On Monday 16 April 1984 155 nursery workers employed by Islington Council began an indefinite strike. This industrial action was sparked by understaffing in the nurseries, which meant there was often an unsafe ratio of children to staff. The strike lasted fifteen weeks, during which time all twelve council-run Children’s Day Centres were closed. The strikers returned to work on 30 July 1984, having won real improvements in the Children’s Day Centres.

In 2025 there was a project to record the history of the strike, funded by Historic England, that culminated in the release of a three-part podcast and a booklet. Listen to the podcast here.

History of the strike:

In 1982, a Labour administration was elected in the London Borough of Islington on a left wing manifesto which included ambitious and progressive plans to make early childhood education and care universal and free to all. The manifesto promised an improvement to staff to child ratios in the council-run nurseries and pledged to ‘ensure that childcare workers are adequately paid, have training opportunities and professional support.’ ¹

In the early 1980s, Islington Council’s Children’s Day Centres were run by the Social Services department and provided day care to children who had been referred by social workers or health visitors as a priority, for instance because they were from a single parent family. Despite their focus on providing care for potentially vulnerable children and families, the Children’s Day Centre’s were chronically understaffed. Officially there was a ratio of one staff member to every four and half children, but with no cover provided for staff absence a single worker could routinely find themselves alone caring for as many as fifteen or more young children.

The nursery workers were some of the lowest paid council employees. The vast majority were women, with a high proportion of Black and ethnic minority workers. Staff without a National Nursery Examination Board (NNEB) qualification were paid less, regardless of how long they had worked in the nurseries, or whether they had other qualifications. Nursery workers remember that often it was Black staff who were paid less because of this ‘qualification bar’ despite having more experience of nursery work than younger White colleagues who had the NNEB qualification.

Despite the promises made by the Labour council in their 1982 manifesto, by 1983 little had changed and in October 1983 the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO) submitted a claim on behalf of their members who worked as nursery workers in Islington. The claim asked for improved ratios, better pay, regrading of the pay scale and removal of the qualifications bar. From 12 March 1984 the nursery workers escalated pressure on the council by starting an admissions ban, which meant they refused to take new children into the nursery until their claim was settled. A leaflet addressed to parents explained ‘we are fighting for better care for your children.' ²

A month later, still no progress had been made. A delegation of the nursery workers went to the ‘Local Joint Committee’, on Monday 9 April 1984 to discuss their claim. ³ The Council made them a small offer that did not meet the main demands of their claim. The workers remember that the chair of the Personnel Committee, Councillor Victor McGeer, told them there was no money available for the nurseries. Then, they recall that McGeer turned to the residential social workers who worked in the Children’s Homes (who were mostly men), and who also had a pay claim in, thumped the table and said, ‘Come on boys, let’s get at this.’ 

Furious about being dismissed in this way, the nursery workers voted almost unanimously to strike at a mass meeting held the following day. The strike began shortly afterwards, on Monday 16 April 1984. Immediately the nurseries were closed. Pickets were organised and quickly moved beyond the closed nurseries to more prominent locations such as the housing office on Essex Road, the municipal offices on Upper Street and Islington Town Hall, as detailed in the newsletter produced by the strike. ⁴

The strike was challenging for both workers and families. Without childcare, some parents lost their jobs. Despite these difficulties, the strikers remember the support they received from parents, some of whom joined them on the picket line and lobbied the council and the Labour group at the beginning of the strike.

The strikers also struggled financially during the strike. The first issue of Strike News reported that the NALGO National Executive had made the strike official, and that the strikers would get at least £22.50 a week, which would be raised to £40 by the Branch. Average take home pay for the nursery workers was £85 a week before the strike. ⁵ Strike News 2 shared the news that other NALGO members in the Social Services Department would pay a levy into the nursery workers’ strike fund and support the strike by refusing to answer Councillors’ enquiries. The same issue reported that NALGO had refused to pay the strikers two thirds of their pay as requested, but the branch were now going to top up the £22.50 strike pay paid weekly by NALGO to £50. The strikers remember that it wasn’t until they picketed NALGO that they started to receive full strike pay from the union, although this was still less than their normal salaries.

