Early notice for what is likely to be a well attended weekend celebrating and learning from struggles that have taken place in Brent in the past and have important lessons for trade unionists today.
Saturday 17th October 2-6pm
The 1926 General Strike in Brent.
Film: The
General Strike in Brent The 1926 General Strike in Brent and the role of local
trade unions. • Speakers: Mary Davis. Visiting Professor of Labour History,
University of London The General Strike in Brent: Chris Coates, former
Librarian at the TUC, researcher in local & trade union history • Panel
Discussion: Organising unorganised workers • Poets on the Picket Line
Sunday 17th October 2-6pm
Celebrating and learning from the
Grunwick Strike 1976-78
Film: The Great
Grunwick Strike Speakers: Professor Sundari Anitha, co-author "Striking
Women: Struggles & Strategies of South Asian Women Workers from Grunwick to
Gate Gourmet" Dave Ward Gen Sec. Communication Workers Union • Panel
Discussion: Issues facing trades unionists today • Music & songs of
struggle.
Venue
Brent
Trades Hall (Apollo Club)
375 High Road
London NW10 2JR
Just up the High Road from Willesden Bus Depot and served by many bus routes including 260, 266 and 297. Nearest tube Dollis Hill on the Jubilee line.
Townsend Theatre Production's play about the Grunwick strike is 'coming home' to the borough in which the strike took place near Dollis Hill station.
The fresh version of the play will be at the Performance Space in Willesden Green Library on November 29th at 7.30pm.
Townsend Theatre write:
Grunwick wasn’t a strike about
wages – it was about something much more important than that: it was about
dignity. Dignity at work. And, for the small band of Asian women strikers, who
braved the sun, rain, and snow month-in and month-out on the picket lines, from
August 1976 to July 1978, rights in the workplace and pride at work were far
more important than any amount of money.
Night after night the public
watched dramatic television footage of clashes on the picket lines, between
snatch squads and regimented police lines, on the one side, and wave after wave
of trade union members, pickets and protesters, on the other.
Each morning the strikers, a
group of predominantly Asian women, colourful saris often hidden beneath heavy
woollen coats, would take up their posts on the picket lines, unbowed and
unbroken in the face of intimidation, the threat of arrest and the sting of the
cold.
They had been employed by
Grunwick, a photographic processing factory in north-west London, in the belief
that they would be easy to handle, to browbeat and to exploit. Yet, they found
their own distinctive voice in the course of the struggle to secure their
rights.
Even during the hardest of times,
Jayaben Desai had the uncanny ability to evoke a mood or sum up a situation
with a perfectly weighted turn of phrase. In this way, she had the measure of
the most brutish and charmless of her managers, when she told them: ‘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 fingertips, others are
lions who can bite your head off. We are the lions, Mr. Manager!’
Ranged against these ‘lions’ of
the trade union movement was, however, a new type of employer – ruthless and
implacable in defence of his ‘right’ to make the maximum amount of profit,
regardless of the human cost, and behind him a new, highly ideological breed of
hard right-wing politicians, fanatically devoted to neoliberalism and the
destruction of the hard-won freedoms of working people.
Jayaben Desai: ‘...my English not
good’. Yet she talked the language of Gandhi, with the burning sense of
injustice of La Passionara. Indeed, at times she was almost Shakespearean. She
had a way with words that captured the very essence of the human spirit.
Grunwick truly did make history.
The strike saw the biggest mobilisation in labour movement history around a
local dispute, with 20,000 descending on Chapter Road in Willesden on 11 July
1977. Grunwick saw one of the most remarkable acts of solidarity in labour
movement history with the brave stand taken by the Cricklewood post office
workers.
Grunwick put centre-stage the
issue of the exploitation of immigrant workers, nailing the myth that Asian
workers were passive and unorganisable.
Grunwick was a defining moment in
the trade union and political lives of tens of thousands, who came to the
streets of Brent to back the Grunwick workers.
We Are The Lions, Mr. Manager!’ is the remarkable story of Jayaben
Desai the inspirational leader of the 1976-78 Grunwick Strike that took place in Brent.
