Jayaben Desai

Jayaben Desai by Radical Poster Collective, 2023

In 1976, workers at Grunwick—a mail-order photo lab in London—fought for union recognition against brutal working conditions: poverty pay, excessive hours, and vindictive management. Most of the workers were South Asian women, many of them immigrants.

When they joined a union, the bosses sacked them. In an act of solidarity, the Union of Post Office Workers refused to handle Grunwick’s mail, and by June 1977, 20,000 trade unionists and activists were joining the picket lines.

The police, backed by the Tories (then in opposition), violently repressed the protests, making over 500 arrests.

Despite heroic resistance led by Jayaben Desai—who famously declared, “We are the lions Mr Manager!”—the strike collapsed after the House of Lords ruled in favour of the company, while the TUC and the APEX union faltered in their support.

The Grunwick Strike remains a landmark struggle: a defiant moment of multiracial, feminist working-class solidarity that continues to inspire.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Trade unions developed out of the need for workers across the world to stand together in the face of the power and wealth of the ruling class.

Modern trade unions started to take shape alongside the development of capitalism and the industrial revolution with the objective of protecting and improving pay and conditions. Some early trade unions also sought to create an alternative cooperative or communal society. In response Governments sought to suppress them both legally and physically, which often led to underground organisations with secret memberships.

Most early trade unions were solely concerned with protecting their own members and the exclusion of non-members from their trades. Over time, towards the middle of the 19th Century a new trade unionism developed which sought to develop mass movements capable of shifting the balance of power.

By the early years of the 20th Century, the trade union movement was significant enough to threaten to be an alternative centre of power in many European countries and allied to social democratic parties (focusing on establishing a presence in parliament), communist parties or anarchist organisations.

Trade unions played a significant part in both the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Revolution and Civil War.

Since the Second World War, trade union membership and correspondingly radicalism has declined. The focus of the “official” trade union movement has been more on negotiation with management, individual case work, and selling “cheap” insurance on behalf of multinational companies to their members.

Radical trade unions still exist and the Radical Poster Collective supports those.

If you are not already in a union we strongly advise you to join one (we recommend a union that is a member of the International Workers’ Association such as the Industrial Workers of the World); and if you are in a union we advise you to get active within that union.

We support workers in struggle whatever form it takes.

We advocate for a General Strike on principle.