By Louise Raw

The Daily Mail would have strongly approved of Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘Little Matchgirl’.

She died of hypothermia and starvation, but did so quietly; as workers should, as women should. The Mail and its readers would probably have clapped for her and called her a ‘hero’- once she was safely dead. But it's unlikely they would have lifted a finger to save her whilst alive.

In the poem, the unnamed girl matchseller, shoeless and bare-headed in the snow, is out on the freezing streets desperately trying to sell matches on New Year’s Eve. She finally succumbs to the cold, sinking down by a wall, 'allowing' herself to transgressively strike some matches (they're not supposed to be for her use, only to make money for her parents) for light and warmth in her last tragic moments.

But crucially, she doesn't complain. She isn’t angry in her last hours as she passes brightly lit houses from which emanate the mouth-watering smells of festive meals; doesn’t bang on the doors demanding food, or, God forbid, lob a brick through any of the windows through which she watches happy families, oblivious to her fate. There is no talk of workers’ rights or injustice.

Any of this would have lost her victim points; to be a Good Victim, a girl or woman must be passive.

Anderson also stresses that she's beautiful and blonde, with lovely hair (unlikely as malnourishment would have made it fall out, but it's important she is attractive- more Good Victim points).

Her death is portrayed as beautiful too- in a dying hallucination she sees her grandmother, the only person who had ever loved her, coming to lift her to heaven in encircling arms.

It’s a poetic martyrdom. Readers are clasped gently by the heartstrings but not guilt-tripped- if there are any villains of the piece it’s the girls' parents who are presented as grotesque and brutal- her father beats her, and we are told her mother has big feet – there's a lot about her shoes being too huge for her daughter's dainty feet- so we know she’s not delicately feminine, thus not a Good Victim.

This is not to criticise Anderson, who was a storyteller not a politician, and was trying to induce sympathy for the poor by appealing to the sentiments of his day.

But what ghastly, hypocritical sentiments they were; and they're still with us.

For much of the pandemic, the right-wing press has been lobbying hard for more Good Victims, more martyrs.

Not THEMSELVES, of course, but frontline workers, who must get back to it for the sake of the economy. The Mail recently implied teachers were DESPERATE to go back to work en masse and become ‘heroes’, but being prevented by horrid militant unions; no matter how loudly teachers tried to correct this propaganda.

REAL workers are rarely as satisfactory as the fictional kind.

The Victorians found this when they- raised on the Little Matchgirl nursery staple- encountered the REAL matchwomen of East London, during their strike in 1888.

Disappointingly they were not all blonde and pretty, nor prepared to die, or even live, quietly!

At this time match firm Bryant & May was a huge economic player, with factories around the country and a major export business. The sons of the original Mr Bryant were in charge by 1888: ruthless ‘fat cat’ Capitalists in the modern style. They understood ‘PR’, always working the press; they were well-connected to senior politicians, and produced huge (20%) profits for shareholders.

By hostile takeovers of other local and national match firms, they’d managed to push wages DOWN and profits up. The women were earning LESS than in 1888 than 1878. There was no need for this- the founders were the equivalents of multi millionaires, living large in huge country estates- the firm was more than successful. But why not maximise profits? Workers had no rights or contracts, and could be easily replaced form the pool of East End unemployed f they became sick or died.

The results of this was ‘written on the bodies’ of the youngest girls; pre-pubescent when they began work and too malnourished to develop properly, observers said they looked very frail, pale and small in stature, even for poor working women. .

Forbidden to unionise, they seemed utterly powerless. Satisfied they were in charge, the Bryants dined with Prime Ministers and built a statue to William Gladstone – using forced deductions from their workers’ wages!

So far, so promisingly Little Matchgirl.

But Bryant & May underestimated their workforce. The women were mainly Irish in decent, though I’ve recently discovered some were Jewish: despite tremendous religious divides in society outside the factory walls, they were united within it, with absolute loyalty and solidarity. They were also politically aware and astute, in part because of the discrimination they had faced and the way their communities had untied to deal with it. When the statue of Gladstone was erected they surrounded it and pricked their fingers with hatpins, shouting ‘Our blood paid for this!’. The looks on the faces of the great and good assembled for the unveiling must have been a picture.

