United Kingdom? (Routledge Revivals) by E. Cashmore

Author:E. Cashmore [Cashmore, E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781135097530
Google: Yc39AQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05T05:53:51+00:00

Chapter 7

A quiet fire

Straight to rage

One of the few orthodoxies in race relations is that the period following the arrival in Britain of the ss Empire Windrush was one of relative calm. Research in the postwar period claimed that, while racialist practices were widespread, migrants were, in some emotional sense, attached to their ‘motherland’ and were reasonably content with their position. Studies from such scholars as Ruth Glass (1960), Sheila Patterson (1963), R. B. Davison (1966) and Ceri Peach (1968) gave rise to an image of the typical ‘dark stranger’: optimistic in the first instance, devastatingly disappointed at reception, but often sustained by an unsubstantiated faith in Britain and a vague ambition to travel back to the country of origin, hopefully enriched after a prosperous spell of work. This was ‘the myth of return’, as it is often termed (so-called because the return was often only a myth, and the migrants settled permanently). Whites’ hostile feelings were generally unrequited. Migrants, the research suggested, were insecure and demoralized, but revealed no antagonism and sought only the opportunity to adjust to the new environment.

Then, as if tearing down purdah, Asian women stepped forward to uncover a starkly different picture of race relations. Place: Grunwick Processing Laboratories, North London. Time: 1976. Subject: racialism in the workplace, at first; turning into the firm’s refusal to recognize trade unions. Grunwick has been singled out as something of a ‘turning point in terms of race and trade unionism’ by Gloria Lee (1987, p. 148). As well as undermining the stereotype of black and Asian workers, especially females, as not interested in union activities, it forced the union movement itself into recognizing the ‘race issue’ – an uncomfortable experience.

As many as 90 per cent of the non-unionized firm’s mail-order department staff were East African Asian women. Gentle, quiet, subservient: these were all qualities popularly associated with Asian women. In the busy summer months of 1976, students supplemented the Grunwick labour force. Devshi Bhudia was told to supervise some students; he asked for more pay for the extra responsibility. The mail-order departmental manager, Malcolm Alden, suggested they discuss the matter later and gave Bhudia additional work. This took place against a backcloth of compulsory overtime and resentment amongst workers. Bhudia refused to perform the additional work and was dismissed. Three fellow workers resigned in protest and, after leaving the plant, stood with Bhudia outside the main gates. The other key player in the drama was Jayaben Desai, an Indian woman, who stormed out after a confrontation with Alden, in which she allegedly told him: ‘You are not running a factory, but a zoo. In a zoo there are monkeys who dance and lions who can bite your head off!’ Seeing herself as one of the lions, she joined the others in seeking the support of trade unions for their protest. Their action sparked a walk-out by other Asian workers, complaining of racialism by management. Grunwick stuck adamantly to its policy of not allowing unions in the company, and this stirred further walk-outs.

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