Lighting Strike
by Tanya Landman
Inspiration for the children’s book, Lighting Strike
Eliza is angry, every day is a struggle to survive, the rich and powerful hold all the cards and her family never seems to have enough. Angry that conditions at the factory where she and her sister work are so harsh and no one seems to care. When Eliza speaks out, her words spark fury among the rest of the workers and the flame of rebellion is lit. But what next? Can one girl really inspire an uprising that will change her world?
Tanya Landman was inspired to write this book at the start of the pandemic when life was scary and she felt angry about how disproportionately lockdown was affecting the poor and disadvantaged. People who could work from home, in a nice house with a garden were having a very different experience to a single parent in a small flat with no outside space having to face the choice of paying the rent or feeding their children.
It really highlighted the gap between rich and poor and those issues of inequality that seem to have got so much worse in the last few years, it felt like we were rewinding to Victorian times, Tanya was furious and thought why not use the rage? Why not write something about the terrible class divides?
Tanya remembered the match girls; she’d heard about them when her son was in a school play about them coming out buzzing because it was the first successful strike – it was the most incredibly pivotal moment and she’d never previously heard of them!
Tanya discovered that most of those workers had actually been teenage girls,
and nobody had ever written down their stories – the only accounts of that strike come from the middle- and upper-class people involved.
The idea of Eliza and her friends and what they might have said was born. At the beginning of the book, she can’t express herself, she gets frustrated and when she’s really angry she cries because she has no power, no control over her own life, and no words.
This must have been how the Matchgirls felt, working 12- to 14-hour days in hot and unventilated rooms to make and pack match boxes in order to earn an average piece rate wage of around 8 shillings per week and then being fined for things like having dirty feet, an untidy workbench or talking.
It takes Eliza a while to find the way but when she does, her words really fly. She goes from seeing what’s wrong and feeling utterly helpless, to realising that she can change the world just like the Matchgirls.
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Tanya Landman
