After three weeks out on strike, the Ford Dagenham machinists have gone back to work. I know you’re relieved. You might not drive a Ford, but you respect a Ford. And I bet you respect Henry Ford. Because he was a man who knew how to put things in a good old-fashioned honest way, for other men to understand.

We might call his wisdom homespun, if that wasn’t such a womanly expression. And wisdom from the hearth cannot possibly bring anything worth knowing to a factory, can it? Factories are for well-ordered pumping, hammering, and screwing. Factories are places of oil, toil and sweat. Women might have their places, on some production lines, packing or checking, doing the small unworthy tasks. But factories, like Mr Ford’s, are run by men.

Yet Ford was brought to a halt by women. There’s something to ponder, John.

I’d like to know what Mr Henry would make of what went on in Dagenham. He is, after all, the man who said, ‘Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.’ I’m not sure how paying your workers who wear bras less than the ones who don’t constitutes working together. It could be that my hormones, or my breasts, are getting in the way of my understanding. Perhaps you can explain it to me. When I’ve finished sewing the buttons back on your shirt.

I know this won’t be the first time you’ve read about the strike in the press. I know, us women, we do go on, don’t we? I expect you’ll write to me, to complain, once you’ve worked out whether I’m nagging or ball-breaking. Allow me to save you some time. I couldn’t care less what you think of me.

The reason I’m going on about the strike? It’s important. And it’s always going to be important. I visited the picket line this week, and do you know what I saw? I saw determination. I saw a sense of what was right – certainty and conviction. And it’s hard to keep that going when you’re hungry. Three weeks on strike pay might not make much of a difference to your life, John, but if that’s the money that goes in the electricity meter or pays the milkman, then believe me, you’d soon feel the lack of it. If there are no savings in your tin, because you only get paid three-quarters of what the men get paid, then striking is not something to be done lightly. It’s something to respect.