On the 7th June 1968 187 women at the Ford factory and Dagenham walked out
on strike followed by two hundred more at the Halewood plant in Merseyside. The
strike which lasted three weeks and reportedly cost Ford £8m in
orders was in protest at the regrading of female sewing machinists as unskilled
labour when men doing similar work, in the same factory, were graded as skilled labour
and paid higher wages. "We had skills the same as the men yet were classed
the same as the teenage boys who swept the floor."
Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity in Harold
Wilson's Labour government, was brought in to help negotiate a settlement. While
the strikers' demands focused on the issue of grading the broader debate
quickly became about equal pay, a long-term goal for Castle. While she was
unable to change the grading system at Dagenham, Castle was able to negotiate an
increase in the women's pay, bringing this up from eighty to ninety-two
percent of the men's wages. She also promised to introduce legislation on
equal pay, which was delivered within two years. Equal pay was not just 'made in
Dagenham' though. This call has a much longer history, stretching back to the
19th century and accelerated by the mobilisation of women to undertake
roles traditionally held by men during the two world wars. Between the wars
equal pay was an objective of the Six Point Group, founded in 1921 by Lady
Rhondda. Meanwhile, the House of Commons voted several times in the 1920s in
favour of equal pay in the civil service, but no action was taken
In 1944 Thelma Cazalet-Keir even tabled a successful equal pay amendment,
only for the measure to be quashed by Churchill.
The same year the Equal Pay Campaign Committee was formed, chaired by Mavis
Tate. In 1954 the committee organized a petition calling for equal pay in the
public services that was signed by over 80,000 people. Presented to Parliament by
a cross-party group of women MPs, including Irene Ward and Barbara Castle,
the petition led to equal pay being phased into the civil service between
1955 and 1961. As the Conservative Chancellor Rab Butler conceded, "if we
don't move, someone will." However, private employers
were not affected. Castle announced talks on equal pay legislation to the
House of Commons a year before the Dagenham dispute, a measure pledged in
the 1964 Labour manifesto. With pressure building within and outside Parliament,
favourable polls and equal pay being a requirement for Britain's entry to the
European Economic Community, the prospect of legislation was finally within sight -
with the Dagenham dispute providing the last push Castle needed. The Equal Pay
Act banned discrimination between men and women in the terms and conditions of
their employment, in both the public and private sector. It received Royal Assent
on the 29th of May 1970 but, in a move designed to appease employers and give
them time to make the necessary preparations, it did not come into force
until the 29th of December 1975. While the principle of equal pay was now
firmly established in law, the Act was more limited than Castle initially hoped
and didn't stop employers using a variety of tactics to ensure women's pay
did not reach parity with men. Some of the Dagenham machinists were also
disappointed that neither the settlement nor the legislation resolved the issue
of their work being downgraded. It would take another 16 years and a second
strike in 1984 before they would be classed as skilled workers.
The Equal Pay Act was later incorporated into the Equality Act 2010 but the
struggle for equal pay in practice continues. According to the Office for
National Statistics on average women continue to earn 13.1%
less than men, while research conducted by the Fawcett Society
highlights that 40% of people do not know that women have a right to
equal pay for work of equal value. As Baroness Margaret Prosser said in the
House of Lords, "having seen the working women's campaign
for equal pay lead to victory with the Equal Pay Act 1970, I wouldn't have
dreamt that in 2020 women could still be facing pay discrimination. It's time to
make the right to equal pay a reality for all women."