Podcasts about grunwick

There is nothing politically neutral about classifying and categorising people as migrants. This is a process through which certain individuals and populations are defined as migrants, whether they have crossed borders or not. It has political consequences and impacts for those who find themselves labelled as such. In this episode we turn to this always-political question to consider what this means for how we study and research migration. Researcher George Kalivis goes back to the 1970s to consider the Grunwick industrial dispute. Presenter Michaela Benson considers what the UK's post-Brexit immigration system, makes visible about class and migration. And Bridget Anderson Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol joins us to talk about why we need to turn our attention to how the distinctions between citizens and migrants are made and to what ends, and what conceptual tools might be useful in excavating the connections between migrants and citizens as we consider the always-political question ‘Who is a migrant?'   You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on our website Who do we think we are?   In this episode we cover … 1 Migrantisation and racialisation 2 Grunwick Dispute 3 Post-Brexit immigration regime   Quote Given that ‘migrant' is a social as well as a legal construction, then we as researchers are part of making the subordinated character of the migrants … migrants and migration, migrant and citizenship are not just neutral descriptors, they make power relations between each other and between a person and state. —Bridget Anderson   Find out more about … Bridget's research and Migration Mobilities Bristol Read Bridget's work on methodological denationalism and migrantisation We also recommend Alyosxa Tudor's work on racialisation and migratisation Michaela's research on Brexit and the stratification of British people in France The Grunwick industrial dispute from the Working Class Movement Library and the Striking Women Module   Call to action Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed.   Visit us via our website, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Solidarity 648, 12 October 2022. Articles may include: Putin threatens nuclear war Socialism vs Trussonomics From piecemeal strikes to class-wide battle Upcoming strike dates If Chris Williamson's the answer, it's the wrong question Ukraine: the proxy fallacy Unveil Iran! Action on Covid-19 Letter: Qatar, Al Jazeera, Israel and The Labour Files Capitalist farming is wasteful From US strikes to politics Aviation: already approaching disaster point Why secularism matters The debate on exclusion Taking the line from the Irish nationalists Ireland on the dissecting table The 19 days in Royal Mail Battling a 2.5% pay offer in FE Schools formal ballot opens 1 November Diary of a paramedic: Queueing to get into hospital Pages from a militant life: The paradox of the 1980s Kino Eye: Coal Miner's Daughter A sense of confidence (John Moloney's column) Liverpool dockers strike again Unite members reject TfL pay offer UAL cleaners plan to escalate Why we welcome Ukrainian victories Campaign to raise benefits! Getting the union onto construction sites Socialists and the Green Party "Unite for a Workers' Economy" The economics of inflation Honour and learn from the Grunwick strike! Haitian revolution vs British empire John Archer: black pioneer of labour politics How transport workers beat the colour bar An organiser for black workers More online: https://www.workersliberty.org/publications/solidarity/solidarity-648-12-october-2022

Concluding part of our double podcast episode about the iconic strike of mostly East African Asian women workers at the Grunwick photo processing plant in London in 1976-8. Featuring Amrit Wilson, Jayaben Desai and Colum Maloney, who took part in the dispute, and Sujata, chair of the Grunwick 40 group. Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory You can listen to our podcast on the below links, or on any major podcast app. Links to a few below. This second part covers scope of the dispute, the role of police, the media and the trade unions, how the dispute concluded and its legacy and lessons for today. Full show notes and acknowledgements, as well as a transcript, on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/grunwick-strike-1976/

Double podcast episode about the iconic strike of mostly East African Asian women workers at the Grunwick photo processing plant in London in 1976-8. Featuring Amrit Wilson, Jayaben Desai and Colum Maloney, who took part in the dispute, and Sujata, chair of the Grunwick 40 group. Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory You can listen to our podcast on the below links, or on any major podcast app. Links to a few below. This is an improved, extended and partially re-recorded version of our first ever podcast episode. We have added more audio clips from other participants in the dispute and added narrative for additional detail, context and to tell the story in a more cohesive manner. Whether you listened to the original episode or not, we hope you enjoy it This first part covers the background to the dispute, how the strike began and developed. Full show notes and acknowledgements, as well as a transcript, on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/grunwick-strike-1976/

