PAIN IN THE WORK PLACE : "MADE IN DAGENHAM"

So, there was a film festival where I live a while back. I look forward to it the whole year round and every year I spend a fortune on movie tickets and for a full two weeks just devote the majority of my time to movie-going. Sheer bliss. Now this has its numerous pleasures and advantages, however, one can find it a tad difficult at times to motivate oneself to get out of the house, especially if it’s raining and it’s a late-night show. Which was the case for this one; mind you it was also the first film of the festival for me so motivation wasn’t at a high point either… By the end however, fear not, I was perfectly clear in my mind why I love the festival so much. Home systems and such are all very well but it can’t beat the real thing can it? I queued for four hours for those tickets – I really worked for them, and now it’s time to enjoy them… You have to be a festival go-er to understand…
Right, made in Dagenham. Now, I love British films. I really do. This had a little added “Easter Egg” surprise for me (You know, those little surprise features they put in DVDs sometimes. They’re called Easter Eggs. Oh never mind…). Anyway, in one of the secondary parts was one of my favorite actors of all times, Rupert Graves. (You may or may not have heard of him, here’s his imdb page). And although I AM a huge fan of his I repeatedly lose track of what he’s doing (heck I repeatedly lose track of what I’m doing as well so no one should be hurt by that fact!) so seeing him appear on the screen all of a sudden was a massive and wonderful surprise for me. Not that I needed to be any more positively disposed towards this one. Oh no. This is the amazing true story of 187 women machinists who worked in the Ford factory in Dagenham in 1968. And they had a problem. The industry (all industries in general in fact) payed women a lot less money than men back then. So the ladies were classed as unskilled workers and payed a pittance. So this group stood up and did something about it. They threatened to go on strike. No one took that seriously either – so they went on strike. They had everyone, from their husbands in some cases to the biggest manufacturers of the times against them but they stood up for what they believed in. But did they achieve anything? Watch the film and see…
This film is a wonderful critique of the woman’s place not only in the work place, but in the world in general, in the ‘60s. And we’re talking about Britain here folks, not a developing nation or the Middle East. I must say that the position of women in the workplace is still far from ideal, even in developed nations ( I won’t even begin on the developing ones). In a lot of big companies, the higher you go up the proverbial food chain the more testosterone is pumped around. I am a strong believer in equality and that this will change one day, not just in Britain but all around the world, so it gave me great pleasure to watch the story of the brave group of women who took on the world and unwittingly took the first steps to change the world fundamentally. And it reminds one, no matter what the issue is, that sometimes in life, in the film’s own words, one simply has to do something. It’s a very real and down to earth movie this one. About real people with real problems who had the guts to stand up and take real steps to solve them. And that, dear friends, is what I call real courage. Highly recommended.