She
brought the issue of workplace exploitation and racism to the fore and
challenged the perception of Asian women being inherently passive and
docile. She not only stood up for workers’ rights and against oppression
with selfless dedication, but with her steadfast resolve, she turned
the dispute into a national movement for human rights and dignity
inspiring future generations.
4 stars ‘A powerful story, powerfully told’ – Clare Brennan. The Observer.
There are still a few tickets left. Don't miss it! BOOK HERE
There will be a performance of "We are the lions, Mr
Manager", the critically acclaimed Townsend Productions play about the
Grunwick strike, on Thurs 19 April at the College of North West London in Willesden.
If you want to be sure of a place please book your ticketasap as it will probably sell out
Two Grunwick40 murals were unveiled today. The first (above) outside Dollis Hill Station where the Grunwick factory gates were situated in Chapter Road, the second on the bridge on Dudden Hill Lane (below) where the mass picket in support of the Grunwick strikers took place.
The work of the Grunwick40 group and artist Anna Ferrie add something extraordinary to the streetscape of Willesden marking a historic struggle of women, Asians and the trade union movement.
We're looking forward to welcoming you tomorrow and revealing not just one
mural to commemorate the Grunwick strike but two!
As you come out of Dollis Hill tube station at the Chapter Road exit you'll
be greeted by dhol players and some of the former strikers, and it's here that
we'll unveil the first mural just after 12pm. We'll be standing directly
outside the former factory, on the same pavement that the strikers and their
supporters stood on 40 years ago.
They'll then lead us in a short procession up
Dudden Hill Lane (a 5 minute walk) to the site of the second mural - which is a
huuuuge 28 metres long! After this is revealed we'll take another 7 minute walk
back down the hill to the offices of Brent Mencap (379-381 High Road, NW10 2JR)
for a short reception.
The view from the pavement outside Grunwick 40 years ago
Ken Montague, a well known and respected local Brent activist who had recently moved to Brighton, died on Friday not quite a month after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. In perhaps his last email to friends and comrades after the diagnosis Ken finished by saying, 'Please
pass on the word to those that need to know and say that I am relying
on you to keep up the fight for better and more sustainable world. My
only regret is that I'm bailing out so early. In comradeship, Ken' I have offered to host tributes on Wembley Matters and begin with this from his colleagues in the University and College Union:
We regret to announce the death
of Ken Montague, known to many of us as a socialist, climate change activist
and member of the UCU London Retired Members branch. His contribution will be
sorely missed. We send our condolences to his comrades, friends and family.
Merilyn Moos, vice chair of the
retired members branch, who knew Ken for many years, has written this obituary.
I
knew Ken as a comrade and friend from when we were in our early 20s. His sudden
death, at 70, is a terrible blow, politically and personally.
Ken became an FE lecturer, first in what was then Kilburn Polytechnic (where I
taught), then at Barnet. Before he retired, he did some part-time teaching at
Middlesex. His main area was literature but he was deeply involved in Media
Studies. His students loved him, especially those he took on annual pilgrimages
to Cannes so that they could witness the iniquities but also the ‘alternative
reality’ of the film industry for themselves. He was the Branch Secretary for
what I suspect he felt was far too long, fighting the college management’s
petty vindictiveness as well as the grander issues of conditions and pay. One
of the crucial (and ultimately successful) campaigns he was crucially involved
in was for the reinstatement of John Fernandes, a black lecturer at the College
of North West London who was being dismissed for revealing the racist content
of essays by police cadets whom he taught.
He was a member of IS, (International Socialists) then SW (Socialist
Workers Party), an organisation which, with a couple of outs and ins, he
remained a member of for all his life. He was passionate about his politics but
never became a hack nor did he become bureaucratically compromised, retaining a
fundamental commitment to grassroots struggle all his life.
