Frank Hansen reflects on the significance of a mainly Asian women-led strike and lessons to be learned
During the 1970s I was active in Brent Labour and Trade Union politics and supported the Grunwick strike from its beginning (Aug 1976) until the end (July 1978). I attended most of the key events and wrote regular articles for the Chartist newspaper as the strike progressed through its many phases. Little did I realise that 50 years on I would be writing to reflect on the significance of the strike for the Labour movement today.
The 50th anniversary is being commemorated by the TUC as a key event in working class history, alongside the centenary of the General Strike. There are 2 major exhibitions, “100 years of Solidarity and Strikes” in Manchester and “Grunwick 50” at the London MET College. Numerous events are planned – including talks, films, theatre performances – a revival of the play “We are the Lions, Mr Manager” focusing on Jayaben Desai, one of the most inspirational rank and file leaders our Labour movement has ever seen. Brent Trades Council will also be organising events to be announced.
This provides an opportunity to explore this monumental struggle and consider its relevance today. We can also reflect on the bitter lessons resulting from the betrayals and flawed Labour politics that led to defeat. Nevertheless, Grunwick has left a positive legacy of grassroots working-class solidarity, anti-racism, and the fight for migrant and women’s rights, which needs to be celebrated and continued.
50 years on, we can agree with Andy Burnham that neoliberalism has proved disastrous for society, particularly working people. Financial deregulation and privatisation have led to oligarchy, inequality, deindustrialisation and the hollowing out of public services. As a result, there is a breakdown in the essentials of life for many people – food, water, housing, heating, health, secure jobs etc – and the threat of worse to come, due to unchecked global warming, conflict and the rise of right-wing populism. But how did this disaster come about? The Grunwick strike took place just as neoliberal ideas were taking root in the UK in the form of “Thatcherism” and it was directly affected by it.
We may view 2016-2026 as a decade of political chaos, but the same is true of the 1970s, at least in terms of uncertainty and political change. It was characterised by industrial unrest as the crisis of British capitalism deepened. Heath’s Tory Government (1970-74) was determined to restore profits by confronting what it portrayed as “militant trade unionism wrecking the country”. Heath was unable to defeat the Miners following a series of strikes and called an election in Feb 74 asking, “Who Runs the Country?”. This returned the verdict “Not You” and produced a minority Labour Government. In a weak position, PM Wilson called an election in Oct 74 which Labour won, but only just. In February 75 Thatcher became Tory leader. In March 76 Wilson surprisingly resigned and was replaced by Callaghan as PM.
It was in this febrile political climate that on 20th August 1976 a walk-out at by 6 workers, led by Jayaben Desai, took place at Grunwick, a small photo-processing plant next to Dollis Hill Station, Willesden. As they left a manager compared them to “chattering monkeys”. Jayaben replied, “What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo. Some are monkeys who dance on your fingertips, others are lions who can bite your head off. We are the lions, Mr. Manager.” Her comments summed up the humiliation of having to work in a sweatshop with very poor conditions and low wages and her defiance and determination to fight back.
Grunwick’s business was based on fear and exploitation – employing vulnerable people who could more easily be exploited to deliver higher profits. 80% of the workforce were E. African Asian refugees forced to flee from persecution; many settled in Brent, 10% were of Afro-Caribbean origin. Most employees were women – the average wage was £28/week compared with £44/week for a female manual worker in London. Strike numbers soon snowballed to 137 as others joined, leaving a factory without air conditioning in the grip of the gruelling heatwave of 1976 (today you know just what I mean!) All were immediately sacked. Supported by Brent Trades Council, they contacted various unions and decided to join APEX – a moderate white-collar union (now GMB) eager to recruit new members, which made the strike official.
From such small beginnings, few could have predicted that it would spark a massive struggle for TU rights for migrant workers, supported by tens of thousands of trade unionists. This was the first dispute, with a majority of Asian and Black workers, to receive widespread support from the Labour movement, particularly the rank and file. Much of this was down to the tenacity of the strikers themselves, backed by the Brent Labour movement. They toured the country supported by local unions, CLPs, women’s and anti-racist groups. TUC leader Len Murray even gave the dispute historic institutional backing, calling on unions to give “all possible support”. In October 1976 he spoke at Brent Trades Hall and assured the strikers “we are alongside you all the way.” The Strike Committee was now optimistic about victory, but Murray’s promise was to be broken within a year.
