East End Landmark Celebrated by New Story Telling Website

A vibrant new story telling site, hagsharlotsheroines.com, founded by resident east ender Helen Wilkinson, celebrates the life of Annie Besant and her part in the 1888 strike at the Bryant & May factory in Bow, East London.

This watershed strike by 1,400 'matchgirls' for fair pay for a fair day's work, and subsequent defeat for Bryant & May, was momentous on many levels. It illustrated the power of collective action to a still embryonic labour movement and was truly David and Goliathan in character. At a time when no woman, not even a nice middle class one over 21, could vote, it was incredible that a group of poverty stricken, unskilled, female workers drove a mighty symbol of capitalist power into retreat. It was also the first ever strike for equal pay in the UK and marked the beginnings of a working class feminist movement in all but name.

The formation of the Matchgirls Union and ensuing clash was inspired and led by social reformer Annie Besant.

This year International Women's Day on March 8th pays tribute to women with careers of courage and hagsharlotsheroines.com salutes 'Militant Annie' and the plucky matchgirls.

"hagsharlotsheroines tells the tales of the famous, and not so famous, pioneering women from past to present who helped to shape the cultural landscape we now inhabit. We aim to entertain, inform and inspire others to seek out those hitherto unsung heroines (and hags and harlots) who lived life by their own rules and in so doing were catalysts for change. Every month we will post up a new story on the site and also send it to the inboxes of our members. We welcome feedback and, indeed, reader's own writing - there are undoubtedly many tales of other fascinating East End women simply waiting to be told" comments Helen Wilkinson, co-founder of hagsharlotsheroines.com.

Helen loves living here in the East End in the old Bryant & May Factory, now known as The Bow Quarter, especially because she shares the space with the spirits of so many ground-breaking, courageous women. hagsharlotsheroines is the fourth website she has been involved in setting up, after successful careers in television as a BBC producer and founder of independent think-tank, Demos where she developed a reputation as a leading social commentator on women's changing lives. In this venture, she has played more of a backseat role, working with her sister, writer Laura Wilkinson and Becky Bradford (also a writer) both of whom live in Brighton. They developed the idea of this website to share stories like Annie's and the plucky matchstick girls with as many people as possible, and to keep 'herstory' alive.