In 1888 they ‘blew the whistle’ to the press about their conditions.

Bryant &May were LIVID- as angry as any NHS manager or government minister today when nurses dare to speak about lack of PPE.

In an attempt to intimidate, they sacked one girl for ‘whistleblowing’ because she- a ‘pale little person in black’, a journalist later tells us-was popular with her workmates.

But the matchwomen were made of sterner stuff.

Their bosses should have known this. These were women who faced danger and sexual assault in their everyday lives as they made their way around the largely unlit East End streets (why should the ‘underclass’ have light and safety?). They coped by travelling in groups where they could, and learning to fight, well.

East End women had to, to protect themselves and each other, and also to fight off paedophile predators who came after their children; the ‘better’ classes of men might criticise the East End publicly, but also used it as a sexual playground. There are accounts of massed ranks of mums driving off ‘toffs’ trying to abduct children playing in the streets.

Researching Striking a Light, my book on the strike, I discovered the matchwomen would also face up to Jack the Ripper, apparently saying they wanted to find him and put a stop to his murderous rampage through their ‘manor’- no shrinking violets, these!

Losing them even more Good Victim points in the eyes of Polite Society, they weren’t all about the suffering, either, but tried to enjoy life.

When they could, which wasn’t often, they went to the music hall and even- horrors- the gin palaces. They had pride in themselves, also a mark against them- they knew they were looked down on as ‘rough’ and probably immoral simply because they were ‘factory girls’, but fought back with small acts as well as large- they formed a Feather Club to buy and share communal hats, so that they looked as good as possible on rare nights out. They even did this wrong, according to the middle classes- their clothes were too bright, too showy, not maidenly or modest- ‘respectable’ poor women were not heard and preferably barely seen. The matchgirls, promenading the Bow Road arm in arm in colourful frocks and brass hooped earrings, with enormous feathered hats from their ‘club’, were unacceptably unmissable.

They had strong codes of loyalty, always collecting money for sick colleagues even though they had so little. They were certainly not going to allow one of their own to be unfairly dismissed.

As one, the women laid down their tools and walked out.

As they streamed out of the huge matchwork gates and on to Fairfield Road, Bow, they faced an uncertain future- the firm could have, and indeed threatened to, sack them all immediately.

But their brilliance lay in using what they HAD, rather than worrying about what they didn’t, and refusing to accept the usual definition of ‘power’

They had sisterhood, numbers, local respect and unity. Parading the streets of the East End, 1,400 strong, they sang songs about their strike (which were very ‘disrespectful’ about their employers!) to attract attention and also to collect funds.

Drawn to the noise, people came to windows and onto balconies to hear what was happening, and threw coins which the women deftly caught in their long work aprons.

The press at first condemned the strikers as people of ‘the worst kind’- not Good Victims! - and feared revolution: but the women kept up the pressure, holding mass meetings and marching to parliament to meet MPs.

Purely because of their efforts, their refusal to be passive and wait for others to rescue them, the tide began to turn. As share prices tumbled the furious bosses were forced, with furious reluctance, to submit to their terms: better pay and conditions, a dining room away from the white phosphorus fumes that caused ‘phossy jaw’- and the right to form the largest union of women and girls in the country.

The message to us today? Imitate the Matchwomen, so that no-one has to die, for others’ profit, the lonely death of a Little Matchgirl.

Dr Louise Raw is a labour movement and women’ s historian, and historian of the 1888 Matchwomen’s Strike. She runs the annual Matchwomen’s Festival, next held on 26 June 2021

Until JULY 12, join the campaign for a group statue of the matchwomen (n.b. this is the only official campaign by Louise Raw) – details here https://www.facebook.com/MatchwomenStatueOfficial/

Speakers, event details and tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/matchwomens-festival-2021-tickets-111401400588

Festival facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Matchwomen/

Buy Striking a Light https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/striking-a-light-9781441114266/