Uma Kumaran

I thank my hon. Friend for that powerful intervention. All Labour Members have stories of women who have shaped the struggle for working people’s rights in British history. Too often, those stories do not get told, so I am really pleased that we have a chance to hear them today. As I was saying, the strike took place exactly 137 years ago this week, and I am proud to be in the Chamber speaking about it. The union movement is still fighting for dignity and fairness at work, and standing up for workers’ rights against mistreatment and malpractice. We owe so much to the women who came before us—the pioneers of the rights we enjoy today. They stood up against injustice, took power into their own hands, and won all the concessions they demanded from greedy factory bosses. Those women changed the course of history, and I and many other women would not be here without them. I come to the House today in that same spirit, to ask the Minister whether we will finally formally recognise the matchgirls’ role in the British trade union movement and in the advancement of the rights of women and girls in Britain. I mentioned Mr Graham, one of the MPs who met the matchgirls in Parliament. Those MPs’ names are recorded in Hansard, but the names and voices of the matchgirls are absent, because it would be decades more before a woman first sat on these green Benches. The matchgirls’ contribution to the story of new trade unionism, British labour history, and the struggle for rights and dignity at work is too often forgotten. That history is too often overlooked; working-class stories are left untold, and are under-represented in our curriculums and our history books. It is a history that belongs to all of us, and that we all have a responsibility to keep telling when we have the chance.