Apart from daily picketing duties, the strikers organised marches, spoke to trade unionists and groups around the country and gave interviews to media. At the end of April, a group of parents occupied the town hall overnight with their children, as reported in Strike News 3. When this Strike News went to press the parents were still in the council chamber and hoping to stay another night, although security guards had been using some ‘heavy handed tactics’ until told to stop by no other than Councillor Victor McGeer. The Islington Gazette (which was normally fairly hostile to the strike) reported on the occupation with theheadline ‘Sit in Babes Back Strike!’ ⁶ According to a leaflet produced nine weeks into the strike, the occupation lasted three days. ⁷

The strikers held mass meetings to discuss offers from the council and decide together whether to accept or reject them. Strike News 2, for instance, reported on a meeting that had rejected an offer made by the council. 95 members had voted against, 10 abstained and 2 to accept, meaning 107 of the 155 workers on strike had attended the meeting to make that decision.

The strikers grabbed local headlines at the end of May when they disrupted the opening ceremony of the new Highbury Fields swimming pool.  Strike News 4 reported how 25 strikers ‘marched noisily round the pool much to the embarrassment of assembled councillors and local dignitaries.’ The actor David Yip refused to go into the ceremony as a gesture of support.

The following week a delegation of miners’ wives from Kent were invited to Islington Town Hall to meet the Mayor, Rosie Dale, as a gesture of support for the ongoing miners’ strike. They refused to cross the nursery workers’ picket line and so had tea with the Mayor, and the striking nursery workers, on the front steps of the hall instead.

On Monday 21 May a one day strike was held by the Islington NALGO branch, which had 2000 members. Strike News 6 reported that it was well supported by most NALGO members. Forty council buildings were picketed. Later that evening the strikers disrupted a meeting of the Social Services Committee and Councillor Rosemary Nicholson was presented with a ‘silver potty award.’ Some brave strikers carried out an all-night picket of the town hall.

At the beginning of June, the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) and the National Graphical Association (NGA) invited the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Arthur Scargill to speak at Islington Town Hall. One of the striking nursery workers, Terry Conway, spoke about the nursery workers’ strike and Scargill signed the nursery workers’ petition, according to Strike News 7.

In June 1984 Islington NALGO balloted members in carefully selected council departments including Social Services, Finance, Computers and Housing, to see if they would join the nursery workers’ strike. These departments were chosen because they were highly unionised and vital to the Council, Strike News 8 explained.

On 19 June the ACTSS trade union held a day of action in support of the nursery workers. Their members, who worked in playgroups and voluntary sector nurseries, spent a day outside the town hall with around forty children having a mass picket/picnic as a show of support for the nursery workers’ strike. Strike News 10 wrote that the strike committee’s letter of thanks to the voluntary sector childcare workers would also be copied to a Councillor who ‘has been telling pickets at the Town Hall how workers in the voluntary sector have been telling him they don’t support our strike because our conditions of work are better than theirs.’

That evening, a large march of around 400 people was held from Highbury Fields to the Town Hall, where a council meeting was taking place. The nursery workers were joined by other council workers in a show of support. Parents and nursery workers packed the public gallery and disrupted the meeting, while nursery workers climbed onto the roof and flew their banner from the flagpole. ⁸

At the end of June it emerged that Margaret Hodge, leader of Islington Council, had advertised in The Lady magazine for a ‘cheerful and energetic’ nanny to look after her four children. This enraged the nursery workers, who pointed out that families who used the nurseries had no childcare while the strike remained unsettled. 

Crucially, Strike News 10 reported that the ballot of other departments had come back. A majority had voted to strike in support of the nursery workers. Strike News 11 reported in the first week of July that Islington NALGO had received approval from the national union to escalate the strike ‘after days and days of agonising tension.’ An additional 400 council workers were called out on indefinite strike in support of the nursery workers from Tuesday 3 July.  Meanwhile, at the Town Hall the laundry van drivers were refusing to cross the picket line, plunging the offices into a ‘towel crisis.’