Grunwick also became an ideological battleground for the politics of new Tory leader Margaret Thatcher, who strongly backed Grunwick boss George Ward, and a literal battleground for the Met Police, who used brutal tactics to defeat mass picketing, later deployed against the Miners and others in the 1980s. Above all, the strike was a test of the Callaghan Government/TUC’s willingness to defend the basic rights of working people against the establishment – now with a leader whose declared aim was to “destroy socialism”.
In the early months, support for the strike grew but was accompanied by intransigence from the company, fuelled by the Thatcherite “National Association for Freedom”. The NAAF was a powerful right-wing, free-market pressure group, some of whom admired Pinochet and the “economic reforms” taking place in Chile. It worked behind the scenes, providing legal, financial and propaganda support for the management. They viewed the dispute as an opportunity to aggressively challenge the power of the Trade Unions and the Labour Govt.
As a mail-order photo processing plant, Grunwick relied on the post. In November 76 workers at Cricklewood PO implemented a boycott, and the business faced collapse. This had an immediate impact on the morale of the strikers but also produced a reaction from the local police and the NAFF. At this stage the picket was entirely peaceful. The evening of the post boycott there were about 20 on the picket line, among them some local NUT teachers, including myself. I can recall that as we celebrated the postal workers’ action, suddenly, to our amazement, police vans came down and arrested most of us for “obstructing the highway”. These were the first arrests at Grunwick and clearly an attempt to intimidate. We were all convicted at Harlesden Magistrates Court but subsequently acquitted on appeal, which at least upheld the right to peacefully picket. This was just a small sign of what was to come, but as we left Willesden Police Station in the early hours, we realised this would be a difficult struggle against forces much bigger than the local management.
The NAFF upped the stakes by launching a lawfare campaign against the union (UPW), based on obscure postal laws, threatening the UPW with the loss of legal immunities. The union’s national leadership soon caved in and ordered its members, much to their disgust, to end the boycott. The only concession was that the company agreed to meet with Govt mediators (ACAS). However, this was just a trick. ACAS tried to poll the workforce on union recognition, but the company/NAFF fought this in court, arguing that sacked strikers were no longer company “workers” and didn’t need to be balloted. Later they pushed it all the way to the Lords, securing a victory that totally undermined ACAS’s authority. The Labour Govt could’ve introduced emergency legislation to guarantee the right to join a union and enable post workers to take secondary action. PM Callaghan failed to act, and this led to the escalation of the strike.
The NAFF’s intervention had transformed a local dispute into a national, ideological battleground, providing Thatcher and the “New Right” with a blueprint to build political momentum against Labour and the Trade Unions. This helped her become Prime Minister in 1979, which led to sweeping anti-union legislation and the even bigger battles against the unions and local democracy of the 1980s.
Faced with these lawfare setbacks, the Strike Committee also upped its game, lobbying for support across the labour movement. The campaign eventually forced APEX/TUC to support mass picketing. The response was solidarity on a huge scale as delegations of miners, dockers, rail workers and many others from across the country turned up throughout Summer 1977. Those who attended know that the disorder, violence, severe injuries and arrests that accompanied these mass pickets were deliberately initiated by the Met Police. Large numbers of police were organised military-style to ensure that the scab bus passed through the picket line no matter the cost. They deployed the notorious Special Patrol Group (SPG) – a paramilitary tactical unit – for the first time against an industrial dispute. The SPG used aggressive containment tactics (baton charges and kettling), leading to brutal, bloody clashes and the highest number of arrests, over 500, since the General Strike. Undercover police were also deployed to infiltrate support groups and gather intelligence as documented in the recent “Spy Cops” enquiry. Yet Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees insisted that a heavy, forceful police presence was “necessary to uphold public order”.
