phossy jaw, the then home secretary replied that he would not prevent the use of white phosphorus since no other deaths had been reported. The article goes on to point out that women suffering from phossy jaw were paid off by Bryant and May and were too fearful of losing their payments from the company to speak out, so official reporting of deaths or illness was unlikely.

This weekend the third Matchwomen’s festival will be taking place in East London, celebrating not just the matchwomen but also today’s female activists with music, poetry, childrens’ activities and speakers.

Perhaps one of the reasons that the matchwomen’s struggle is so inspiring is that these women were strong, determined, organised and they were at the vanguard of a burgeoning new trade union movement, rather than passive victims or a mere footnote to a history of a movement led by men. As Louise Raw, historian and the organiser of the Matchwomen’s Festival, writes in Striking a Light, the matchwomen were neither “helpless little ‘match girls’ nor slatternly ‘factory girls’ but industrial workers pursuing a genuine grievance on their own account.”

We need to think about female workers in this context today too: from the Ford machinists to Grunwick, Gate Gourmet to school teachers, midwives and cleaners in some of London’s swankiest hotels, women are at the forefront of the trade union movement.

It’s no secret that women are more likely to be union members than men. This has been the case for over a decade.

Fifty-five per cent of union members are women. And today’s trade union women are a force to be reckoned with.

Last year the midwives took strike action for the first time in their 133 year history. Female cleaners at the Park Plaza County Hall hotel in London are considering striking for better pay and conditions.

Female trade unionists have made huge gains since the matchwomen’s strike of 1888, from health and safety legislation to the prohibition of child labour, equal pay legislation and protection from discrimination. But, as the saying goes, “the price of equality is eternal vigilance.”

The attacks on the public sector, employment rights and trade union rights which began under the coalition government are set to intensify in scope and viciousness under this government. Plans to introduce thresholds for strike ballots, to impose time limits on strike mandates, to further restrict the right to picket and to scrap the ban on using agency workers to break strikes are intended not just to undermine trade unions but to undermine the spirit of collectivism and solidarity embodied by the matchwomen and the many brave trade union women who have followed in their footsteps.

Just as the bosses at Bryant and May tried to break the strike by moving the factory overseas or bringing in labour from Glasgow, this government wants to stamp out industrial action by bringing in agency workers.

Attacks on our trade union rights do not just hurt the trade union leaders so reviled by this government; they also hurt the three million female union members working in the NHS, teaching in our schools and cleaning the hotel rooms of the wealthy.

As individuals we have little hope of standing up to the onslaught of attacks on pay, conditions, social security and, with Michael Gove in charge of justice, even our fundamental human rights.

But collectively, in our trade unions, working with the rest of civil society, with feminist campaigns and with new grassroots groups, female workers are still a force to be reckoned with.