FEMINISTS packed out the Bow Arts Trust in east London on Saturday for the annual Matchwomen’s Festival commemorating the historic 1888 strike.

Organiser Dr Louise Raw said the strikers were pioneers of working-class militancy whose victory over bosses at the Bryant & May match factory inspired the dockers’ strike of the following year and helped found modern trade unionism.

She welcomed Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s recognition that the matchwomen were the “mothers of the modern labour movement.”

Campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez introduced her book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, explaining how research and programming bias affects women.

With everything from car crash testing to drug research being weighted towards the effect on males, women’s health and safety are undermined. 

Even average office temperatures are set with men’s comfort in mind — women are typically less comfortable at colder temperatures. 

Other sessions saw domestic violence survivor and campaigner Rachel Williams speak on the need to change the way that the law handles abusive men and her campaign for strangling women to be made a specific offence, Carla Montemayor of Maternity Action discuss the persecution of pregnant immigrants and historian Hallie Rubenhold present her book The Five, the first full study of the women murdered by Jack the Ripper to focus on their stories rather than obsess over the identity of the murderer.

Muslim feminist Nina Malik looked at the role of patriarchy in Muslim communities, while Stand Up to Racism’s Sabby Dhalu and Dr Raw addressed the rise of the far right.

In the final session, “token man” Michael Rosen spoke about the anthology Reading and Rebellion that he has compiled with Kimberley Reynolds and Jane Rosen, exploring how growing up in a Communist Party family meant he was used to countercultural literature and “replying to the mainstream” from an early age.

Attendees partook of a gin bar and partied into the night to live music from socialist singer-songwriter Maddy Carty and radical folk band Steve White and the Protest Family.