‘By “a living wage” we mean not merely a wage which is sufficient for physical existence but a wage adequate to maintain the worker, his wife and family, in health and honour, and to enable him to dispense with the subsidiary earnings of his children up to the age of sixteen years. By “reasonable hours” we mean hours sufficiently short not merely to leave him unexhausted but to allow him sufficient leisure and energy for home life, for recreation, for the development through study of his mind and spirit, and for participation in the affairs of the community. We hold that the payment of such a wage in return for such hours of work ought to be the first charge upon every industry.’

When she’d finished reading the paper, Olive raised her head and looked at her husband as Adam said, ‘That’s what I want for us and for the bairn. It’s a basic human right, surely? And yet if we voice such things the working class are held up as a lot of useless whingers who haven’t got the sense to do anything more than to labour like animals.’

Olive stared at him. She hadn’t heard anything past the ‘us’. It was the first time in her marriage Adam had referred to them as such.

‘I might be looking on the black side, Olive, but I can’t see that a strike will persuade them at the top to regard working people as human beings. I hope I’m wrong, but when I see pictures of Churchill in his nice suit and with a cigar the size of a bazooka sticking out of his mouth, it’s like he’s from another planet, and the same goes for the rest of the government. They talk about us as the “New Red Threat” and being “Worse than the Hun”, but I work with blokes who fought in the war and would fight again if their country needed them. No, this is going to be a long bitter fight and I’ve no idea whether it’ll be worth it in the long run.’

It was the most he’d said to her at one time in the whole of their four years together. Quietly, she said, ‘We’ll get through, Adam. You’re fighting for Alice’s future and all the other bairns who weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths.’

He raked back the curls that always fell over his forehead as he muttered, ‘I don’t know if you’ll still see it that way when we can’t pay the rent and there’s nowt to put on the table.’

It struck her anew how handsome he was. ‘Oh, aye, I will, have no doubt about that.’

He met her eyes and as she held his gaze, he said softly, ‘I believe you will at that.’