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Recognition at last! Matchwomen to be honoured with a blue plaque
Historian LOUISE RAW charts her journey of discovery of how a group of impoverished East End workers became the mothers of the modern trade union movement – and the resonance their story of battling adversity had with her own life

AFTER 134 years, an English Heritage blue plaque will at last mark the site of a groundbreaking strike by east London matchwomen. 

I’ve spent a little less than that, but still almost half my life, learning and telling their story — pursuing women I could never meet, but who still changed my life, through the pages of history, and East End memory. 

It started with a chance discovery in an archive in 1997.

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