by Becky Cherriman
The title of the exhibition, Any work that wanted doing emphasises the pressures of capitalism on individuals. Textile artist Becky Moore and I were aware of this as we worked on our commission, which responds to experiences of disabled people working in the textile industry.
Growth in the woollen industry was stimulated by Acts of Parliament introduced between 1666-1680 which stated that all dead folk should be buried in a shroud of [English] wool[i]. This was to avoid exports of wool and to encourage the trade. I found it fascinating that, as early as the 17th Century, the forces of capitalism were imaginative and greedy enough to succeed in commodifying the death of every citizen. Imagine the number of machines that needed to be built to meet these demands.
The language of the mills is glutinous (or should that be gluttonous?) with capitalist concepts. Consider power loom and the oxymoron of overlooker (overseer), both of which highlight power dynamics. Overlooker also recalls the invisibilising that disabled people are still subject to such as how they are overlooked in the job market[ii]. In the 21stCentury, most disabled people hide their disabilities from their manager at work[iii]. This tendency echoes the 19th century report (1832) in which Rev G.S. Bull refers to children who reproach one another for their impairments and women who hide their crooked limbs[iv].
These days the desire to hide – not an option for every disabled person – is partly explained by the pay gap for disabled people[v]. As Eliza Marshall’s testimony indicates, this gap also existed in the 19th Century:
Warburton asked me how much I wanted to have, and I thought happen if I had said 6s. he would not have given it me, because he used to say I was not so sharp as I used to be; so I said 5s. 6d., and he agreed. [vi]
In the 1800s, the disability pay gap would have impacted women more than men because the wages they could command were lower than those of men. Indeed, the gender pay gap increased as the industrial revolution progressed[vii]. There may also have been a perception that women’s marriageability would be compromised if potential grooms knew about their conditions, not least because they could not earn as much.
During one of our first project meetings, Becky Moore suggested that, although mill workers were part of the capitalist system, they were not just compliant cogs in the capitalist wheel. She was right. Textile workers found innovative ways to break up the working day. Oral histories given by 20th Century Sunny Bank Mills workers included accounts of how the women would go out together for lunch in Farsley or play tricks on young male workers who were in a minority in the mill[viii]. I like to think of their accounts of singing together, learning to waltz in the toilets and skating round the mill floor as small resistances to the system, although workers would not necessarily have seen them in that way.
The women looked after one another. Becky Moore shared an amazing story that her great aunt (1906-1989), who had worked in a Leeds mill on Aire Street, told her about how female workers ensured nobody was left short of money. They were paid by piece and, when they overproduced, they would hide pieces and give them to someone who was underproducing to claim as their own. Sometimes, if everyone was meeting the targets, the fabric would be hung out of the window for another day; they would need the support of the men in a different part of the factory to wash and dry the weather-worn pieces.
There were more violent acts of solidarity against the forces of capitalism. In my poem, the phrase brickbats to mill doors refers to Luddite activities such as those used in the Rawfold Mill attack of 11th April 1812[ix] and described in Charlotte Bronte’s fictional Shirley[x]. These tactics make modern day union activities seem tame.
Solidarity is required between working classes from a variety of backgrounds because they share everyday experiences of precarity, prejudice and a lack of power and place[xi]. No matter how the working class is defined, it is not and never has been comprised entirely of white men working in manual labour[xii]. It includes disabled people, women, and people from a range of cultural contexts. The British textile industry was built from colonial wealth. Once there was a labour shortage, the local workforce was boosted with people from the countries it had colonised as with the Windrush generation[xiii]. With regards to Leeds, mill workers included Indians who came in the 20th century[xiv] and found jobs in Sunny Bank Mills[xv] and Irish children who were indentured and trafficked to Northern English linen mills in the 19th century[xvi]. It would be neglectful and inauthentic then for us to leave migrant mill workers out of this artwork altogether. You will find in the poem hints of the food Indian workers shared from a communal pot[xvii] and the silken lilt of Irish mill workers whose photo appears on Becky Moore’s patchwork.
References
[i] UK Parliament (2014). Burying the Dead. [online] UK Parliament. Available at: https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/death-dying/dying-and-death/burying
[ii] Lengnick-Hall, M.L., Gaunt, P.M. and Kulkarni, M. (2008). Overlooked and underutilized: People with disabilities are an untapped human resource. Human Resource Management, 47(2), pp.255–273. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20211.
[iii] Jain-Link, P. and Taylor Kennedy, J. (2019). Why People Hide Their Disabilities at Work. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2019/06/why-people-hide-their-disabilities-at-work
[iv] The House of Commons (1832). REPORT FROM THE COMMITTEE ON THE "BILL to regulate the LABOUR of CHILDREN in the MILLS and "FACTORIES of the United Kingdom. The House of Commons, p.420
[v] Jess, R. (2022). They Look Down on Us. [online] They Look Down On Us. Available at: http://classonline.org.uk/pubs/item/they-look-down-on-us
[vi] The House of Commons (1833a). FACTORIES INQUIRY COMMISSION. FIRST REPORTTHE CENTRAL BOARD OF HIS MAJESTY’S COMMISSIONERS appointed to collect Information in the Manufacturing Districts, as to the EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN IN FACTORIES, and as to the Propriety and Means of CURTAILING the HOURS of their LABOUR: The House of Commons, p.72.
[vii] Humphries, J. and Weisdorf, J. (2015). The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850. The Journal of Economic History, 75(2), pp.405–447. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022050715000662.
[viii] Pearce, J., Teale, R. and Pugh, D. (2020). 360 Archive Film.
[ix] Spen Valley Civic Society (n.d.). Luddites. [online] www.spenvalleycivicsociety.org.uk. Available at: https://www.spenvalleycivicsociety.org.uk/heritage/luddites
[x] Bronte, C. (2009). The Project Gutenberg eBook of Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë. [online] www.gutenberg.org. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30486/30486-h/30486-h.htm [Accessed 6 Dec. 2022].
[xi] Jess, R. (2022). They Look Down on Us. [online] They Look Down on Us. Available at: http://classonline.org.uk/pubs/item/they-look-down-on-us, p.4.
[xii] Williams, Z. (2022). The phrase ‘white working class’ is a fiction – so why are the Tories obsessed with it? | Zoe Williams. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/04/white-working-class-fiction-tories-obsessed [Accessed 26 Nov. 2022].
[xiii] Lowe, K. (2020). Five times immigration changed the UK. BBC News. [online] 20 Jan. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51134644
[xiv] Striking Women (2009). Post 1947 migration to the UK - from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka | Striking Women. [online] Striking-women.org. Available at: https://www.striking-women.org/module/map-major-south-asian-migration-flows/post-1947-migration-uk-india-bangladesh-pakistan-and
[xv] Pearce et al. 360 Archive Film.
[xvi] Gowland, R. (2023). ‘A Mass of Crooked Alphabets’: The Construction and Othering of Working Class Bodies in Industrial England. Bioarchaeological Analyses and Bodies, [online] 18(5), pp.147–163. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71114-0_8.
[xvii] Pearce et al. 360 Archive Film.
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