Strike News 12 came out in the fourteenth week of the strike. Despite the strike having escalated, a motion put to a Council meeting on 13 July to make a ‘substantial offer’ to settle the dispute was voted down. A demonstration of striking workers marched to the town hall and gathered outside. On the steps of the town hall Victor McGeer was presented with signed petitions by nursery worker Karen Reeve. He refused to take them, and Karen refused to move. Strike News reported ‘he refused to take [the petitions] and eventually barged his way into the Town Hall knocking over several people in the process.’

Aware that more pressure was needed to resolve the dispute, the nursery workers called for a ballot of the entire NALGO branch, which if successful would bring the council’s entire workforce out on strike. To their surprise, the NALGO national executive agreed.

By the end of July the strike was resolved. The final Strike News asked ‘A victory? Or just a step in the right direction? 9,158,400 seconds after turning up for our very first picket duties on a cold and miserable April morning we have staged the longest strike in Islington Council history and it’s the first time that [nursery workers] have taken strike action to improve their own working conditions.’

The nursery workers had voted to accept the council’s offer of 26 additional staff posts, deputy managers being made supernumery (meaning they were no longer counted in the ratios,) removal of the qualification bar and recognition of a wider range of qualifications and a pay increase of £3 a week. This was not everything the nursery workers had hoped for (the original claim had asked for 75 additional staff posts) but it was a real improvement.

As Terry Conway wrote in a report at the end of the strike, ‘child care workers’ had ‘gained an enormous amount of experience and confidence during the long and bitter 15 week strike.’ As Terry explained:

‘We were all stretched in new directions and learnt new skills. We learnt how to talk to people on picket lines and in meetings, how to write and produce leaflets and to talk to the press, how to make banners and fly them from the town hall flagpole and how to write songs walking around Highbury roundabout. We learnt how stubborn certain Councillors can be when asked to receive petitions and why not to trust your employers even if they call themselves socialists.’ ⁹

The nursery workers returned to work but the struggle was by no means over. The council planned to recoup some of the cost of improving care in the Children’s Day Centres by increasing the fees charged to parents on a sliding scale, as reported by the August-September 1984 issue of Broadside, Islington NALGO’s magazine. ¹⁰ For some parents this would mean an increase in fees from £2.35 to £23 a week, which Broadside described as ‘intolerable’ and potentially would deny vulnerable families day care in the Children’s Day Centres. Mass meetings of nursery workers had already decided to refuse to implement the increased fees if they were introduced.

In 1989 another indefinite strike of nursery workers in Islington began, called in response to the Children’s Day Centre managers being suspended for refusing to implement an increased ratio of 1 staff to 8 children. ¹¹ This second strike began on Monday 8 October 1989 and ended on 15 January 1990. As a result of the strike action the number of children in the nurseries increased by 11% rather than 27%, marking the first time Islington Council had been forced to reduce cuts by industrial action. ¹²

Thank you to Helena Wacko for help planning and preparing this map entry.

Footnotes

1. Report of Borough Secretary to Social Services Committee, 7.06.1982, Islington Local History Centre, YH397
2. Untitled leaflet, Islington Nursery Strike archive, Bishopsgate Institute
3. Support Nursery Workers Strike, leaflet, Islington Local History Centre, YH397
4. Strike News 2, Islington Nursery Strike Archive, Bishopsgate Institute
5. Support the Nursery Workers Action, leaflet undated, Islington Nursery Strike Archive, Bishopsgate Institute
6. Clipping in Islington Nursery Strike archive, Bishopsgate Institute, date of article unknown
7. Support the Nursery Workers Action leaflet.
8. NALGO Islington Press Release, 21.06.1984, Islington Nursery Strike Archive, Bishopsgate Institute
9. C.D.C Strike – Report from Strike Committee, Terry Conway, Islington Nursery Strike archive, Bishopsgate Institute
10. Islington Nursery Strike archive, Bishopsgate Institute
11. IN89, Edition 3, October 1989, Islington Nursery Strike archive, Bishopsgate Institute
12. IN90, Edition 1, March 1990, Islington Nursery Strike archive, Bishopsgate Institute