reds of thousands of workers showed that strikes, the more militant the better, could effect real change in their lives. The period is one of great significance and inspiration.
The working class and its organisations had suffered a long downturn. Eleanor played a role in bringing them back to life. She organised solidarity, set up women’s branches in the new unions and jumped on pub tables to speak to workers in London’s East End.
In the book I wanted to bring this movement to life and show how Eleanor related to it. Although she had an interesting cultural and social life, I really wanted to place an emphasis on her political activity.
She would have recognised the world we live in today. An inspiring example that came up again and again in discussions while I was writing the book was that of fast food workers in the US. One of their slogans, “We can’t survive on $7.25”, is exactly the kind of cry the matchwomen, dockers and gas workers of the 1880s would have taken up.
In a society where anti-immigrant myths were constantly perpetuated, she recognised the importance of unity against the bosses and the state. In the 1880s the immigrants were Irish and Jewish. Today they are Bulgarian and Romanian.
At the centre of her arguments was always the emancipation of the working class as the act of the working class itself. Her life was shaped by the struggle for an alternative world.