As valued supporters of our campaign, you should know that we received an email from Manor Park Cemetery last week to say that they were going to start the process of clearing the hundreds of existing gravestones in areas 146/147 where Sarah is buried, and begin the mounding process. I have since exchanged further emails with the Cemetery and had a conversation with Director, Mr Jeffryes. The mounding process has now started.

It is with a heavy heart that, after several years of campaigning, gathering wide political support, and collecting almost 10,000 signatures, our appeals to the Ministry of Justice have failed to stop the Cemetery in their bid to mound over the area where Sarah is buried. 

However, we did at least achieve one victory as we have been assured that Sarah's plot will be protected with four scaffold poles and a wood surround, so she will at least be protected from the brutal clearing and levelling process that involves heavy machinery. Two years ago we also paid for a digital survey  to record exactly where Sarah’s plot is so we know we will still be able to locate her once the mounding is complete. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the countless other souls in that area, including many buried there following the devastating 1943 Bethnal Green tube disaster.

Sarah's wooden cross is to be removed and kept in safe storage until we can collect it. We will then renovate it (it has been open to the elements since we placed it there as a temporary tribute in July 2017) and, once the mounding is complete, we will reinstall it over Sarah’s grave until the ground is stable enough to take the actual headstone. This is dependent on us having the funds to purchase the plot. 

As you know, we have a beautiful headstone that we commissioned (thanks to Unite and the GMB) after the Cemetery Directors said we could go ahead and put up a more permanent memorial to Sarah in 2019. That autumn we heard, from a third party, that they had decided to mound earlier than they had told us. When we queried this with the Cemetery, they confirmed that they were imminently going to mound and we would not be able to erect the headstone for 3 to 5 years after the mounding process was complete. We have now had a two year delay due to Covid, so the clock only starts ticking from 2022, and it could be as late as 2027 before we can finally erect Sarah’s headstone. 

In the meantime, the TUC has offered to store the headstone. The effort, and potential cost, of transporting a 100 kg headstone plus base stone, is daunting.

So now we wait, there is nothing more we can do. Should the Cemetery at least ‘give’ us the plot for Sarah, rather than charging us for a new grave plot? Should they grant a grave plot in perpetuity in honour of Sarah and all that she and the Matchgirls achieved, rather than the restrictive 50 or 75 years they currently offer? Let us know your thoughts.

There are obviously more far-reaching implications for anyone buried in a commercially run cemetery, as opposed to a Council run municipal cemetery. Despite it being illegal to disturb human remains without a Ministry of Justice licence, there is simply no independent check on the digging of new graves to ensure the earlier burials are not disturbed. Municipal cemeteries have safeguards in place to carefully protect against this possibility. It really is time the law was changed, and the Ministry of Justice took responsibility to stop private cemeteries having carte blanche to do as they please with our loved ones and our history. 

The Government’s Law Commission was, in December 2017, tasked with the job of examining burial practice and Burial Law. We have had correspondence with them, however, their work on burials will only start, “when resources allow”.