Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History

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Cast about as it may, there is no way for Israel now to free itself from a hook that it baited itself. Louise Raw makes a great play on calling the matchgirls “matchwomen”, arguing that this gives them more gravitas and respect. However, as most of matchgirls were teenagers, and a good many were children, while only a few were over the age of 22, it seems more logical to use the traditional term ‘matchgirls’. When they went out on strike, the matchgirls were already heavily politicised by the reality of their own living conditions, by Ireland and by the propaganda of the socialist revival, which had paid special attention to the East End. Raw makes a strong case for the reason why Annie Besant was given such a prominent role in the strike in historical records at the time, despite her own protestations to the contrary. She was a charismatic, notorious woman. Forgetting the bizarre Mrs Annie Besant, Louise Raw’s study of the family and community relationships of the matchgirl strikers is an interesting development in Labour history, which has tended to ignore this form of research (called prosopography), pioneered in a different context by Sir Lewis Namier. [ 9]

That fire-making was important in Viking society is certainly undeniable. For cooking, for warmth, for light, the fire was an indispensable part of civilization. It is unsurprising, as a result, that we find the fire-steel has a religious context as well as its practical one. Invented in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, fire pistons or syringes work by the compression of air. When exactly this method originated is unclear, but it is also assumed to be prehistoric. Fire pistons consist of a hollow cylinder made of wood, bamboo, animal horns, antlers, or metal. Tinder is placed in the tube and a piston with an airtight seal is rapidly pushed into it. The air inside the cylinder is compressed and the pressure and temperature are increased until the tinder combusts. The same principle is used in a diesel engine to ignite fuel in a cylinder. Its inventor Rudolf Diesel got the idea for his design from observing the use of a Southeast Asian fire piston. Raw, Louise: ‘Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History’, Continuum, 2011 A spectacular but very readable account of epic original research that has uncovered a very different story from the traditional tale ... [Raw's] claim for this as an important foundation of New Unionism is strong also, so this really is a must-read book if you're interested in British political history. Both these groups were active in the East End, holding meetings, selling papers and agitating, along with the anti-Irish coercion movement, which had come to a head in a march to Trafalgar Square that became known as Bloody Sunday (13 November 1887).

One of the oldest and most widespread methods of fire-making is by using tinder, flint, and steel. Even ‘Ötzi’, the natural mummy of a man who lived 5300 years ago in the Ötztal Alps in Austria, was found with flint, iron pyrites, and a collection of different plants for tinder. For those readers who know nothing of the Bryant and May strike, let alone its myths, the usual tale told is that on 23 June 1888, the then famous secularist-malthusian turned fabian-cum-‘socialist’ Mrs Annie Besant published an article in the small circulation The Link denouncing the terrible working conditions, low wages and illegal system of fines prevailing at Bryant and May (a hugely successful company whose shareholders included the famous bourgeois feminist Mrs Millicent Garrett).

The story is full of hope for the future, illustrating as it does the immense power that lies in mere publicity. It was the publication of the simple story of the grievances of the match girls in an obscure little halfpenny weekly paper called The Link which did the work. That is not to say it is perfect, but its defects are peripheral, while its core analysis of the 1888 Bryant and May’s matchgirls’ strike demolishes the standard myths of the strike with a precision that a US drone can only dream of. [ 1] Striking a sharp-edged flint or hard stone, such as quartzite, chert, or chalcedony, against a fire striker of mineral or fire-steel, causes hot, oxidising metal particles to split off the fire striker and ignite tinder.Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because under-fed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die or go on to the streets provided only that Bryant & May shareholders get their 23 per cent and Mr. Theodore Bryant can erect statutes and buy parks? One refinement on this technique suggested by B. E. Spencer ("Making Fire with Flint and Steel") is to add a candle to your fire-making kit:

Instead of Mrs Annie Besant leading the strike, Louse Raw argues that it was instigated by the matchgirls themselves. Using information from the Bryant and May company archives, she names those identified by the company as strike leaders when the matchgirls set up a twelve-strong strike committee. [ 5] The standard myth about the matchgirls’ strike is that, inspired by Mrs Annie Besant’s discovery of their plight, some 1,400 matchgirls went on strike and, with the help of a ‘strike fund’ set up by the Fabians and with Mrs Annie Besant as their strike leader, the matchgirls marched after a three-week strike to total victory.How could a union be formed among the girls at Bryant and May? … Suppose a union was formed and the girls went on strike; the foreman would simply announce that so many hands were required at so much an hour, and their doors would be besieged within hours.” [ 4] In 1920, the SDF, renamed the British Socialist Party (BSP), became the largest feeder party to the CPGB, and its late 19th-century unemployed movement inspired the CPGB’s National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM).) [ 8]

In short, the idea that a fabian Lady Bountiful in the shape of Mrs Annie Besant (during her brief five-year period as a ‘socialist’) descended on the politically ignorant matchgirls to lead them to an isolated victory against their particular Bryant and May employers is a nonsense. William Stead, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, Henry Hyde Champion of the Labour Elector and Catharine Booth of the Salvation Army joined Besant in her campaign for better working conditions in the factory. So also did Hubert Llewellyn Smith, Sydney Oliver, Stewart Headlam, Hubert Bland, Graham Wallas and George Bernard Shaw. However, other newspapers such as The Times, blamed Besant and other socialist agitators for the dispute. Not all steels work: high carbon steels, tool steels and knife steels will work if tempered or case-hardened. The steel does not have to be in the classic "C" shape of most Viking steels, though this is a handy configuration that ensures a good grip and protects the fingers on the striking hand. I’m sure a lot of people would agree that we live in strange times. But do they have to be so strange that Area 51 is making headlines? And what’s this about fish the look like aliens. September’s Words in the News explain all.Tinder box made from the shells of two half gourds, containing flint, steel, and tinder in form of the pithy flower stem of an agave plant. Collected by R. Kislingbury on Saint Lucia, West Indies, Caribbean Sea, in 1910.