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Early this year the Norwich shoe manufacturers Sexton & Everard, having gone £14m. in the red, sold out to a Florida property developer. Part of his conditions for buying the firm was the sacking of 485 workers out of a total labour force of 700. On 17th March the 45 women workers at the Fakenham branch who had stitched the shoe uppers which were cut and soled in Norwich, were all made redundant. That Friday they decided to occupy the factory. Eileen English and Nancy McGrath locked themselves in and barricaded the doors with machines - determined to fight for their right to work. Edna Roach: 'When the factory was bought in Norwich they saved two or three hundred jobs there and we got the chop. As far as we were concerned it just wasn't on, because there was no work here for us anyway. So the only alternative we had was to take over the factory and to work in. By working in it makes it a bit different to a sit in; we're actually doing a job of work, so we don't lose our skills. We just had to work in to try and get somebody to realise that work is needed in this area and to help save our jobs......If you like to scrub floors or stand up to your ankles in water in one of the processing plants 1 suppose you could say there's work of a kind. But that's very limited, because they don't want that many and nine times out of ten in the winter they stand off anyway. We're not used to that kind of work. Leather's the only kind of work we know."
CO-OPERATIVE The women began by machining patchwork bags out of scraps of old shoe leather. All profits from sales and money from donations go into one fund which is used to buy more leather, which they make into bags, skirts, and waistcosts. No one takes a wage. The women who hadn't made garments before learned as they went along, helping each other out, seeing the product from start to finish. Their factory runs as a co-operative, all decisions are made collectively. When a problem comes up they all meet in the centre of the factory floor to talk it out. The atmosphere in their converted church is miles away from the timeclocked, piecework days of Sextons with husbands and friends popping in to chat, non-stop music and each worker pacing her own work. Every order is turned out to specification and on time.
THE ROLE OF THE UNIONS Workers throughout the country have expressed solidarity with the Fakenham occupation workers. They have received donations from Fisher Bendix, £250 from the Upper Clyde Shop Stewards Committee, and contributions from the membership of their own union, the National Union of Footwear, Leather and Allied Trades (NUFLAT), even though they've not received official recognition from the union itself. (Nancy McGrath is the only ASTMS member, and she does get official backing.) The union bureaucrats outdid themselves, sending a circular to the Norwich and Fakenham Trades Councils and to union branches asking that the women be refused any support or recognition, Edna Roach (NUFLAT steward): *The union unemployment benefit lasts for 12 weeks and runs for females at 27 pence a day for continuous membership or 20 pence a day under the full membership. The union by paying this recognises we're out of work, but the Labour Exchange says we haven't proved we're unemployed. I don't know really how you prove you're
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out of work, other than by surrendering your cards and going up and signing on when you're supposed to or going for a job when they send you even if it's a job that doesn't exist when you get there. It's been a month since we put in an appeal and we're waiting for a tribunal......Waiting a month to get our £4.20, which as married women is all we're allowed, though you pay a full stamp and the same tax as a single girl. Single girls get £6.00 but married ones get £4.20, which I think is a confidence trick in anybody's book."
Nancy MeGrath (ASTMS): "I think unions can be a good thing provided the membership of the union works within the union to see that the rules are carried out for the benefit of all the members. I think that in our particular case here there are a lot of things that can be bettered, a lot of restructuring to be done within the union. I don't think it's any good at all forming a breakaway union. women especially. I don't think they'd get the overall membership and they'd never get the funds to support any sort of dispute. I think what they have to do is to remain within the unions that they have representing them now and try to get them restructured from the bottom up. You don't appoint an officer in 1972 and 25 years from now he's still sitting pretty in a seat. You appoint him for maybe two years and let him put himself up for re-election in two years time. I think that's one way that you can insure that union officers are made to work for the benefit of all the members. If they know they're coming up for re-election they'd better jolly well get in there and fight for you and work for the people they represent, not having the people dragging them along by the scruff of their necks, like the people have had to do here in the WORKERS CONTROL Nancy McGrath: *1 think working class people are becoming far more aware of conditions outside of the place where they work. They know for instance, if they read the papers and look at the profits being made as a result of the work that they're doing, they're becoming increasingly aware that they should be involved in the structure of an industry, perhaps at boardroom level. Be in there on the decisions, and in that way I think that these long term redundancies and rationalisations could begin to be fought before they ever reach the stage where four or five hundred people are made redundant and there's nothing you can do about it then."
How long can they go on? When Mr Glassman, the new general manager, said they could remain in their factory rent-free as long as they paid the bills, he must have underestimated their determination. In actual fact, he can only profit from the women's resolve to buy the factory and set it up as a workers co-operative. He owns the place now and hasn't any plans for it. But any negotiations must go through him. His price for the place is £11,000, and the women have spent a good part of their time these past two months trying to find a suitable backer. As Nancy says, "we don't just want to revert to being creatures behind a machine with all the decisions being made by remote control. We must have a part in any decision which is made. But the practicalities have to be faced now, I have bills to pay, insurance for the workers, and we have bills at home to pay ..." The women hope a trust will loan them the £11,000 to set up on their own and then they can offer jobs to the women who were forced to leave and find other work. The occupation at Fakenham is limited as is every occupation. The choice the women are faced with either to set up a cooperative or to obtain contract work-both result in producing for profit; i.e, it is impossible to "beat the system"" while the system still exists. But, though the Fakenham women realise this themselves, they have also learnt something which in the long run is perhaps more important: the answer to their problems lies in themselves and more than that in the unity of the working class and the determination to fight redundancies or whatever with direct militant action. That lesson must be remembered for another day.
Sue Shapiro, Tessa van Gelderen FAKENHAM FILM The story of the occupation; the women discuss the problems, the issues involved, the lessons to be learnt.
Made by Sue Shapiro with Socialist Woman.
Ideal for showing in factories, colleges, schools, sit-ins—a good basis for discussion. Approx. 10 minutes.
Write: Socialist Woman, c/o Pat Masters, Flat 3, 20 Queens Gardens, London W.2, for more information about hiring.