Remembering the Grunwick Strike

 

‘What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo. But in a zoo there are many types of animals. Some are monkeys who dance on your fingertips, others are lions who can bite your head off. We are the lions, Mr. Manager!’-  Jayaben Desai

Grunwick was a mail order film processing company, probably one of the first in the UK. It employed predominantly female workers, many of whom were recent immigrants to the UK. Conditions in the factory were harsh with poor facilities.

In the relentless heatwave of summer 1976, and the sweltering  intolerable  working conditions of the Grunwick film processing plants in Willesden, the predominantly newly arrived Gujarati workers sweated under the yoke of company boss George Ward, seething with anger and humiliation. 

Matters came to a head on 20 August 1976 when factory manager, Malcolm Alden, sacked Devshi Bhudia  for working too slowly 

He was quickly joined by three of his colleagues. Later that same day, Mrs Jayaben Desai and her son walked out after an argument with the same manager.

Within days other workers joined the picket line. The strikers were advised by the TUC to join APEX, the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff which declared the strike official.  Brent Trades Council provided key support From the start, the strikers had the support of Brent Trades Council, whose headquarters were close to the factory. That building became the strike HQ, and it was there a strike committee was first elected on 24th August. *

At a time when the national average wage was only £72 per week, they were paid £28. They faced ‘no-notice’ compulsory overtime, and during the hottest summer for decades, they had no air conditioning.  The workforce of the north London photo processing plant was low paid and subject to arbitrary discipline.Many of the workers were Asian women. The bosses had consciously employed recent female migrants because they thought they could be pushed around and exploited more easily. The employers had banked on the women being passive and easy to control, playing on the racial stereotyping that existed at the time. Instead, they got a pride of lionesses – the women were dubbed by the media as the Strikers in Saris – and they managed to galvanise the wider labour and trade union movement in support.   

On 23 Aug 1976 picketing began outside Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in London in what would become one of the iconic strikes of the 1970s, when a predominantly Asian women workforce struck for almost two years. Grunwick wasn’t a strike about wages – it was about something much more important than that: it was for  union recognition. Dignity at work. 

And, for the small band of Asian women strikers, who braved the sun, rain, and snow month-in and month-out on the picket lines, from August 1976 to July 1978, rights in the workplace and pride at work were far more important than any amount of money. 

Led by South Asian woman Jayaben Desai, the strike showed the strength of women standing together against unfair treatment at work. The strike became a movement and remains a defining moment for class solidarity, feminism, union representation, antiracism and social justice.

In the 1970s, women workers and workers of colour found it difficult to win support from white male-run trade unions. Many felt the unions were racist. They failed to act on workplace discrimination and denied them the same support offered to white workers. But after months of picketing, the Grunwick workers’ cause began to be supported by other trade unions, such as the National Union of Mineworkers and the Trades Union Congress (TUC). 

Throughout the 1970s there had been a rising tide of strikes to improve conditions, and a high level of trade union consciousness. Action by miners, car workers and other traditionally well-organised workers inspired others to get organised.The capitalist class saw this a threat that had to be crushed, and Grunwick became a test case. Sir Keith Joseph, who Tory leader Margaret Thatcher called her closest political friend, explained that Grunwick could be “all our tomorrows” if the workers forced their employer to recognise their union with the help of solidarity action and picketing; it was a ‘litmus test’.  

At the time, the Grunwick dispute provoked copious news coverage and political commentary, which penetrated the national public consciousness. The dispute marked the first time that the mass of trade unionists stood with and showed support for immigrant and Black workers. Not, however, that the TUC leadership demonstrated such interest. There had been an attempt to unionise Grunwick in 1973, with workers joining the Transport and General Workers Union [one of the main constituent unions of what became Unite], but they were immediately laid off by the company. 

On this occasion, the TUC bureaucracy assigned the Grunwick strikers to the largely clerical trade union, APEX, at the time one of the most right wing unions. [APEX later amalgamated with the GMB].  Fortunately, any lack of action on the part of APEX was compensated by Brent Trades Council, which, filling the vacuum, organised widespread support throughout the labour movement. 

The strikers faced the extreme hostility of Grunwick’s management throughout. They offered to take the strikers back if they dropped the demand for union recognition. 

When the strikers rejected this, the company sacked them on 1st September. ACAS, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, offered to mediate: management refused.  

George Ward, the Anglo-Indian owner of Grunwick, got important support from the National Association For Freedom (NAFF, now the Freedom Association),  founded in 1975, and gained public prominence through its anti-trade union campaigns. John Gorst, Tory MP for Hendon North, a pre-Thatcher Thatcherite, also assisted Ward alongside NAFF.  

