Grunwick Dispute

The Grunwick dispute was an industrial dispute involving trade union recognition at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in Willesden, North London, that led to a two-year strike between 1976–1978. During a decade of industrial unrest, the Grunwick dispute became a cause célèbre of trade unionism and labour relations law, and "at its height involved thousands of trade unionists and police in confrontations, ...over 500 arrests on the picket line and frequent police violence." The total of 550 arrests made during the strike was at the time the highest such figure in any industrial dispute since the General Strike of 1926. Journalist Paul Foot described the dispute as "a central battleground between the classes and between the parties." The dispute was reported nightly on the national television news, depicting the often violent clashes between the strikers and the Metropolitan Police's Special Patrol Group. Grunwick was the first time that this paramilitary police unit had been deployed in an industrial dispute. The mostly female, immigrant, East African Asian strikers – dubbed "strikers in saris" by the news media – were led by Jayaben Desai, whose membership of the union was later suspended following her hunger strike outside the Trades Union Congress (TUC) headquarters in November 1977. This was also the first dispute where the majority of strikers were from an ethnic minority and still received widespread support from the labour movement – previous disputes involving immigrant workers which had taken place in Leicester and Southall had "remained marginalised" and had even led to "open and ugly racism on the part of white union members and their leaders."

The incumbent Labour government commissioned the Scarman Inquiry, chaired by Lord Scarman, which recommended both union recognition and re-instatement of the workers, but the employer, backed by the right-wing National Association For Freedom (NAFF) and the Conservative Party, rejected the recommendations. The TUC subsequently withdrew their support and the workers' strike committee announced the end of the dispute in June 1978. The repercussions of the strike for British industrial relations were far-reaching, significantly weakening the British trades union movement. For the Conservative Party and the right-wing this was seen as a major political and ideological victory, preparing the ground for their success in the 1979 general election and their subsequent curbing of the unions' power in the 1980s.