Tag Archives: industrial action

A WOMAN FROM GUJARAT AT AN INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE IN LONDON’S WILLESDEN

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WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST memory of a news item? In my case, I remember my parents discussing something about Cuba. This was The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. I had little or no idea about it, but later I learned that US President John F Kennedy was involved in its resolution. A year later, when we were staying in the USA, we were there when he was assassinated. I well recall that and my feelings about it at the time. That remains in the forefront of my memory, but far back in the fleshy recesses of my grey matter, the name Grunwick resides. While visiting an exhibition at the Tate Britain recently, I saw several photographs that brought this vague memory back into my consciousness.

Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories (‘Grunwick’), located at Willesden in northwest London, processed photographic films and produced finished prints from them. Photographers (mostly amateurs) put their undeveloped exposed films into an envelope along with payment, and sent them to Grunwick, who later returned the developed film and the prints made from it. In 1973, some workers at Grunwick joined a trade union and were subsequently laid-off by the company. The company employed many workers of Asian heritage – including a substantial number of ladies. As the then Labour politician Shirley Williams pointed out, the Asian ladies were being paid very much less than the average wage, and conditions were bad – hours were long, overtime was compulsory (and often required without the employer giving prior notice).

On the 20th of August 1976, Grunwick sacked Devshi Bhudia for working too slowly. That day, three other workers walked out in support of Devshi. Just before 7 pm that day, Jayaben Desai (1933-2010) began walking out of the factory. As she was doing so, she was called into the office and dismissed for leaving early. When she was in the office, Jayaben said (see guardian.com, 20th of January 2010):

“What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo. 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 those lions, Mr Manager.”

Thus began a two-year long strike, which was supported not only by the company’s workers but also by many politicians and trade unions, including, for a short time, the Union of Post Office Workers, who refused to cross the Grunswick picket lines.

Jayaben was born in Dharmaj, now in the Anand district of the Indian state of Gujarat. Soon after marrying, she and her husband migrated to what is now Tanzania. Just before the Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1968) made it difficult for Commonwealth citizens to settle in the UK, the couple moved to England. There, she was obliged to take up poorly paid work, first as a sewing machinist, and then as a worker at Grunwick.

Not only did Jayaben initiate the strike, but she helped keep it going until the dispute was resolved. In November 1976, when the Post Office workers stopped supporting the strike, she told an assembly of  Grunwick’s workers:

“We must not give up. Would Gandhi give up? Never!”

Later, like Gandhi, she employed his tactic – the hunger strike – outside the Trade Union Congress in November 1977. During the court of enquiry led by Lord Justice Scarman, she gave powerful evidence against her erstwhile employer. When the strike was over, she went back to sewing, and then later became a teacher of sewing at Harrow College. After passing her driving test at the age of 60, she encouraged other women to do so to increase their freedom.  After her death, some of her ashes were deposited in the Thames, and the rest in the Ganges.

The reason that Grunwick came to mind at Tate Britain was that its current exhibition “Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990” (ends 7th of April 2024) includes several photographs taken at Grunwick during the strike. Three of them include portraits of Jayaben in action.

As I wrote earlier, I had heard of Grunwick, but I could not recall why until I saw the exhibition. As for the remarkable Jayaben Desai, I am happy that I have become aware of her and her amazing achievements.

Industrial action and a library

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The Madras Gymkhana Club library was not devoid of interest. To enter it, one has to climb over a tall step. This is designed to protect the library when rainfall causes flooding of the Club’s grounds which are on low lying land close to the Adyar River estuary.

Another interesting feature was pinned to the shirt of one of the library staff. It was a rectangular plastic badge with a hammer and sickle on both of its sides. One side had words in Tamil, and the other in English. These words explain to the reader that there was a grievance between the staff and their employers, The Club. The problem about which the employees were protesting concerned pay. Seeing these badges of protest reminded me of a visit to Nizam’s restaurant in Kolkata a few years ago. There, the waiters were wearing similar badges, some in Bengali, some in Hindi, and others in English.

As for the library, it seemed well stocked with books and journals. Several old books were being sold, and there were three that I could not resist!

Bulgarian mineral water

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bottle

In 1967, there was a serious strike of dock workers in the United Kingdom. There were anxieties about shortages of stocks of various household goods. And one of the most worried people was my late mother. Maybe, having lived through the lean days of early post-WW2 Britain, she did not want her family to be caught short of any essential supplies.

Very soon, she filled one of our smaller bedrooms with enough toilet rolls to keep an army happy. We did not have to buy toilet paper for many years after the strike was over.

Some years after she died, my father and I looked into a large cupboard which was used mainly to store unwanted furniture and other junk. We hardly ever opened this storage area because we knew there was little inside it that we might ever want to see again. However, when we opened the cupboard sometime in the 1980s, my father and I found that its floor was packed solid with a layer of tins of canned meat: ham and so on. Sadly, this went to waste.

My mother worried that in addition to shortages of groceries, the strike might lead to a failure of the public water supply. To prepare for this possible tragedy, my mother bought bottled water. Today, water packaged in plastic bottles is extremely common,and many will not leave home without a bottle of water. However, in the late 1960s in the UK, bottled water was a bit of a rarity. In those days, it was de rigeur to drink only bottled water in France, but in the UK you just turned on the tap.

Given the scarcity of bottled water in the UK of 1967, it is amazing that my mother was able to find quite a few gallons of the stuff. What amazes me to this day is that all of the bottles bore labels indicating that they contained spring water bottled in Bulgaria.