The first demonstration in support of the strikers took place on 10th September, and on the same day Jayaben Desai and another woman were injured by a management car. Arrests of pickets began in the same month.  

In October 1976, APEX referred the dispute to ACAS; however, Grunwick management refused ACAS access to those still working (many of whom were said to favour unionisation). ACAS recommended union recognition, but Grunwick refused. 

At the start of November postal workers refused to deliver Grunwick mail, a crucial part of their operation, After court action, the postal workers backed down. 

From March 1977, picketing was stepped up and got widespread support across the trade union movement. Strikers picketed the TUC General Council for the withdrawal of essential services (gas, electricity, telephone) to Grunwick, but this was refused, other unions arguing they would need to be indemnified against court action. 

At its conference, APEX, hardly a militant union, called for the cutting of supplies to Grunwick.  In mid-June a week of action began with a mass picket and 84 arrests in one day. More Grunwick workers came out on strike and Cricklewood postal workers began an unofficial boycott of Grunwick mail. As mass pickets reached 1,500, printers at the Sunday Telegraph refused to print an article critical of the strike. 

Labour MP Audrey Wise and Yorkshire miners’ leader Arthur Scargill were arrested on the picket line. Busloads of miners had come to support the picket from around the country. 

At the end of June, Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees praised the police on a visit to the picket line. This was despite widespread support in the Labour Party, both locally and up to the National Executive Committee, for the strike.  

In July ’77, the postal workers were suspended, which meant no postal deliveries at all in the London NW2 area. The postal workers’ action was called off at the end of the month only after they were instructed to do so by their union leadership and fined by the union for initially disobeying.  

During the postal blockage, NAFF ran `Operation Pony Express’ to get mail from and to Grunwick out.  On 11th July a mass picket and demonstration were supported by 20,000.  

A court of enquiry under Lord Scarman was set up at the end of June ‘77, and called in August for union recognition and reinstatement of the strikers. In mid-July the High Court supported the ACAS report calling for recognition, but at the end of July the Appeal Court overturned the High Court decision and declared the ACAS report invalid. 

In December, the House of Lords, at the time Britain’s highest judicial body, confirmed the decision against ACAS. Throughout, when decisions went against them, Grunwick refused to comply.  

Mass pickets of up to 3,000 continued, but at the end of September Roy Grantham, APEX General Secretary, attacked the call for a resumption of mass pickets, and the strike committee were threatened with disciplinary action if they supported them. 

Throughout the dispute, the application of the law and the policing of the dispute was shown to be far from even-handed.The tactics used at Grunwick were seen to be a precursor to disputes such as the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s. 

The dispute was often marked by violence during the mass pickets, with the Metropolitan Police unleashing the notorious Special Patrol Group against the strikers and their supporters. The police sent out large numbers of officers to control the crowds and defend workers crossing the picket line. They harassed and sometimes violently clashed with protesters.  

There were over 550 people arrested, which at the time was the highest number of arrests during any industrial dispute since the 1926 General Strike.

 Despite this, further mass pickets took place in October and November.On 7th November there were 113 arrests and 243 pickets were injured. On 21st November ’77, strikers held a hunger strike outside the TUC HQ calling for support.  

At its peak, 20,000 workers; white, Black, Asian, male, female, stood shoulder to shoulder on that picket line. Grunwick broke assumptions that the working class wouldn't support migrant workers.

The  strike  leaders and their comrades shattered the stereotype of submissive South Asian women and took a stand for women workers everywhere. Instead of dismissing Black and migrant workers, and particularly women, as vulnerable and difficult to organise – the unions were forced to accept the dignity and determination of these workers.

It is clear that with solidarity action and mass pickets the workers could have won. Willingness to support from fellow workers was demonstrated repeatedly despite the role of their leaders. 

But union leaders were keen to direct the dispute down legal channels. Roy Grantham, the particularly right-wing leader of the striker’s union, APEX, called for pickets to be scaled down and threatened the strike committee with withdrawal of support if they would not agree.  

Strike leader Jayaben Desai explained her view: “I have no faith in the legal position. I only believe in the power of the trade union movement. Nothing happened for forty-four weeks. We played cricket. The mass picket brought the issue to a head, and the mass picket will win it.”  

The Labour government set up a commission of inquiry under Lord Scarman and in return the pickets were called off in mid-July 1977. Two months later the Scarman Inquiry recommended reinstatement of the strikers. Grunwick refused to do this, and the leadership of APEX encouraged hopes that the government conciliation service, Acas, would somehow come up with a solution.

