YES, women doing all the work while a couple of men stand around watching. The top picture is the Rolls-Royce factory in Hillington during the war.

It was a remarkable story. The Hillington factory was only built in 1939, and began producing Merlin engines within months for the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters which at one point seemed to be the only defence between Britain and a potential German invasion.

By 1943 the Rolls-Royce factory – staffed mainly by women as the men had gone to war – was producing 400 engines a week, and by the end of the war had manufactured more than 23,000 engines, which was a huge contribution to the British war effort.

After hostilities, the factory repaired and overhauled the Merlin engines as well as producing engine parts. It closed in 2005, but staff were transferred to a more modern production plant at Inchinnan.

The wartime staff included these women posing for a group photograph, bottom left. Amongst them is union activist Agnes McLean who fought first for women to be allowed to join a trade union, and then for them to be paid the same as the male workers. The pay gap was so bad that the women twice walked out on strike during the war. Agnes, who was a crane driver at the factory, went on to become a councillor, as well as becoming the fist female member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union’s national executive.

The picture bottom right is a more traditional form of industrial action. Two shop stewards who held a meeting during working hours at the Rolls-Royce factory in February, 1951, were sacked, and the workforce went on strike to have them reinstated with this march crossing Jamaica Bridge in Glasgow.

They seem cheery enough, giving our photographer a wave. Well dressed too, with many in shirts and ties.