Grunwick Factories Strike
Mural by Anna Ferrie and the Community, Chapter Road, Willesden*
Pete Firmin explores the ongoing
significance of a dispute that began fifty years ago this week. First published by Labour Hub. Reproduced with the permission of the author and publisher.
2026 is an important year for the
commemoration of significant British class struggles. As well as marking the
General Strike of 1926, it is 50 years since the start of the Grunwick strike
in NW London.
But why did a strike of a few
hundred workers at a small firm in Dollis Hill have national importance? Why
was it frequently an item on the national television news? Why did it see more
arrests in an industrial dispute than at any time since the General Strike of
1926?
The Grunwick strike was
extraordinary because the strike of mainly women of South Asian heritage
received widespread support from the trade union movement. Previous strikes by
migrant workers, such as at Imperial Typewriters in Leicester and Mansfield
Hosiery in Loughborough got no such support but rather the hostility of other
workers and little support from the wider movement.
Grunwick was a photographic
processing firm in Dollis Hill. In the days before smart phones, cameras
contained reels of film which had to be sent away to be turned into photos
after taking the pictures, and these were then sent back.
Working conditions were dire,
overtime was compulsory and often without warning. Pay was lower than the
London average..
There was an attempt in 1973 to
unionise Grunwick workers but it failed when they were sacked.
On 20th August 1976, Devshi
Bhudia was sacked and three other young men walked out in protest. Jayaben
Desai and her son Sunil walked out in protest at this unacceptable treatment by
management. 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.
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.
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.
Recourse to the law had mixed
results for the strikers. 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.
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.
With Grunwick management adamant
they would not allow recognition, the law apparently against them, and a lack
of official union support, the strike committee announced the end of the strike
on 14th July 1978.
The timeline alone does not give
the full flavour of the dispute: the resilience of the strikers, the
magnificent solidarity shown by the wider movement, up against police brutality
and the obstinacy of a company determined to deny its workers their basic
rights, backed up by a ruling class determined to beat down the workers’ movement.
When Thatcher came to power in
1979, she quickly moved to restrict the rights of unions even further,
something our leaders have refused to seriously challenge over the intervening
decades.
The Grunwick strike showed the
immense ability of workers to resist and the power of solidarity across
sectoral and, importantly, racial divides. But it also showed how when it comes
to the crunch, we can’t rarely rely on our union leaders – or the law – to back
us in that fight. We have to be prepared to fight on – and break the law – when
they refuse.
Learning more:
There are a wealth of resources
about the Grunwick strike available:
Books:
Grunwick: The
Workers’ Story, by Jack Dromey and
Graham Taylor (Lawrence & Wishart).
Films:
The Great Grunwick Strike 1976-78, Brent Trades Union Council
The Year of the Beaver https://youtu.be/RBJZ9hkHmxo
This year, the 50th anniversary
of the start of the strike, there are several commemorative exhibitions,
including at the Working
Class Museum and Library and at London
Metropolitan University.
Over the weekend 17/18 October,
Brent Trades Council is organising an event commemorating both the General
Strike and the Grunwick Strike and discussing issues facing trades unionists
today. For more details contact petefirmin@btinternet.com
Pete Firmin is Vice Chair of Brent Trades
Council.
*Image: https://openverse.org/image/e51b2bd3-c06c-4bcd-9e01-1107f9cface3?q=grunwick+strike&p=2
“Grunwick
Factories Strike Mural by Anna Ferrie and the Community, Chapter Road,
Willesden” by Loz
Flowers is licensed under CC BY-SA
2.0.
