Jayaben Desai: Lessons from the past for the future

The Tricycle Cinema was crowded this afternoon for a commemoration of Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick Strike Committee, who died in December 2010. The meeting temporarily brought together councillors and activists who have recently been battling over local council cuts. As the audience reflected on the events of the 1970s both sides could draw lessons from this historical strike.
As I watched the film and once again saw Jayaben's bravery in the face of police violence, her impish sense of humour that bettered many a journalist, her self-identification as a strong woman against crude stereotypes of Asian female submissiveness and most of all her steadfastness in standing up for her rights and that of her fellow workers, I could not help but be moved. As people spoke about Jayaben from different perspectives our appreciation deepened. We heard from Amrit Wilson how Jayaben invited her to her home and talked at length about herself and the strike and the links with race and colonial struggle. It was alleged that George Ward, the Grunwick boss, continued to pursue Jayaben after her death, with threats of legal action against obituarists who mentioned accusations of racism at Grunwick.

We heard from an Asian Women's group how Jayaben clashed with the group's chair about the suppression of ego and advised the women to stop buying jewellery with their money but instead empower themselves by using the money instead to buy driving lessons. It also emerged that she was an erudite contributor to the Gujerati Literary Society.

Cllr Janice Long asked for support to persuade Brent Council to name a building after Jayaben Desai to commemorate her life and urged to audience to write to the leader of the council, Cllr Ann John, who was also present. Another speaker, stressing the need for children to be educated about the importance of Jayaben's role, urged that a school be named after here.

Broader issues were also raised. Pete Firmin linked the struggles of immigrant workers, and the support they received from rank and file white trade unionists, with David Cameron's attacks on multiculturalism and the attempt to divide new arrivals into 'good' and 'bad' migrants. Jack Dromey, then Secretary of Brent Trades Council and now a Labour MP reminded the meeting that a few years before Grunwick, dockers and Smithfield meat porters had marched in support of Enoch Powell after his 'rivers of blood' speech. Jayaben had said, 'We are lions - I am afraid of no one' . She went on to say that the strike had shown that immigrant workers will fight and white workers will support them. Dromey concluded that Grunwicks had 'demonstrated all that is best in our movement and in our immigrant community'.

There were many critical comments about the TUC's role at Grunwick's and warnings that their lack of will to fully use their potential power remains in 2011 as we face the attacks on public services, benefits and the vulnerable. Geoff Shears, at the time a young legal representative for the strikers, confessed that he had felt intimidated by Mrs Desai. He said that anti-trade union laws did not exist in their present form then but instead there was a conspiracy that enabled courts to break the law by restricting the solidarity action of postal workers, the police to break the law by attacking pickets, and George Ward to ignore the recommendations of the Scarman Inquiry that came down 90% in favour of the strikers. He said that had prepared the ground for Thatcher in the 1980s and warned that it would be used again by the Coalition government. Mrs Desai had understood the meaning of solidarity as requirement for workers to organise collectively to ensure that the unions served their interests.

Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union (successor to the Union of Post Office Workers) said that the union's next conference would be considering awarding honorary membership to Jayaben Desai and wiping out the fines imposed by the union on the Cricklewood postmen who refused to deliver Grunwick mail at the time.

As I have remarked on this blog before LINK Jayeben and the story of Grunwick is a far better subject for children to study in Brent Black History Month than rehashed versions of American black history that currently dominate the curriculum.

Posted by Martin Francis at 8:20 PM

Jobcentre call centre staff name strike date

Jobcentre call centre staff name strike date (from http://www.pcs.org.uk)

8 April 2011

Thousands of Jobcentre Plus call centre staff will strike on 18 April after bosses refused to improve working conditions and customer service.

In a ballot of the union’s 7,000 members in JCP’s 37 call centres across the country, 70% of those who took part voted for strike action. The turnout was 43%.

Following this strong result, the union agreed not to call any industrial action to allow negotiations to continue. But senior managers have shown little willingness to resolve the dispute.

The action will follow a well-supported two-day strike in January by more than 2,000 workers in JCP’s seven newest contact centres who have been forcibly moved from processing benefit claims to handling enquiries by phone.

The union wants to improve the levels of customer service in call centres; end the target driven culture, particularly by changing the way unrealistic ‘average call times’ are used; and introduce proper flexible working arrangements.

PCS’s Department for Work and Pensions group president Jane Aitchison said: “We are being prevented from providing a good quality service to the public because of unnecessary and unrealistic call centre targets.
“We entered into negotiations in good faith because we care about the help and advice we give to some of the most vulnerable people in society. It’s very disappointing that our management didn’t do the same.”
Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, said: “With unemployment rising and welfare recipients being blamed for an economic crisis they did not cause, it is outrageous that standards are being driven down in Jobcentre Plus.