The
first massive class struggle I remember him in was at Grunwicks. He was the
Secretary of Barnet Trades Council at the time and was on the Grunwick strike
committee. From the beginning he stressed the importance, especially given the
concealed racism, of solidarity between white, male, manual workers and Asian
women and was vociferous in demanding, mass pickets to shut down Grunwick. As
Ken wrote in SW: ’There was lots of talk of support from the top of the unions
but it was mostly just talk.’ Indeed, as I remember vividly the turning point
in the dispute came when, after a few weeks of mass pickets, the TUC (in the
figure of Jack Dromey, then of Brent Trades Council, and indeed, Scargill,)
marched us away from the gates. Ken would not have been in agreement with that.
Ken
continued to be active, campaigning for example for the Respect candidate in
Brent in a number of elections. But his next major and long-term involvement
was over climate change, which, in recent years, including campaigning against
fracking. He emphasised throughout the importance of trade union support and
organisation. He was instrumental in setting up the Campaign against Climate
Change Trade Union Group (CACCTU) and became its Secretary. He took a leading
part in organising and promulgating the influential ‘One Million Climate Jobs’
booklet and campaign, both in Britain and internationally (supported by Jeremy
Corbyn though one wouldn’t know it).
Last
year he attended the Paris Climate talks as part of the Global Climate Jobs
movement. Global Climate Jobs is the network of all the national climate
campaigns, which he was instrumental in setting up. The International Trade
Union Confederation (ITUC) held an alternative summit in Paris, attended by
approx 40 climate jobs activists from 20 countries, which launched a Global
Climate Jobs campaign. Ken always emphasised the crucial role of trade unions. As
he wrote afterwards about Paris:
It is clear that the leaders of all the
countries in the world have failed us. They did so because nowhere did we have
the political and social power to make them take decisive action on climate… We
have to mobilise... After all, we need cuts of 80% in global emissions, as soon
as possible.
We have to fight to leave the coal, gas and oil in the soil, he
said. So we need to replace fossil fuels almost entirely with renewable energy.
Ken could always be found doing the organising, writing and distributing the
leaflets, speaking at meetings and rallies (which he didn’t enjoy), making the
contacts, arguing with rank and file trade unionists - but never claiming the
lime light.
The
last event he was organising was the Conference Climate Refugees, The Climate
Crisis & Population Displacement. Building A Trade Union & Civil
Society Response (to be held on Saturday 11 February 10pm
- 5pm, NUT, Hamilton House) Let’s support it.
Ken
died too young and we shall all miss him.
Pete Murry, fellow UCU member and Brent Green Party and London Green Party TU Liaision Offcer, Secretary of Green Left wrote:
For much of his life Ken lived in Cricklewood and was
active in many local campaigns against, council and goverment cuts, against
racism and against war. He was the founder and backbone of the Brent Campaign
Against Climate Change and a key organiser in Campaign Against Climate Change nationally and its Trade
Union group. It was an honour to have worked with him on these campaigns and as
a fellow UCU member.
A one-day conference
on migrant workers, trade unions and the new economy.
Forty
years ago Asian women at Grunwick led a strike for basic human dignity at work
and for the right to join to a trade union. Today these battles are still being
fought, often by migrant workers in precarious employment conditions. The
experiences of workers at Byron revealed the extent to which migrant workers
can be exploited by 'the new economy' and tossed aside when no longer needed,
while those at Deliveroo showed that resistance is both necessary and
possible.
This one-day conference will bring together campaigners, trade unionists,
activists and thinkers to examine the changing nature of work and the terrains
for resistance.
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 26TH 10.30AM-5.30PM
Willesden Library Centre
95 High Road
London
NW10 2SF
Willesden Green tube (Jubilee line)
Although
a free event, please ensure you book your place HERE as spaces are
limited.
Sessions will include:
The legacy of Grunwick
Do we need independent trade
unions?
Building community support
What does Brexit mean for workers
Resisting immigration raids
Building community support
Confirmed
participants are:
Rita Chadha (Refugee and Migrant
Forum Essex and London
Dr Sundari Anitha
Suresh Grover (The Moniroring
Group)
Anti Raids Network
Amrit Wilson (writer, activist)
Durham teaching assistants
Jack Dromey MP
Unite Hotel Workers Branch
United Workers of the World Union
(Deliveroo and other campaigns)
Saturday October 22nd 12 noon to 4pm at Ealing Town Hall, New Broadway, London W5
-->
Black History month brings together a
series of events that celebrate the culture, history and achievements of black
and ethnic minority communities. We hope to see you at at what promises to be a
very special event.
