Rita lives in Dagenham and, like many local women, she works at the Ford plant stitching together seat covers. It’s intricate work carried out in sweltering conditions. So why, she wonders, are the workers paid the same as unskilled labourers? Is it because the work is unskilled? Or is it in fact because they are women?
Made in Dagenham shows how, at some expense to their family lives, in a country already crippled by strikes, and with a little help from colourful political firebrand Barbara Castle, the Dagenham women managed to overturn an age old hypocrisy.
Award winning actress Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife) stars as Rita O’Grady, the catalyst for the 1968 Ford Dagenham strike, which led to the advent of the Equal Pay Act. This popular British comedy also stars Bob Hoskins, Rosamund Pike, Ray Winstone and Miranda Richardson, and is directed by Nigel (Calendar Girls) Cole.
See Made in Dagenham (15) at Theatr Mwldan from Friday October 22nd.