On 13th June 77, a picket organised by women trade unionists opened a month of mass action. The police responded with immense force, resulting in 40 arrests and Jayaben Desai being dragged across the road by her hair – an image that enraged the Labour movement. Cricklewood PO workers defied their union leadership and resumed the mail boycott. At its absolute peak on 11 July 77, the turnout swelled to 20,000 packing the narrow streets outside the factory. The same day, Merlyn Rees appointed a court of inquiry into Grunwick chaired by Lord Scarman. The Govt hoped this would defuse the situation and used it as a lever to end the mass picket.
The Tories/NAFF mobilised their many friends in the press and media to portray and magnify these events as the “Ugly Face of the TUs” and “Red Fascism”. In protest, workers at The Sun refused to print a particularly vitriolic editorial attacking the unions – the only time the paper has published an edition with a blank page! However, the relentless daily press/TV coverage spooked the TUC leadership and APEX, already under pressure from the government to end mass picketing. They began to withdraw support, eventually starving the Strike Committee of the institutional means needed to win. The only sop was their claim that the Scarman Inquiry would deliver justice
Len Murray placed faith in Scarman and confidently declared “No employer has ever defied a court of enquiry”. When the report was published in August 77, it did recommend the workers be reinstated, and the union be recognised, but the company simply ignored it as it wasn’t legally binding! The House of Lords simultaneously ruled that secondary strikes (like the postal blockade) were illegal, and Murray and APEX refused to sanction further industrial action as this was “legally binding”.
The strikers decided to battle on, and solidarity action continued with the unofficial postal boycott and regular picketing. A new mass picket was called for Nov 7th, 1977. Eight thousand turned up, but with the removal of official TUC endorsement, the MET saw this as an opportunity to really crack down and smash the protest. In a single day, 243 were injured and 113 arrested, including Yorkshire NUM leader Arthur Scargill. This was accompanied by a severe pushback from the Post Office and national UPW leadership, who threatened the Cricklewood workers with dismissal and the loss of their pensions if they did not stop the action. The harsh reality is that the Government and TUC leaders undermined and sold out the strike. They may have hoped for a quick win against a small employer, but they were never prepared to take on Thatcher’s “New Right”, backed by the establishment, judiciary and media. The NAFF rang rings around them in court and exposed the hollowness of their procedures and laws intended to protect workers’ rights. In fact, the Government seemed more concerned with “public order” and was prepared to unleash the SPG to enforce it.
The Grunwick strikers were left isolated by the TUC in Winter 77 but still fought on until July 1978. With strong support from Brent Trades Council and the CLPs, they continued to campaign across London and beyond. Jayaben Desai and three other women even took the fight directly to Len Murray’s doorstep, staging a hunger strike outside the TUC on 21st November 77, demanding the unions cut off Grunwick’s utility supplies. The shameful response from APEX was to suspend the hunger strikers from the union.
Mass picketing was no longer an option due to aggressive policing, and the law seemed entirely slanted towards the company, with the Govt unwilling to rectify this. In December 77, the Lords finally ruled that Grunwick wasn’t legally obliged to recognise the union on the technicality that ACAS had failed to consult the remaining workforce in the factory. Another victory for NAFF lawfare loopholes – the company had refused to supply ACAS with the names and addresses of non-strikers in the first place! This marked a final legal defeat for the strike. There was now a shift to boycotting Grunwick’s business by picketing local chemists and high street shops. By July 1978, the strike committee accepted that the battle was lost. Disillusioned and betrayed after a gruelling 670 days on strike, they called off the dispute.
As for Callaghan and Murray, by 1978 they were busy trying to implement a “Social Contract” – an agreement between the Government and the TUC that sought (and failed) to curb inflation by restraining wages and stopping “militant” strikes. In exchange, workers were promised “favourable” social policies (although this didn’t seem to include legislation to guarantee union rights!). The Social Contract proved fatal for the Labour Govt. It became highly unpopular with many workers and trade unions who opposed its 5% limit on pay – way below the rise in the cost of living. During the “Winter of Discontent” (Sept 78-Feb 1979) millions went on strike for better pay. Thatcher seized the opportunity to table a vote of confidence in Parliament, which Callaghan lost. The Tories won the subsequent election with a 43-seat majority, and Labour would be out of power for 18 years. Thatcher introduced monetarism, or what we now call “neo-liberalism”. She began to dismantle the post-war settlement and the welfare state in the interests of finance capital and big business.