Grunwick - 40 years on: Join Leroy Logan, MBE Former Chief
Inspector & Chair of Black Police Association and Amrit Wilson Writer and
Activist.
Race invites you to join us in remembering and celebrating
Black women who were at the forefront of the Grunwick dispute 40 years ago.The
day will consist of an exhibition dedicated to Grunwick, various performing
artists with cultural food available, plus much more. Further details will
follow but please keep this date free, it’s an event not to be missed.
Preston Commnity Hub Library was packed last night for a showing of 'The Great Grunwick Strike'. Here is a shorter film about the strike. The Exhibition about the strike will be opening soon as well as other events. As immigrant workers are targeted by the May government this is not just history but part of a struggle that continues today.
The Exhibition opens at The Library at Willesden Green on October 19th. Volunteers are needed to join a rota helping look after the Exhibition during opening hours engaging with the public and answering their questions. Contact grunwick40@gmail.com
In 1976, six workers walked out of Grunwick Film Processing Laboratory in Willesden. They staged a strike against their poor working conditions, demanding the right to join a union.
Less than two years later, those six had been joined by 20,000 supporters in an historic dispute fighting for better rights for poorly treated workers. Predominantly Asian women, these strikers shattered stereotypes, challenged the establishment, brought a community together to support the rights of workers and changed the face of trade unionism.
40 years after the start of the Grunwick Strike we want to celebrate their bravery and take their inspirational story to a new generation by installing a mural, developing an exhibition and holding a conference.
Grunwick40, in collaboration with Brent Museum and Archives, wants to collect stories, memories and experiences of the strike. If you, or one of your friends or relatives was involved – we want to hear from you. We aim to include some of these stories in the exhibition, and all will be added to the collections at Brent Archives.
We will be holding a story sharing session at Brent Archives (Second Floor, The Library at Willesden Green) on Saturday 27th August 2-4pm, so that you can explore some of the material held by Brent Museum and Archives related to the strike, and share your memories.
Email us at museum.archives@brent.gov.uk for more information or call 02089373600.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the first moments of
the Grunwick strike – and we're proud to announce our plans to
commemorate it.
We'll be running a series of inspiring, thought-provoking events
exploring Grunwick and its legacy, launching with Grunwick
Memories on Saturday 27 August.
Grunwick Memories is a free event, giving you the
opportunity to explore and contribute to the Grunwick archive held by
Brent Museum and Archives. Come along and take part in
a story sharing session and add your memories and experiences of
the strike to the Archive. You will also get an exclusive look at
some of the materials that will feature in the upcoming exhibition.
Grunwick Memories will take place at Brent Archive, on
the second floor of The Library at Willesden Green, Willesden High
Road NW10 2SF, from 2-4 pm on Saturday 27 August. Please join us! Email museum.archives@brent.gov.uk or
call 020 8937 3600 for more information.
Other upcoming events:
• We are those lions: The story of the Grunwick strike
1976-78 exhibition, launching October 2016 at The
Library at Willesden Green. Look out for the launch date – coming
soon.
• The Great Grunwick Mural unveiling, Chapter Road, NW10.
Be the first to see our amazing murals in place near the original
Grunwick site. The design and unveiling details are still under
wraps, but we'll be revealing details over the next few weeks, along
with the names of our special guests, who'll be providing music and
entertainment.
• Explore Grunwick in more detail at our November
events, a film screening and discussion on “Race and the
Unions” at SOAS, November 2nd, and Grunwick 40: The
Conference, The Library at Willesden Green, November 26th –
booking for these events will open in October.
Yours in solidarity,
Grunwick 40
PS: Don't miss out on the reissued anniversary edition of Grunwick:
The Workers’ Story, by Jack Dromey and Graham Taylor, with
an updated introduction – due out in late September.
