Dr Louise Raw: Activist Historian

Women have routinely been written out of history, sidelined and forgotten. So have the working class. Dr Louise Raw, author of ’Striking a Light: the Bryant & May Matchwomen and Their Place on History’, in the book, she challenges the idea that the Dock Strike of 1889 was the first major strike in British history, and instead looks at an industrial strike the previous year, led by women, that was a key moment in the founding of today’s Labour Party.

Louise describes herself as an activist historian. She has created the Matchwomen Festival in London’s East End, celebrating their story, and unearths untold stories weekly on “London Lives” on the Robert Elms show on BBC London. They say the winners write history – the stories we know from the past and the ones we have forgotten tell us what kind of society we live in. The missing pieces give us the clue to set it right.

Follow Louise on Twitter @LouiseRawAuthor and hear her on the Robert Elms show on BBC London.

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Produced and recorded by Rena Niamh Smith 
Theme music by Benjamin Tassie
Artwork by Fleur Beck
Sound engineering by Gibran Farrah
Special thanks to Chloe Vasseghi