From the establishment of the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968, annual reports were published to justify their continued existence. The first 15 year batch of these were some of the first documents to be released by the Undercover Policing Inquiry, you can read them for yourself https://www.ucpi.org.uk/search-results/?fwp_type=annual-report Chris Brian From the Undercover Research Group has read them all, in this episode he tells Tom Fowler the highlights and lowlights covered in the documents, from the death of Kevin Gately https://pasttenseblog.wordpress.com/2019/06/15/today-in-london-anti-fascist-history-1974-the-death-of-kevin-gately-opposing-national-front-demo/ to the Grunwick strike https://grunwick40.wordpress.com and a great deal more besides. These documents represent the link between the grubby role of the secret undercover political police with the civil service and politicians. Chris mentions a PHD on this topic, which you can read here: https://research.edgehill.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/thatchers-culture-of-conformity-the-disintegration-of-partystate- Find links to all our work at https://www.spycops.info please follow us on social media.

Women's Fightback Issue 26, Autumn/Winter 2021. Full contents, buy a paper copy, or download the PDF online: https://workersliberty.org/wf26

Solidarity 604, 1 September 2021, part 2 of 3, pages 7 to 11. Articles include: "We are the lions, Mr Manager" Disaster in Afghanistan: why the Taliban won A disastrous invasion and a disastrous withdrawal Afghanistan timeline Afghanistan, the left and the "third camp" Russia's war in Afghanistan and the 1978 coup More online: https://workersliberty.org/publications/solidarity/solidarity-604-1-september-2021

Dominant representations of South Asian women in Britain locate them within their family and community lives; the women themselves are constructed as passive, confined to the domestic sphere and lacking agency. Their roles as citizens, as workers and as active members of trade unions who have contributed to the struggles for workers' rights in the UK is elided in historical accounts and contemporary popular discourses. The Grunwick strike that took place in the late 1970s was one of the many occasions when South Asian women fought for their rights as workers. The focus of this session the Grunwick strike and its legacy for the broader struggles against racism and exploitation at work. Reading Anitha, S. and Parmar, M. (undated) ‘On the picket line: Jayaben Desai from East Africa to Grunwick', Our Migration Story. Anitha, s. and Pearson, R. (2021) 'The Grunwick protests: remembering the 1970s strike for migrant workers' rights', BBC History Magazine. Anitha, S., Pearson, R. and McDowell, L. (2018) From Grunwick to Gate Gourmet: South Asian Women's industrial activism and the role of trade unions. Revue Francaise de Civilisation Britannique. XXIII-1 | Online since 20 March 2018. Resources Educational resources on migration, history of women and work and on the Grunwick dispute: www.striking-women.org The comic Striking Women: https://www.striking-women.org/sites/striking-women.org/files/striking_women_for_download_opt.pdf BBC Radio 4: Great Lives – On Jayaben Desai, the leader of the Grunwick dispute: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09yddxk Questions for Discussion Why was there a need for organising specifically by women? Who were the women involved in the Grunwick strike? How did their location at the intersection of gender, race and class shape their experience of oppression and exploitation at work? Though the Grunwick strikers failed to meet their objectives, why do we consider their struggles an important moment in British labour history? What is outsourcing, and how did this effect the experiences of the women workers at Gate Gourmet? What challenges do workers face in contemporary UK?

In this episode, Melina interviews Michelle Codrington-Rogers, the first (known) Black female president in British teacher trade union history. Michelle shares with us her journey from truly knowing herself thanks to Saturday schools, to getting hooked to activism as the Black Students Officer, and rising even higher in the teacher trade union ranks in the midst of a global pandemic and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Michelle is a Black British queer teacher of citizenship and PSHE at a large secondary school in Oxford. As a teacher, she first became a member of the NASUWT – the Teacher's Union which is the only UK-wide union exclusively for teachers. In the NASUWT, Michelle started off as a school rep, then a local secretary and Oxfordshire Federation secretary. In 2011, she was elected to the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Race Relations Committee and she chaired the annual TUC Black Workers' Conference in 2018. Also in 2018, Michelle was elected as a national officer for the NASUWT and, in April 2020, she became the first Black President in the union's 101-year history. Some of those special people (that Michelle didn't want to embarrass!) who kept those doors open for Michelle and more to continue rising: NASUWT General Secretary Dr Patrick Roach, NASUWT National Officer for Equality and Training Jennifer Moses, NASUWT Birmingham Local Association Secretary Ava Verrier, and many more... References and staying in touch: NASUWT - The Teacher's Union, and its annual Black Teachers' Conferences (UK-wide). Political Blackness Michelle Codrington-Rogers: @oxcityNASUWT and @MNasuwt on Twitter. Decolonise the Curriculum for Education: @Dtc4Uk and recorded conference Impact of Omission: @impactofomission Jayaben Desai who led 100 mainly South Asian women in a dispute against the Grunwick photo processing factory in Willesden, North London, in 1976. TUC Black Workers' Conferences Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Heart of the Racist Empire --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-anti-racist-educator/message

