Exploitation

During a recent visit, Margaret's sister Christine and her husband too us to the fascinating Black Country Living Museum. Buildings from all over the West Midlands have been rebuilt on the site and are operated as working shops, businesses and homes from various periods in history. We went down a mine, sucked humbugs from the old-fashioned sweetshop and ate, from paper cones, chips cooked in real beef dripping
Very nostalgic but in reality the life depicted was very harsh. Chris said that each village specialised in a specific sweated trade. The village where she grew up made nails. She remembers her great-grandmother telling how women would leave the nail production to have a baby but have to return to the line only two hours later.
The lower part of the museum depicts a village set in 1910. It is based around the story of the women chain makers of Cradley Heath. They went on strike that year to obtain a minimum wage of 2.5 old pence per hour. Women dressed in costume march up and down the cobbles holding placards supporting the strike. Also, as you visit different houses, bits of the story are revealed until the whole tale becomes clear. They stood little chance of success because their income was vital to their families. Then Mary MacArthur took up their cause. In 1906, she had founded the Federation of Women Workers and was a tireless campaigner for women's rights. She toured the country speaking on their behalf and the money she raised enabled her to pay them until the strike was successful. With the money left over she built the Cradley Health Workers' Institute. That has been rebuilt, brick by brick, at the museum.
Now, you may wonder what all this has to do with religion. Well, a mere stone's throw from the Institute is a rebuilt Baptist Chapel, with a Methodist and Salvation Army officer as its custodians. This for me symbolises the fact that so many of the early fighters for workers' rights came out of our Non-Conformist tradition. The Bishop of London recently acknowledged that in the past the owners of the mines, factories and farms tended to worship in the established church while their workforce could be found in the Non-Conformist chapels. Many of the leaders of the early workers' movements were as familiar with the pulpit as with the negotiating table. It is understandable that the artisans and labourers empathised with a carpenter from Nazareth. Also, that they saw love and service for their fellow man as an extension of their love for God. These links continued until comparatively recent times.
Today, conditions have changed but sweated labour still exists despite often being hidden. Evil people still take advantage of the vulnerable. Frequently, it is immigrants that are now the victims and their own compatriots who exploit them. The fact that cockle pickers who drown in Morecambe Bay are Chinese does not absolve us from responsibility. What price a shellfish supper? Sometimes the exploitation is hidden in domestic situations. Only recently, a woman went on trial for importing brides for three of her sons and turning them into slaves sewing twelve hours a day. Only an astute teacher reporting a child's chance remark eventually saved them after years of abuse. We should all be as aware as that teacher of what is happening around us. Also, rather than importing labour, we often export the work. Too many of the cheap goods that are available in our shops are produced at the expense of men, women and children being underpaid and overworked in Third World countries. Are we so impoverished that we need more consumer goods produced at that cost?
When I consider things like these, I have no doubt that our Non-Conformist ancestors would say that we should not only feed Christ's sheep but also ensure that they have a living wage and decent working conditions.