Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labor Movement
Monthly Review Press, New York, 2015, 288pp. $28.95 cloth
ISBN 9781583674345
Reviewed by Martin Empson
In 1889 nearly 3,000 workers at Silver’s, an enormous factory in East London, in Silvertown went on strike. The men and women who walked out were inspired by the New Unionism that was sweeping the city. They’d seen mass strikes by dockers in the East End that had won major victories and they wanted improvements too.
Their twelve week strike has almost been forgotten today. Perhaps because it ended in defeat. But John Tully’s important book rescues the struggle for readers today, and, perhaps surprisingly, the reader will find that we can learn much from those brave men and women….
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