Trico Equal Pay Strike to Be Subject of New Play

Questors to tell story of Brentford women's struggle in the seventies

On the Line is written by Caitlyn Vary and Becky Hartnup

October 7, 2026

Fifty years after hundreds of Brentford women walked out of the Trico Factory and into the longest equal pay strike in British history, The Questors Theatre is marking the anniversary with a new play inspired by the voices of those who lived it. On the Line, written by local theatre makers Caitlyn Vary and Becky Hartnup, opens in Ealing this November and revisits the summer of 1976 through a fictional story rooted in real testimony.

The Trico Factory, once a major employer on Brentford’s Golden Mile, manufactured car parts including windscreen wipers. In early 1976 women on the assembly line discovered they were being paid around 20% less than men doing the same job. The Equal Pay Act had come into force the previous year, but management refused to change its pay structure. In response, 400 women voted to strike, beginning a five-month battle that unfolded during the hottest summer on record and drew national attention.

Although the Dagenham strike of 1968 has been immortalised on stage and screen, the longer Trico strike has received far less cultural recognition. Questors began addressing that gap earlier this year with STRIKO, a historical docudrama written and directed by Tony Chapman and performed both at the theatre and, with support from the Hadley Group, on the original Trico site in Brentford. That production drew heavily on Sally Groves and Vernon Merritt’s book Trico: A Victory to Remember and interviews with the strikers themselves.

On the Line continues that work but takes a different creative approach, using the same testimonies and historical research as the foundation for a fictional narrative. The play is inspired by a real newspaper headline from the time — “Mrs Striker and Mr Blackleg” — and explores how the strike reverberates through one marriage. Valerie, a Trico worker, swaps the assembly line for the picket line, determined to fight for equal pay. Her husband, meanwhile, wants to keep his job and would rather focus on Brentford FC than confront the politics of workplace equality. Their conflict becomes a lens through which the wider struggle is felt: the courage required, the risks taken, and the personal cost of standing up to injustice.

Scenes from the strike are recreated in the play

Sally Groves, co-author of Trico: A Victory to Remember and one of the original strikers, welcomed the new production. “We welcome this play telling a story influenced by our memories of the 1976 Trico strike – when we and our union took direct action and won equal pay against all the odds,” she said.

The production features actors recreating scenes from the strike, photographed by Finn Hartnup-Williams, and aims to bring the atmosphere of the picket line vividly to life for contemporary audiences.

On the Line runs at The Questors Theatre from 13–21 November.

Further details and booking information are available here.