Moss, Jonathan (2015) 'We didn't realise how brave we were at the time': the 1968 Ford sewing machinists' strike in public and personal memory. Oral History, 43 (1). pp. 40-51. ISSN 0143-0955

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Abstract

The 1968 sewing machinists' strike for equal grading at Ford's plant in Dagenham has been identified as a key moment in the history of women and work, widely associated with prompting the 1970 Equal Pay Act and presaging a period that saw the emergence of the Women's Liberation Movement and increased gender equality in Britain. Public memory of the strike's legacy was transmitted to a wider audience through the 2010 feature film Made in Dagenham. This article shows that this was not necessarily how the sewing machinists understood the strike's outcome at the time, or in the period since. The article considers the impact of film on the personal memory of women involved in the dispute and explores how they negotiated the tension between their newfound public role as history-makers and their personal experience of defeat.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Law, Politics and Sociology > Politics
Depositing User:	Jonathan Moss
Date Deposited:	01 Nov 2017 09:16
Last Modified:	02 Jul 2019 17:34
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/70820

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