Rosemary Carden
Bob May Collection BCN Society
WOMEN'S WORK Heather Wastie shines a spotlight on the women often overlooked in the history of inland waterways restoration
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t is the weekend of 26th/27th September 1970. Margaret has driven her Mini to Parkhead, a derelict industrial area on the Dudley Canal, waste tip for Doulton’s ceramics. The whole area is buzzing with hundreds of enthusiastic workers clearing the locks. On the side of one of the locks there’s a small red tent belonging to Tina and her husband, Derek. Their boat is moored too far away to sensibly commute, so they decided to spend the weekend living under canvas in the middle of the action. Tina and Derek are kneeling on the grass in white boiler suits, leaning over the side of the lock. As they haul up heavy rubbish and buckets of debris from the bottom of the lock, they commiserate with the muddy volunteers down below, knowing their turn will soon come. Meanwhile Margaret – keen to help clear the vegetation – has picked up a sickle. They say a bad worker blames his tools, but in this case Margaret was justifiably disdainful of the implement in her hand: “Well, you’d have had a job to cut soft butter with it.” She set to work doing something about it – and word soon got round. Now in her 80s, Margaret has vivid memories of that day, when she had set out to dig but ended up being “the woman who sharpens the sickles”.
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'I Dig Canals' Both Margaret and Tina agreed to be interviewed for a research project entitled ‘I Dig Canals’, run by Alarum Productions in 2019/20 with financial support from National Lottery Heritage Fund. The event they described, which took place exactly 50 years ago, was called the ‘Dudley Dig & Cruise’. Another volunteer that weekend, Sheila, told us that the evening before she had made a treacherous 2-mile journey with her husband Alan on their ex-working narrowboat, Laurel. Her onboard logbook recounts: “Negotiated canal from Bumble Hole to Hawne Basin ready for Dudley Dig & Cruise. Experienced quite a lot of difficult patches with rubbish and scours [factory discharge pouring into the canal]. Finally arrived in darkness to rousing cheers.” Sheila will no doubt have spent much of that journey lifting or leaning on a heavy shaft, pulling a rope or shifting her slight frame to rock the boat and keep it moving, until they eventually made it to the small gathering waiting for the cruise next day. She certainly kept fit, and to this group of enthusiasts a ‘cruise’ involved rather unglamorous onboard activities! Winter 2020 22/10/2020 10:01