“Instead of punishing people who are claiming benefits through no fault of their own, the government should be investing in our public services to help get people back to work quicker and to help our economy to grow.”

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Support the UCU strike 24th March

OPEN LETTER TO TRADE UNIONISTS, STUDENTS, COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS FROM LONDON REGION UCU

Dear sisters and brothers,

On Thursday 24th March up to 120,000 university and college lecturers will be on strike across the UK. We will be striking in defence of our pensions, jobs, and pay.

London region of the UCU would like to invite you to join us on our picket lines and demonstration on the 24th.

As the bankers continue to reward themselves obscene bonuses the coalition government, via our employers, are attempting to cut our jobs, conditions, and public services, in order that we are the ones that have to pay the price for the greed of those same city fat cats who created the financial mess we are now in. Why should ordinary hard working public sector workers pay for the excess of the few? Why should desperately needed jobs and services be cut, and conditions of employment reduced, when the simple and affordable alternative is to increase the taxation of the very rich, reign in the banks profiteering, and recover the billions of pounds of tax revenue lost through corporate tax avoidance and tax evasion?

The government is trying to divide workers by describing public sector pensions as too generous or ‘gold plated’. In reality, pensions are our deferred wages. At the same time, lecturers’ pay has been cut. The employers made college lecturers our worst pay offer ever last year, 0.2 percent. This follows below inflation ‘increases’ last year. University lecturers have been offered 0.4 percent. If our pay rises don’t keep up with inflation, currently around 5%, we face accumulated de-facto real-terms pay cuts this year of around 8-10 percent.

Lecturers are also concerned about massive job losses and the hugely negative effect this will have on the quality of education we can provide to our students. In almost every university and college, job losses are mounting, with an estimated 40,000 jobs currently at risk in higher education alone. One million 16-24 year olds are languishing on the dole—and the government and employers now seem determined to force lecturers to join them. 

The political context of our dispute is about far more than pay, pensions and jobs; it is about defending education for all.  The lifting of the cap on tuition fees, the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance, and the refusal to pay fees for those on income support who want to learn English, will ensure that education will become the exclusive domain of only those who can afford it. It is this political context that our specific strikes and demonstrations can help expose and build resistance to.

On 10 November, when 52,000 students and lecturers marched through London, they broke the consensus that cuts are inevitable.  They also gave many of us the impetuous and confidence to take up that fight. Subsequent student and worker demonstrations and college occupations have reinforced our resolve to fight back.

However, we are also the first to realise that we cannot defend access to education alone.  We need the support of fellow trade unionists, students, and community activists.  As the old trade union adage goes “in unity there is strength.” We therefore hope to see as many of you as possible on the 24th March on both our picket lines and on our demonstrations.

Details for the London protests and mass rally next Thursday 24 March:

11.30am: London action for ESOL protest, Old Palace Yard, opposite Parliament

1pm: UCU London Region March to Parliament, Assemble at LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE

3pm: UCU London Region Rally, At Emmanuel Centre, 9-23 Marsham Steet, SW1P 3DW

Speakers include:

Alan Whittaker UCU president, Mark Serwotka PCS general secretary, Billy Hayes CWU general secretary, John McDonnell MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Dot Gibson NPC, Mark Bergfeld NUS NEC (pc), Zita Holbourne BARAC,  Rose Veitch, Action for ESOL

In solidarity

Mark Campbell, UCU NEC (London and the East), UCU London Region - SERTUC Delegate

Support the Redhall workers!

GPTU (the Green Party Trade Union Group),would like to send a message of solidarity to the 400 Redhalls workers at Hull who have been locked out by their employers. GPTU calls for the immediate and full reinstatement of these workers without any prejudice to their future work and prospects and all past earnings paid in full.

We understand that these workers were working on  a bio-ethanol plant, which is a problematic enterprise as far as many in the Green movement are concerned, Nonetheless GPTU maintain that the Redhalls workers deserve fair and proper treatment from the employer, just as any other group of workers does. An ecologically sustainable future can only be built on the basis of economic and social justice for workers, not the type of bullying and coercion that lock-outs represent. Support the Redhall workers!

P.Murry
Secretary GPTU 17/3/2011

A Tribute to Jayaben Desai: Sunday 17th April

On Sunday 17th April 2.30-5.00pm at the Tricycle Theatre Kilburn High Rd, London NW6 7JR

(nearest tube Kilburn Jubilee Line)

A showing of the film "The Great Grunwick Strike - A History" by Chris Thomas followed by a discussion on the lessons of the strike with paticipants.

