“WE ARE THE LIONS, MR MANAGER!”
“What you run here is not a factory, it is a zoo. There are monkeys here who dance to your tune, but there are also lions here who can bite your head off. And we are the lions, Mr Manager! I want my freedom!” With these words – uttered in the middle of the long, hot summer of 1976 – 43-year-old Jayaben Desai stormed out of the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in London. In doing so, she triggered one of the most significant industrial disputes in modern British history.
A few days later, Desai was back at the factory, but this time she had no intention of doing any work. Instead she stood on a picket line, where she was joined by 137 staff out of a workforce of 500, each demanding union recognition and an end to arbitrary and humiliating management in the workplace. Over the following two years, Desai’s strike would attract thousands of supporters, spark intense media coverage, throw the spotlight on the treatment of Britain’s migrant workforce, and elicit a fierce reaction from right-wing groups determined to weaken the power of the trade
