London, Dec. 28: 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 and 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 had gained national recognition. She 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.
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.”
“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.