The Grunwick dispute was a British industrial dispute involving trade union recognition at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in Chapter Road, Dollis Hill in the London suburb of Willesden, that led to a two-year strike between 1976 and 1978.^[1]

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, ... with over 500 arrests on the picket line and frequent police violence".^[2][3][4] 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.^[5] Left-wing journalist Paul Foot described the dispute as "a central battleground between the classes and between the parties".^[6]: 1:15 The dispute was reported nightly on the national television news, depicting the often violent clashes between the supporters of the strikers and the Metropolitan Police's Special Patrol Group.^[7] Grunwick was the first time that this police unit had been deployed in an industrial dispute.^[8][9] 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^{[failed verification]} following her hunger strike outside the Trades Union Congress (TUC) headquarters in November 1977.^[10] 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".^[11][12][13]

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. The Conservative Party and other members of the right wing saw this as a major political and ideological victory, preparing the ground for Conservative success in the 1979 general election and their subsequent curbing of the unions' power in the 1980s.^[8]

Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories was a photographic finishing and processing business, trading under a variety of brand names including Bonusprint, Doubleprint and Tripleprint, founded in 1965 by George Ward, John Hickey and Tony Grundy.^[14] At the time of the dispute, the firm operated on a postal basis, in which customers mailed undeveloped films and payment to the laboratory and received finished photographs back through the postal service. The growth of amateur colour photography meant that small High Street chemists which had previously serviced this market "could no longer afford the equipment to develop family snapshots, and the photo-processing field was left wide open for larger, specialist companies" such as Grunwick.^[15] In 1973, there had been a previous dispute over union recognition at Grunwick, and a number of workers who joined the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) were subsequently laid off.^[1] Shirley Williams described it as employing "a great many Asian women on fairly long hours and pretty low wages" – the average pay at Grunwick was £28 per week while the average national wage was £72 per week and the average full-time wage for a female manual worker in London was £44 per week.^{[6]: 3:16 [15]} Overtime was compulsory and often no prior notice would be given. Of the company's 440 employees, 80% were of Asian origin and 10% of Afro-Caribbean origin, and application forms for employment at Grunwick asked for passport numbers and "date of arrival in the UK."^[12][16][17] The MP for Brent South, Laurence Pavitt, said that in his dealings with the company over "many years" prior to the dispute, the management had been rude and intransigent, failing to respond to his letters, and treated the workers in a "deplorable fashion."^[18]

MP Joe Ashton accused the firm of "exploiting coloured workers", and writer and political activist Amrit Wilson asserted that Grunwick's management "made use of the poverty of Asians" and would turn away non-Asian applicants.^[16][18] Grunwick strikers explained: "Imagine how humiliating it was for us, particularly for older women, to be working and to overhear the employer saying to a younger, English girl 'you don't want to come and work here, love, we won't be able to pay the sort of wages that'll keep you here' – while we had to work there because we were trapped."^[16] Jayaben Desai said: "The strike is not so much about pay, it is a strike about human dignity."^[19] The 1977 Scarman Inquiry would ultimately conclude that "physical working conditions in the company before the strike were good; although the rates of pay were low prior to the strike, the company increased financial benefits paid to workers in November 1976 and April 1977 [until] the rates of pay were broadly comparable with, and in some respects, slightly better than, those paid by comparable firms in the industry... and employees understood and accepted the requirement of compulsory overtime during busy periods."^[20] A claim by the Socialist Workers Party alleging that Grunwick was a "racist" employer was also later withdrawn as "completely untrue and unfair".^[21] In fact, George Ward was of Anglo-Indian extraction born in New Delhi in 1933, the son of a wealthy accountant.

Although there were allegations that the working conditions at Grunwick resembled those of a sweatshop, other contemporary writers described the premises as "clean and well lit but frugal."^[15][22] However, the dispute began during the hottest summer in the UK since records began, when the air-conditioning at the premises was not then in operation, and no allowance was made for this in terms of the employees' productivity.^[15]

The dispute, and the attendant media coverage, became far more heated for a few weeks in June and July 1977 when mass-pickets formed of trade unionists and supporters from across London tried to stop non-striking Grunwick workers from entering the workplace. Police responded with greater numbers and more aggressive tactics, and violence broke out on a number of occasions.

The local Brent Trades Council, led by its president, veteran construction union activist and Communist Party industrial organiser Tom Durkin, and its secretary, TGWU activist Jack Dromey, had become increasingly active in support of the strikers, mobilising support from other trades councils, trade unions and other labour movement bodies across Greater London. From the spring of 1977 this had led to delegations of trade unionists from other parts of London starting to attend at and support the picket lines and the Grunwick management and the police had responded by preventing pickets from having any contact with workers entering the factory. In the summer the strike committee, supported by the trades council, decided to call mass-pickets in an attempt to prevent buses carrying non-striking workers entering the Grunwick premises and a mass-picket and demonstration was called for 22 June 1977. This mobilisation call was vigorously taken up by several trade union and labour movement bodies across London and by virtually all leftist political organisations (notably the Communist Party and its newspaper, the Morning Star, the Socialist Workers' Party and various political groups inside the Labour Party). The 22 June event became a national demonstration of solidarity with the Grunwick strikers.

On 22 June delegations from trades councils, several constituency Labour parties and a great many trade unions (including miners and print workers) attended the mass-picket. The attendance of the president of the Yorkshire area of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill, and a delegation of mineworkers from as far afield as Yorkshire, South Wales and Kent, was highlighted by the media. There were clashes between police and pickets (and a large number of arrests) when police tried to escort buses carrying non-striking employees into the Grunwick plant and bloody scenes between the police and the pickets were broadcast on television.

The Labour government decided to commission an inquiry under Lord Scarman and the pickets were called off in mid-July to wait for the result of the inquiry. APEX announced it would abide by the outcome of the inquiry but Ward did not, saying he would only submit to the normal courts.

The Scarman Inquiry recommended the reinstatement of the strikers, said that the management had acted "within the letter but outside the spirit of the law" and that union recognition could "help the company as well as the employees". Ward rejected the report, the strikers were not reinstated and the union was not recognised. A House of Lords ruling upheld Ward's right not to recognise a union. The strike's support from other unions "slipped away"^[10] leaving the strikers to call off their action on 14 July 1978, nearly two years after it had begun. Their demands for collective bargaining were never met.^[10]

A 2016 BBC radio documentary, Grunwick Changed Me, described how the involvement of white, working class men in support of Asian women strikers was seen as a turning point in race relations in the United Kingdom.^[41]

Three ministers in the Labour Government who were sponsored by APEX, Shirley Williams, Denis Howell and Fred Mulley, joined the picket line at Grunwick on 19 May 1977; at the time the picket was "relatively small and peaceful".^[42] Williams, who was generally known as a moderate, subsequently lost her seat at the 1979 general election and the novelist Kingsley Amis commented that "I bet she rued the day she turned up on the Grunwick picket line". Postmen who refused to deliver Grunwick's mail were suspended, disrupting postal service in the area, and the Attorney General refused to initiate any action against them and stopped anyone else from doing so. In August 1977 Sir Keith Joseph, a prominent Conservative politician, called the Grunwick dispute "a make-or-break point for British democracy, the freedoms of ordinary men and women" and described Labour ministers who joined the pickets as "'[m]oderates' behind whom Red Fascism spreads". Joseph was seen as speaking beyond his remit, as the more moderate James Prior was the shadow Employment Secretary. The Tory Reform Group called Joseph "off his head" and Margaret Thatcher said his comments were "too sharp".^[43][44]