For #InternationalWomensDay 2021 Jill Mountford takes a look at the origins of IWD, the work of Mary McArthur and the women chainmakers of Cradley Heath: their fight against injustice, and fights against sweatshop labour today. #ChooseToChallenge sweatshop labour Tonight at 6pm Workers' Liberty Students have a meeting on it: https://facebook.com/events/761405588108413 And at 7pm Leeds Workers' Liberty are running a meeting on the story of the Grunwick strike by mainly women, Asian, migrant workers - a pivotal working-class battle in the 1970s: https://facebook.com/events/477530426614635 And you can read or buy the new edition of our Socialist Feminist paper Women's Fightback here: https://workersliberty.org/publications/womens-fightback/womens-fightback-25-winterspring-2021 Read about the socialist and labour movement origins of the International Women's Day idea: https://workersliberty.org/story/2020-03-10/socialist-history-international-womens-day See our youtube playlist on Socialist Feminism for more! #InternationalWorkingWomensDay #SocialistFeminism Reposted with thanks from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28ui8JZjdWQ . Created originally for Lewisham's IWD celebrations.

Simon Richards, Chief Executive of The Freedom Association, talks to Andrew Allison about the history of the association, the Grunwick dispute, 'Better Off Out', the EU referendum, and free speech.

In 1976 South Asian women workers who had made Britain their home, led a strike against poor working conditions in a British factory. Lakshmi Patel was one of the women who picketed the Grunwick film-processing factory in north London for two years, defying the stereotype of submissive South Asian women. They gained the support of tens of thousands of trade unionists along the way. Lakshmi talks to Farhana Haider about how the strike was a defining moment for race relations in the UK in the 1970s. (Photo: Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick strike committee holding placard 1977 Credit: Getty images)

Featuring interviews with Dr. Sundari Anitha and Dr. Ruth Pearson on their book 'Striking Women, struggles and strategies of South Asian women workers from Grunwick to Gate Gourmet' and David Arnold of Unions21 about his thoughts on how we can revitalise the British Trade Union Movement. Plus clips from strike rallies in support of Alternative Futures Group care workers, who are taking action in protest against cuts to their wages. Theme music by Podington Bear used under a creative commons license.

How South Asian women led thousands of UK workers in an industrial dispute in the late 1970s, plus Dr Crippen's alleged gruesome crime, Judy Garland's emotional last performances, the 'miracle waters' in Mexico and excitement over a whale in London's River Thames. (PHOTO: Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick strike committee holding placard 1977 Credit: Getty images)

In 1976 South Asian women workers who had made Britain their home, led a strike against poor working conditions in a British factory. Lakshmi Patel was one of the South Asian women who picketed the Grunwick film-processing factory in north London for two years, defying the stereotype of submissive South Asian women. They gained the support of tens of thousands of trade unionists along the way. Lakshmi talks to Farhana Haider about how the strike was a defining moment for race relations in the UK in the 1970s.(Photo: Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick strike committee holding placard 1977 Credit: Getty images)