Victory over the Grunwick strikers and the bankruptcy of the Social Contract set her on her way. In the 1980s a political and social counter-revolution was achieved by aggressively confronting and defeating the unions, using strong-arm tactics against pickets honed by the MET at Grunwick. Neo-liberalism led to the closure of pits and factories across the country. It was paid for by the devastation of many working-class communities, which still has an impact 50 years later. There are half as many trade union members today as there were in 1976, when membership stood at a peak of 13 million. Local democracy was also degraded by the introduction of rate capping and the abolition of the GLC and Met Authorities.
The TUC and Labour national leadership proved unable and unwilling to stop any of this – their conciliatory approach and the failure to back united industrial/local council action led to defeat, just as it had at Grunwick. Those many who stood up to Thatcherism and fought back hard, like the miners and the GLC, were left unsupported by the Labour leaders and eventually crushed.
Even when Labour returned to government between 1997/2010, it opted for policies based on neo-liberal market economics, rather than rolling back privatisation or reducing inequality. Public Private Partnerships and PFI were promoted as a “solution” which only led to even more public services being privatised or marketised. Like the NHS.
Although beaten, the Grunwick strikers had learned important lessons, and most went on to better things. They also inspired many others by demonstrating what workers’ solidarity really means and how it can be built from the grassroots. In the final strike meeting, Jayaben Desai gave a message of hope: “We have shown that workers like us, new to these shores, will never accept being treated without dignity or respect. We have shown that white workers will support us.”
The strike helped boost a growing anti-racist movement, which challenged and ultimately defeated the threat of the National Front. In the 1970s, the NF were very active on the streets and electorally, particularly in major cities with large immigrant communities. This reached a peak in 1976-1979 coinciding with the Grunwick Strike. In London, the NF received 120,00 votes in the GLC elections of May 1977 and contested most council and Parliamentary elections during that time. They staged provocative marches and events in areas such as Brick Lane, Lewisham and Southall, which were met with massive opposition from local communities and anti-fascists. At the “Battle of Lewisham” in August 1977, thousands turned up and prevented them from marching. That day the NF suffered a defeat from which it never really recovered. The Anti-Nazi League grew quickly, attracting many young people and ran two massive carnivals in 1978.
Of course, racism and fascism are on the rise again, but, in my view, the anti-racist mobilisations of the 1970s, including Grunwick, have provided a firm base for organising against this today – as indicated by recent by-elections, including the Manchester Mayoral election and also the London council elections, where Reform’s electoral surge was halted.
As for the Labour and the TUC leadership, Jayaben Desai famously described support from leaders like Len Murray as being “like honey on the elbow – you can smell it, you can see it, but you can never taste it”.
This failure of leadership, recently manifest in the abysmal Starmer Project, cooked up by Morgan McSweeney and Labour Together (now unsurprisingly rebranded Think Labour), is at the root of the problem we face today. Can it be rectified?
A short memo to Andy Burnham in the spirit of the Grunwick Strike Committee
We support your aim of reversing neo-liberalism, but given the history of how it was imposed and continued also by Labour, please consider what a serious and difficult task this may be. Even obvious reforms like public ownership of utilities are likely to produce fierce resistance. You can only succeed with massive support from the public and particularly from organised labour. You need to repair the damage caused by previous Labour leaders and Labour Govts and rebuild and democratise the Labour movement. It’s a disgrace that CLPs have been banned from attending marches opposing genocide in Palestine and many comrades suspended or purged for tabling motions on Gaza. Labour needs to be upholding laws that support human rights. Not degrading them and arresting those who peacefully stand up for them.
We need a party where the members are firmly in control, not one influenced by lobbyists funded by outside interests seeking to manipulate policy. One that upholds its historic mission of advancing the interests of working people and fights for equality. We are the people on whom you can rely. Oh, and please reverse immigration laws that blame and penalise migrant workers. We have more than proved that you can trust us, and we demand that it is reciprocated by the Labour leadership. Finally, we would advise you to act according to the values and slogan of our strike – “The Workers United, Will Never Be Defeated!”