Jayaben Desai was the most well known of the black leaders of the strike at the Grunwick film processing factory, which started in August 1976. She had worked at the Grunwick factory in North West London for 2 years before she walked out, starting the famous Grunwick strike. Mrs Desai knew from bitter experience all about the awful working conditions, the racism, the low pay, the long hours and the overtime that workers were forced to do.
Jayaben Desai was born in Gujarat, India, from where she moved first to Tanzania, East Africa, and then, in 1969, to Britain. Like her, most of the workers at Grunwick were East African Asians recently arrived in Britain, many of them women, and these black workers were employed as cheap labour. There was no union allowed at Grunwick, where the white management controlled the workers through threats, insults and harassment.
On 20 August 1976, following yet another rude instruction to do overtime, Mrs Desai, together with her son, Sunil, walked out. Her parting words to the manager were, '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 finger-tips, others are lions who can bite your head off. We are those lions, Mr manager.' Outside she joined up with four other workers who had also left earlier that day in protest at conditions at Grunwick. Together the six workers joined the APEX union, and with support from local black political groups and local union backing they started picketing the factory. Soon there were 137 workers on strike, protesting about the conditions at Grunwick and calling for union recognition.
The trade union movement had a very bad record when it came to supporting black workers striking against racist exploitation. But in 1976 the Labour Government were in the process of passing a new race relations law - this time with trade union backing. The unions were keen to be seen supporting black workers and so, for the first time, the trade union leaders gave full support to black strikers. But they tended to play down the racial dimension of the struggle and concentrate only on issues which affected all trade unionists - white and black.
Militant postal workers organised a boycott of Grunwick's mail, stopping the mail order photographic business that the company relied upon. Other workers joined the Grunwick strikers in mass pickets to stop workers not on strike from entering the premises. Mrs Desai became a national figure on TV speaking to hundreds of miners, postal workers, car workers and others in front of the Grunwick factory.
But the law was used to halt the postal boycott and stop the mass pickets. Dozens of people were arrested during the mass pickets as riot police cleared a path to the factory gates. The union leaders started to lose their nerve and the strikers found themselves up against the Grunwick management, the law and the union leaders. Meanwhile, the government had set up an enquiry into the dispute, under Lord Scarman. The Grunwick dispute had become a major political issue, with right wing pressure groups using it to fight for anti-trade union laws. Though the enquiry said the workers' case was justified, it did nothing to make the management give way. Mrs Desai and the other strikers were being blocked at every turn by the law and, now, by the union leaders. In desperation, on 22 November 1977, after nearly 15 months on strike, Mrs Desai and 3 others went on hunger strike outside the headquarters of the Trade Union Congress to try to get the trade unions to take militant action in their support. The response from their own union, APEX, was to suspend the strikers. Mrs Desai commented, 'the union views itself like management. There's no democracy there.'
Though the strike was not officially ended for another six months, it was effectively over by the beginning of 1978. The strikers had lost. But black workers, like Mrs Desai, had shown themselves the most militant fighters for trade union rights and against racism.
Find out more about the people who made a difference on the HomeBeats: Struggles for Racial Justice CDROM.