Interview with Amrit Wilson and Grunwick 40 about the iconic strike of East African Asian women in London in the 1970s. Apologies for the audio quality which isn't great on headphones at least. All our later episodes are much better quality, so if you don't enjoy this one please check out one of our later episodes instead. Support the WCH podcast on patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/workingclasshistory FOOTNOTES For a short video history of the Grunwick strike see here on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWuB7JYo818 This is an interesting article with more information about the strike which was written while it was ongoing: https://libcom.org/library/the-grunwick-strike-a-sivanandan Check out their website of Grunwick 40 here: https://grunwick40.wordpress.com/ The website of the South Asia Solidarity Group is here: http://www.southasiasolidarity.org/ Before Grunwick, there were other strikes by black and Asian workers in the UK, where the unions basically adopted a racist approach and supported preferential treatment of white workers. Notably these included the 1974 Imperial Typewriters strike (https://libcom.org/history/imperial-typewriters-strike-1974-ron-ramdin), the 1973 Standard Telephones and Cables strike (https://libcom.org/library/standard-telephones-cables-strike-1973) and the 1972 Mansfield Hosiery strike (https://libcom.org/library/women-struggle-mansfield-hosiery-strike). Also mentioned during the podcast was the “colour bar” on public transport in Bristol enforced by the TGWU union which was eventually broken by a boycott in 1963 (https://libcom.org/history/black-white-buses-1963-colour-bar-dispute-bristol). In addition to struggles in workplaces, Asians in Britain fought racism in the streets, forming militant Asian Youth Movements around the country. This is a good account of these organisations: https://libcom.org/history/here-stay-here-fight-kenan-malik GLOSSARY Arthur Scargill – left-wing leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), at the time the most powerful trade union in the UK Ian Tomlinson – a newspaper seller on his way home in London who was attacked and killed by a police officer during the 2009 protests against the G-20 summit in London. The press originally falsely claimed that police trying to “help” a “dying man” were “pelted with bricks” by demonstrators. IWGB union – the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, a rank-and-file-controlled union in London: https://iwgb.org.uk/ Kettling – the police practice of penning in demonstrators for prolonged periods of time Orientalism – the subtle and persistent patronising Western representations of “the Orient” – meaning individuals and cultures from Asia, North Africa and the Middle East Trades Council – an umbrella body for delegates from different trade unions in a geographical area United Voices of the World union – another rank-and-file union of mostly migrant workers: https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/ More information about WCH on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com THANKS Edited by Tyler Hill of the Gods & Ghosts podcast: https://tylerkenthill.podbean.com/ Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can purchase it here: http://www.alabianca.it/store/bravo-records/le-canzoni-di-bella-ciao-aa-vv/ Or stream it here: https://open.spotify.com/album/6yXBmaTSWDKWz45JuE78xi?si=imm7zdnXQrWJWUUEzgNEAQ

Daniel, Ellie, and Edd discuss migrant workers' struggles past and present, and explore debates in the historic and contemporary labour movement around immigration controls, arguing that trade unions are strongest when they oppose border controls and seek to organise all workers, regardless of immigration status or national origin. The episode features interviews with Sujata Aurora from the Grunwick 40 Committee, who explains the history of the Grunwick strike and the Committee's work to commemorate it, and Henry Lopez, President of the Independent Workers' union of Great Britain (IWGB), who discuss his union's organising amongst migrant workers, including their ongoing dispute involving outsourced security workers at the University of London. Grunwick 40 Committee: https://grunwick40.wordpress.com IWGB website: https://iwgb.org.uk IWGB University of London branch, which is organising the dispute mentioned in the interview with Henry: https://iwgb-universityoflondon.org United Voices of the World (not mentioned in the episode, but another radical union organising amongst migrant workers, including the ongoing cleaners' strike at the London School of Economics): https://www.uvwunion.org.uk The articles referred to in this episode are: "A Voice from the Aliens" (1905): available online at http://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/WES/4/2/9 "Free movement has failed — Labour and the unions must recognise it", by Paul Embery (Huffington Post, 2016): http://huffpost.com/uk/entry/13112058 "Trade union movement must connect with the working class post-Brexit", by Paul Embery (Westmonster, 2017): http://www.westmonster.com/trade-union-movement-must-reconnect-with-working-class-post-brexit Gerard Coyne objecting to "the presence of a v large number of foreign nationals" (Twitter, 2017): https://twitter.com/gerard_coyne/status/815873144619728896 Intro music and audio motif taken from 'Labor' by Aesop Rock. We do not own this music, which is copyright Def Jux, 2001.

Jayaben Desai, defied stereotyping all her life. "A person like me, I am never scared of anybody," she told managers at the Grunwick film processing plant in Willesden, London shortly before she led a walkout in August 1976. Desai and her co workers were dubbed "strikers in saris" by the media but she went on to lead a campaign which eventually led to a respect for immigrant workers and a recognition of the very long hours and low wages they were prepared to tolerate. The New Elizabethans have been chosen by a panel of leading historians, chaired by Lord (Tony) Hall, Chief Executive of London's Royal Opera House. The panellists were Dominic Sandbrook, Bamber Gascoigne, Sally Alexander, Jonathan Agar, Maria Misra and Sir Max Hastings. They were asked to choose: "Men and women whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and/or given the age its character, for better or worse." Producer: Sarah Taylor.