Grunwick 40 has an exciting opportunity – we're recruiting a
temporary Curator/Project Manager to help us develop our exhibition about the
Grunwick Strike. We're looking for someone with experience of researching and
developing displays and exhibitions which include both audio-visual and
interactive material. A record of engaging young people in similar
projects would be welcome.
Click here to download the job description, you've
got until 27th June to apply!
We've
raised over £9,000 so far to commemorate the Grunwick strikers – that
brave group of workers who stood up for their rights 40 years ago and
inspired a generation, changing the face of trade unions as they did it.
We believe that the Grunwick mural will be the first ever piece
of public art to mark the contribution of Asian women in Britain.
The mural is expensive to produce and install but we want to make it as
high impact as possible. The Grunwick strikers fought for justice for
all workers and now we want to do justice to them with a
colourful tribute that is big, bold and celebratory.
We need your donations to help make this happen.
This is the final week of our crowdfunding campaign and your last chance to get the fantastic rewards when you donate.
Please give whatever you can afford.
We have some exclusive rewards for people who donate including badges,
posters, DVDs and rare artwork from the 1970s, so please consider making
a personal donation or asking your union branch to make one. Whatever
the amount, every £ helps to ensure that the legacy of Grunwick is not
lost.
Please make your donation by 12.30pm on Monday 25th April.
Plans are forging ahead to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Grunwick strike, one of the most significant events for trade unionists and anti-racists in the last century.
Plans include a mural, a major exhibition in conjunction with Brent Heritage, a conference and other events initiated by Brent Trades Council and the Willesden Town Team. LINK
There is a meeting tomorrow (Thursday) at 7pm at Brent Trades Hall to further the plans. Everyone welcome - you don't have to be someone who remembers the strike to take part!
BrentTradesHall (London Apollo Club) 375 High Rd, Willesden, NW10 2JR Dollis Hill tube / Near Willesden Bus Garage
The funeral took place this afternoon of Ben Rickman, secretary of Brent Trades Union Council, who died suddenly yesterday..
Ben was a long-time trades unionist and labour movement campaigner and anti-racist activist well known in the borough.
He was a determined opponent of extreme right-wing groups and opposed the EDL's attempts to stir up hatred during their campaigns in Harrow and Wembley. He signed the following letter to the press when the EDL was threatening to demonstrate in Wembley:
The racist, Islamophobic English Defence League is threatening to
demonstrate in Wembley on Saturday 26 June against a peace conference,
organised by a Muslim charitable foundation and aimed at building
understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.
The EDL is an
organisation of violent, bigoted thugs with proven links to the Nazi
British National Party. They should be condemned everywhere, but will be
particularly unwelcome if they come to Wembley, part of this country’s
most diverse borough.
We are proud of our diversity. In the London
Borough of Brent, people live and work together, children study, play
and grow up together in peace and mutual respect, regardless of faith or
skin colour.
As residents and workers in this borough, we will
not tolerate attempts to divide us or stir up hatred. We stood united to
show that there was no place for racism or Islamophobia in the
neighbouring borough of Harrow. We stand prepared to do the same in
Brent.
Commemorating Jayaben Desai who led the famous Grunwick strike, Ben said:
Jayaben Desai
destroyed the myth of passive Asian women and contributed to the
advancement of Asian people in the UK. Many consider her a role model.
She also contributed to unions taking the organisation of migrant
workers as a campaign priority, one of her lasting legacies.
Supporting last year's Give Our Kids a Future unity march in Hackey which took place after the riots he said:
Please include the support of Brent Trades Union Council. Brent is a
borough of many languages and cultures and a spectrum ranging from
deprivation in Harlesden to millionaire homes in Kenton. We wish this
demonstration every success. We all have a right to work, and to be
valued and developed. Opportunity only exists for some, not for all and
that is very wrong.
These extracts demonstrate why Ben was held in such regard as a man of principle.He will be greatly missed and perhaps the best tribute we can pay him is to join the March For An Alternative on Saturday. He would have been there.
️