Organised by Brent trades Council; tickets £5 from www.brenttuc.org.uk

Martin Francis writes "Jayaben Desai, whose refusal to obey a management instruction to stay on and work overtime after another worker had been sacked for not fulfilling his quota, started the famous Grunwick strike, died just before Christmas. She was 77.

I have written elsewhere (...) how this strike in Dollis Hill, in the heart of Brent, was a significant milestone in the history of trade union struggle in the UK - and one that should feature when local schools devise their programmes for Black History Month

As someone who attended the pickets I well remember her inspiring presence in front of the Grunwick gates. This was a fight against exploitation based on race, class and gender and challenged the trade union movement's neglect of immigrant and women workers.

Here is Jayaben's own account of the working conditions at Grunwick:

"On two sides there are glass cabins for the management so that they can watch you as well. He is English. He moves around and keeps an eye. You have to put up your hand and ask even to go to the toilet. If someone is sick, say a woman has a period or something, they wouldn’t allow her home without a doctor’s certificate, and if someone’s child was sick and they had to take it to the clinic or hospital they would say “Why are you going, ask someone else from your family to go”…

Even pregnant women who wanted to go to the clinic were told “you must arrange to go at the weekend.” On the rare occasions when a woman did go during working hours she would be warned that that was the last time. Everyone would be paid a different wage so no one knew what anyone else was getting. And to force people to work they would make them fill in a job sheet saying how many films they had booked in. If someone did a large number they would bring the job sheet around and show the others and say “She has done so many, you also must.”

And here is a quote about George Ward, the boss, that sums up her strength:

He would come to the picket line and try to mock us and insult us. One day he said “Mrs Desai, you can’t win in a sari, I want to see you in a mini.” I said “Mrs Gandhi, she wears a sari and she is ruling a vast country.”… On my second encounter with Ward he said “Mrs Desai, I’ll tell the whole Patel community that you are a loose woman.” I said “I am here with this placard! Look! I am showing all England that you are a bad man. You are going to tell only the Patel community but I am going to tell all of England.”

DEFEND THE NHS – DEFEAT LANSLEY’S BILL (video clips)

DEFEND THE NHS – DEFEAT LANSLEY’S BILL
Organised by Keep Our NHS Public and Coalition of Resistance
Wednesday 16th February, 7,30pm,
Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1, Holborn tube


Introduction: Fred Leplat (Coalition of Resistance)and John Lister, Health Emergency


Dr Jacky Davis


Wendy Savage, Keep Our NHS Public


Teresa Delaney, Coalition of Resistance


Dot Cotton, National Pensioners Convention


Questions and discussions (1)


Questions and discussions (2)

BMA London vote against the health bill

Exclusive: The momentum in favour of a vote of outright opposition against the Government NHS reforms gathered pace last night after a fractious meeting called by BMA London voted to stop the health bill in its tracks.

An overwhelming majority of the estimated 250 people at the meeting backed a motion calling for the BMA to scrap its policy of critical engagement and instead introduce a policy of total opposition to the bill.

Up to 100 protestors carried out a noisy demonstration against the reforms outside the regional meeting and inside the hall at BMA House, health minister Simon Burns faced catcalls from some of the audience and saw the Government’s plans come under fire from BMA leader, Dr Hamish Meldrum.

The BMA London move is the latest in a series of motions by BMA divisions and council members calling for a policy change, which looks set to be debated at a BMA Special Representative Meeting next month.

Dr Meldrum, who has come under increasing pressure to drop the BMA’s engagement policy, set out the association's strong objections to the bill at the meeting, especially plans to ramp up competition from the private sector.

Also speaking at the meeting, shadow health minister Diane Abbott attacked the Government’s plans and afterwards declared the meeting was a sign of ‘all-out opposition to Tory health reforms.’

Mr Burns faced a string of questions from angry members of the audience, who demanded to know why the Government had not trialed its plans and also why many of the key elements of the health bill were not included in the coalition’s manifesto.

Outside the meeting, Dr Ron Singer, president of the Medical Practitioners’ Union and one of its GPC members, explained why they were protesting.

‘We think the changes proposed in the bill are so massive that nothing but outright opposition to, so that it never sees the light of day, it is the only course. A lot of people turning up tonight will tell the London division of the BMA that they must take a stronger line.

‘What is being offered to GPs – to run the NHS and have control over the budget – is just simply not true.’

acknowledgements to Andy Hewett