Remembering the 1910 Women Chainmakers Strike

– the 2026 Women Chainmakers Festival

27/06/2026 Mary McArthur Park, Cradley Heath

The 1910 Chainmakers strike re-enactors pose for a group photograph

Every year during the summer the Midlands TUC coordinates a family festival at the Mary McArthur Park at Cradley Heath, to commemorate the successful strike of the women Chainmakers of Cradley Heath in 1910.

This year, I was once again privileged to be commissioned to document the occasion. The call to arms a piece of street theatre intended to give the audience a flavour of the reasons and causes for the strike action back in 1910 was the start of the day proper. A young actress portraying Mary McArthur interacted with an actor portraying an employer and various other players taking other parts.

The actress playing the part of Mary McArthur

Every year, Derby, with support from the Midlands TUC, celebrates this event with a march from Derby Market Place to Cathedral Green, and a chaplet laying at the Silk Mill memorial and a festival on the green.

Mary McArthur rouses the women into action

The ‘employer’

After the ‘Call to Arms’ Mary McArthur sat down with the children and told the kids stories from the strike (this was repeated again a few hours later).

A feature of the festival in recent years has always been a series of panels were women meet and discuss various issue of the day, with a particular reference as to how they affect women. Panel members share their experiences.

‘Women Winning in the Workplace’ panel.

‘Women Winning in the Workplace’ panel l l-r Sarah James GMB, Sonia Kumar MP, Deb Ferris GMB, Laura NEU, Penny Unite Kathryn Salt MBE (chair)

Kathryn Salt MBE

(Chair)

After the ‘Women Winning in the Workplace Panel’ there was music from Sam Draisey a protest-folk singer/songwriter from Wolverhampton.

Sam Draisey – protest-folk singer/songwriter from Wolverhampton

After Sam’s set there was a talk from Jenny and Lucy, two descendants from women Chainmakers, who talked about their ancestors and regaled stories from the time.

Jenny and Lucy talk about the women, the conditions they lived in and what they had to deal with

Luce – also a descendant of one of the women chainmakers

After Jenny and Lucy, we had another music set, this time from Jess Silk, the guitarist, singer and songwriter from the Black Country.

Jess Silk, guitarist, singer and songwriter from the Black Country.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, we had another bit of theatre with Mary McArthur and the women Chainmakers, and we leaned a little more about the end of the strike. Mary gave her victory speech, and participating unions hoisted their banners

Hong Kong Lion Dance

The finale of the afternoon was the Hong Kong lion dance

After the speeches a chaplet was laid to commemorate the Workers sacrifice at the Plaque on the side of the Museum of Making

A brief history of the women Chainmakers’ strike.

In 1910, the women Chainmakers of Cradley Heath gained the world’s attention, as they demonstrated the difficulties suffered by Britain’s low paid women workers. In their backyard forges, hundreds of women stopped work in a last-ditch effort – strike for a living wage.

They gained the attention of the charismatic union organiser and campaigner, Mary Macarthur. She gave the women the focus they needed and helped them unite together. The women’s struggle became a national and eventually an international cause célèbre.​

Trade unionists from all over the UK rallied together to help the women, and donations to the strike fund were received from far and wide.

After ten long weeks, the employers gave in and the women they won the dispute. Their earnings increased from as little as 5 shillings (25p) to 11 shillings (55p) a week. Their victory helped to make the principle of a national minimum wage a reality.

When the strike was ended there was £1,500 remaining in the strike fund. Mary Macarthur proposed that this money in the strike fund should be used to build a ‘centre of social and industrial activity in the district’. Thousands of local people turned out for the opening of The Cradley Heath Workers’ Institute on 10 June 1912.

Who was Mary McArthur?

Mary Reid McArthur was a Glaswegian born in 1880.  She became the bookkeeper for the family drapery business, and at the prompting of her father attended a meeting of the Ayr branch of the Shop Assistant’s’ union.

Upon learning of the poor conditions and treatment of so many shop workers, she became fascinated with the union’s cause, joined the Ayr branch and soon became the branch secretary.

By 1903, May had become secretary of the ‘Women’s Trade Union League’. Mary turned her focus to the ‘sweated’ industries and in 1906 was a founding member of the Ant-sweating League. In the same year she also founded the ‘Federation of Women Workers’ (NFWW) through which she wanted to help women organise, and where necessary have successful strikes.

Mary recognised the women chainmakers’ issues and realised that they needed help. One of her famous quotes is: “women are unorganised because they are badly paid, and poorly paid because they are unorganised.”

Mary helped the women organise and used her trade union knowledge to bring their cause to the UK national press.  She joined the women on their pickets, lobbied members of the aristocracy, unions and newspapers to gain support from the women’s cause. She was an excellent orator.

After the Chainmakers strike was over she moved more and more into political circles and was a friend of both Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. In 1918 she stood for Parliament at Stourbridge, losing by 1,333 votes to the Liberal candidate.  She was active in establishing the International Labour Organisation (ILO) a League of Nations agency in 1919 – part of the treaty of Versailles.

In 1920 she was diagnosed with stomach cancer and had two operations.  Despite her illness she continued her union work until her death on January 1^st, 1921, at the age of 40.

More photographs from around the festival.

The children’s climbing tower

BMA

Birmingham Stand Up to Racism

Kings Winford and South Staffordshire Labour Party

Birmingham Clarion Singers

Midlands TUC Banner and main tent

Serene Strings Academy Guzheng Recital

Women Against the Far Right

The National Education Union

Musicians’ Union

GMB Union

Unison

Wolverhampton Bilston and District TUC

The Morning Star newspaper

The Lady Chainmaker statue at Mary McArthur Gardens

In 2004, the Workers’ Institute was threatened when plans for a bypass were announced. In 2006, thanks to the efforts of the Midlands TUC and the Midlands unions and a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £1.535 million, the entire building was moved brick-by-brick to the Black Country Living Museum.

The Workers Institute, paid for with surplus funds remaining after the end of the Chainmakers’ strike, and now sited in the Black Country Museum.

Thank you for reading my blog post about the Women Chainmakers’ Festival 2026.

– I hope you enjoyed it.

Pete Jenkins