The strikers felt abandoned and disillusioned with the trade union movement. As Jayaben Desai commented :  Trade Union support is like honey on the elbow – you can smell it, you can feel it, but you cannot taste it.  

Despite an heroic struggle, the dispute was lost as Grunwick continued to refuse to recognise the union, and it was backed up in this by both the Conservative Party and an extreme right wing organisation which called itself the National Association For Freedom.  

The Labour government of the time, led by Jim Callaghan, found the whole dispute an embarrassment rather than an essential battle for workers to have the right to join a trade union  and  in  utter  betrayal  did nothing. . 

The strike was a threat to the cosy relationship the Labour leaders had nurtured with the tops of the TUC to sell the government’s so-called ‘Social Contract’: a policy which effectively limited wage rises below what was the current rate of inflation. Subsequently, after a two year battle,  the TUC withdrew support for the dispute with the strike committee announcing the end of the heroic strike on 14th July 1978.

Desai blamed the government and it marked a turning point in industrial relations.Margaret Thatcher, elected in May 1979, outlawed secondary picketing the following year. 

But according to jayaben Desai, not everything was lost: ‘We have shown’, Desai said, ‘that workers like us, new to these shores, will never accept being treated without dignity or respect.’  …because of us, the people who stayed in Grunwick got a much better deal. When the factory moved, the van used to come to their home and pick them up because it was difficult for them to get to the new place. Can you imagine that? And they get a pension today! And we get nothing. That was because of us, because of our struggle.  

Strike leader Jayaben Desai and her workmates became a symbol of working class unity and opposition to racism as they battled for justice.

They didn't win the factory that time. But they won something the bosses can never take away: they proved that migrant women are not prey, they are lionesses. For too long Black and Asian workers had been ignored, but the Grunwick strike put them at the forefront of trade unionism. 

From a very small factory in North London, though it ended in defeat,  Grunwick is remembered for how thousands of workers, men and women from all races, united to defend the rights of migrant women workers..  

Grunwick remained a non-union hellhole until, with trade falling, it went under and closed in 2011. One of its most high-profile owners, George Ward, became a leading light of the local Tory Party until he was thrown out for trying to fiddle internal elections.Blaming Thatcher for not backing him, he died a bitter man in 2012.  

The strike leader Jayaben Desai remained a prominent figure in the support of other struggles of Asian and black workers in the workplace over the next few decades. She tirelessly fought on behalf of immigrant workers against exploitative employment practice, fearlessly faced all the elements of establishment authority, alerted many in the trade union movement to the issues of vulnerability of immigrant workers and highlighted the fight to maintain basic trade union rights. Her resolve and courage should be remembered and celebrated. She died in 2010 having received a number of national awards from trade union bodies in recognition of what she started.  

The Grunwick strikers, standing daily on the picket lines and facing attacks from police and the Tory press, had become politicised in the space of a few short months and would not soon forget what they had learnt.This would in turn be passed on to other workers.

Fifty years, we should salute the struggle of the Grunwick strikers. That it was a strike of Asian workers – a section which up to then had largely been absent from the leadership of high-profile industrial struggles – demonstrated what was possible, despite decades of divide-and-rule tactics being used on the industrial shop floor. 

Although the strike was ultimately unsuccessful, it has come to be seen as a turning point – not only in how it was policed but also in how unions perceived minority workers. Where ten years previously, some had taken to the streets in support of Enoch Powell, now predominantly white, male trade unionists were prepared to face the sack or arrest in support of predominantly female, Asian workers.  50 years on, their story still matters and their legacy continues to inspire new generations of workers to stand up and fight back. 

Led by Asian women, the Grunwick strike challenged stereotypes, changed the face of trade unions and inspired a generation of people to stand up against injustice.The solidarity of rank-and-file workers was an inspiration, striking fear both inside the boardrooms of big business and in the cosy offices of more than a few union bureaucrats.  

The stand of the Grunwick strikers continues to inspire a new generation of trade unionists, black and white, to fight against the attacks of the bosses  and  find  ways in which to  challenge  trade unions who still fail the most vulnerable workers. 

Also, Grunwick raised many wide-ranging questions about trade unionism, rights in the workplace and dignity at work - themes that still resonate and are relevant today

I strongly recommend the book 'Striking Women' by Sundari Anitha and Ruth Pearson - about both Grunwick and the later Gate Gourmet dispute - which is reviewed here.https://southlondonsocialist.wordpress.com/2024/10/19/return-to-gate-gourmet/