This is the story of one of the most important strikes in labour history revealing the significance & truth of what actually happened. In July 1888, fourteen hundred women & girls employed by the matchmakers Bryant & May walked out of their East End factory & into the history books. Louise Raw gives us a challenging new interpretation of events proving that the women themselves, not celebrity socialists like Annie Besant, began it. She provides unequivocal evidence to show that the matchwomen greatly influenced the Dock Strike of 1889, which until now was thought to be the key event of new unionism, & repositions them as the mothers of the modern labour movement. Returning to the stories of the women themselves, & by interviewing their relatives today, Raw is able to construct a new history which challenges existing accounts of the strike itself & radically alters the accepted history of the labour movement in Britain.