I am grateful to the redoubtable Kathryn of Sheblogs and the spirited figure of the Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown for the heads up on an unsung heroine, Jayaben Desai who died recently. Born in the Indian coastal state of Gujarat, to the south of what is now Pakistan, at school Jayaben rejected passive obedience in favour of active support for Indian independence. In 1955, she married Suryakant Desai, a tyre-factory manager from Tanganyika – united with Zanzibar since 1964 as Tanzania – where the couple settled the following year. The East African Asians formed the mercantile and administrative classes, and Jayaben enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. For the Desais and tens of thousands of others, all that changed with the "Africanisation" policies that saw them expelled and flee to Britain. When they arrived here the Desais' social status collapsed. Suryakant took a job as an unskilled labourer and Jayaben as a sewing machinist in a Harlesden sweatshop. Working part-time, she brought up their two children before going to work for Grunwick in 1974.
The death of Mrs Jayaben Desai who led the workers in the Grunwick dispute in 1976 gives us the opportunity to look back and consider an important lesson in the Labour movement’s history. This fight for Union recognition in a small photo processing firm turned into a massive 17 months struggle of solidarity from 1976. It was without doubt a turning point where three elements came together to defeat not just a single union in a small plant but as it turned out the Trade Union movement itself.
This pioneer of Asian women workers’ movement in Britain, died after a brief illness. She was 77. She is survived by her husband and two sons. The diminutive India-born Ms. Desai, who moved to Britain from Tanzania in 1969, came to be known as a “lioness” for her role in leading the two-year long strike at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories, north London, in the 1970s to demand union recognition for its largely Asian and female workforce.
The workers at Grunwick’s photo processing were earning around £28 for a forty hour week when the national average was £72 a week. Conditions particularly in the mail order department were bad, and work was being speeded up to meet summer demand. The women's toilet breaks were timed, and the management instituted compulsory overtime. There were complaints of harassment and bullying, and allegations that white workers had been paid more than the others.
She famously told a manager: “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.’’ Recalling her memorable taunt, Labour MP and Jack Dromey, a former trade union leader who worked with her during the Grunwick dispute said: “She was 4ft 11 tall, but an absolute lioness.” The Grunwick strike (1976-78), regarded as a seminal moment in British trade union movement, was sparked by the dismissal of Devshi Bhudia, a male worker, for working “too slowly’’.
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Ms Desai who walked out in support along with other workers, including her son, was dismissed. Most of the workers at the factory were women, mostly Indian, and as they took to the streets led by Ms Desai with her trademark handbag they were fondly dubbed the “strikers in saris’’.
Although workers failed to achieve their demand, the strike helped highlight the oppression of migrant women workers. Defiant to the end, Jayaben told the final meeting of the strikers that they could be proud. "We have shown," she said, "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."
In what The Guardian said was her last known public statement, Ms Desai told the newspaper: “I am proud of what I did. They wanted to break us down, but we did not break.”
The Grunwick strike and the shameless exploitation of a largely female and Asian workforce by exploitative management backed up by the Tory Party and racist fellow travellers still resonates today pace the baying calls from the Tory Hyenas for more restrictions on the rights of trade Unions and attacks on workers’ rights hard won by the actions of Jayaben Desai in opposing obvious injustice and exploitation. Over 550 workers and supporters were arrested in the course of the Grunwick Strike and all the workers were sacked, but the insight their struggle provided into the heart of darkness changed British Society and employment relations in the years afterwards.
Namaste, Desai jee, phir milenge. In memory of this gentle Hindu woman from Gujarat who became a lioness and changed the subservient perception of Asian Women I recall the words of The Bhagavad Gita.
Let a man lift himself by himself;
let him not degrade himself;
for the Self alone is the friend of the self
and the Self alone is the enemy of the self.
Jayaben Desai, trade unionist, born 2 April 1933; died 23 December 2010
Read SheBlogs here;
http://www.sheblogs.co.uk/
Read Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s article in the Independent here;
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-remembering-an-unsung-heroine-of-our-modern-history-2174684.html
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