Fiesty leader of UK `strikers in saris` dies

Prasun Sonwalkar
London, Dec 28 (PTI) Jayaben Desai, a feisty
Indian-origin woman who became an icon of the struggle of
migrant women workers in the 1970s and provided a fillip to
the trade union movement in Britain, has died aged 77.
Desai is best known for her bold leadership of the
famous Grunwick dispute in Willesden, London, in the late
1970s.
She died just before Christmas after several months of
illness.
She led Indian-origin migrant workers in protests and
demonstrations – the group came to be known as 'strikers in
saris'.
Desai led a walkout of the Grunwick Film Processing
Laboratories in the summer of 1976 in an attempt to convince
managers to recognise a unionised workforce.
Desai's defiant two-year campaign gained national
recognition.
Desai was born in Gujarat, from where she moved first
to Tanzania, 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, who 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, Desai, together with her son,
Sunil, walked out.
Her famous 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.
Desai became a national figure on TV speaking to
hundreds of miners, postal workers, car workers and others in
front of the Grunwick factory.
Jack Dromey MP, who was secretary of the Brent Trades
Council during the dispute and a close associate of Desai,
told The Guardian: "She was 4ft 11 tall, but an absolute
lioness. A quite remarkable woman with an absolutely
extraordinary turn of phrase."
He recalled how Desai stood before a meeting of more
than 80 "husbands, fathers and brothers" of women who worked
at Grunwick after it was alleged they had been discouraged
from joining the picket lines.
Dromey said: "I will never forget how she said: 'We,
the women, are determined to make a stand and nobody will get
in the way of that, including from within our own families’."
"Desai's attempt to achieve union recognition for the
Grunwick workers was ultimately unsuccessful, but the strike
proved a seminal moment in the British labour movement,
drawing attention to the overlooked plight of female migrant
workers – and generating admiration for Desai's tenacity," The
Guardian said in its obituary. PTI