Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968

The strike, led by Rose Boland, Eileen Pullen, Vera Sime, Gwen Davis, Violet Dawson, and Sheila Douglass, began on 7 June 1968, when women sewing machinists at Ford Motor Company Limited's Dagenham plant in London walked out, followed later by the machinists at Ford's Halewood Body & Assembly plant.

[1][2][3] At the time it was common practice for companies to pay women less than men, irrespective of the skills involved.

[4] Following the intervention of Barbara Castle, the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity in Harold Wilson's government, the strike ended three weeks after it began, as a result of a deal that immediately increased their rate of pay to 8% below that of men, rising to the full category B rate the following year.

[9][2][4][10][11] In the second reading debate of the bill, MP Shirley Summerskill spoke of the machinists playing a "very significant part in the history of the struggle for equal pay".

[13] Several streets in Dagenham Green, built on the site of the Ford stamping plant, are to be named for the women who led the strikes and the equal pay campaign.