ASIAN WOMEN AND INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 
NEW STRUGGLES, NEW STRATEGIES

 by 
 Amrit Wilson

"Since they lost us they have themselves become Third World" says my Nigerian taxi driver as
we speed through the streets of Birmingham.He argues his point convincingly. Since Britain lost
its colonies it has declined progressively, and now its cities display many of the characteristics
associated with so-called "Third World" countries: unemployment, corruption, harmlessness, beg-
gars, an enormous division between rich and poor and a growing informal sector often dealing in
stolen or damaged goods.

Of course there are major differences too. And despite Britain's decline, the decisions to buy
and sell on the world market are still made in the heart of the collapsing "First World" country.
But there is a definite analytical analogy and at the heart of it is the relationship between
Monetarism (or Thatcherism in Britain) and its "Third World" counterpart  –structural
adjustment. Britain is now a 30\30\40 society1 - 40% employed and secure, 30% employed but
unsure of tomorrow's employment, and 30% unemployed and never employed. At the edge of
the last two groups a new and growing category has emerged – a new working class in Britain
who are not recognized even to be a working class – not by the trade unions who ignore them,
not by their families who depend on them but do not accord them the respect traditionally
shown to the sole wage earner, and often not even by themselves. These new workers are
women. Some work at home doing piece work, and some attention has been focused on them
world wide by feminist analysts.2 Others who are central to this article are workers in small
factories, sweatshop, manufacturing items for small employers who are often themselves
subcontractors somewhere along the line to a large multinational; or they are farm workers in
farms which often link to big agribusiness; or they could be service workers, cleaners for
example, in services which used to be in the public sector but have been privatised with
appalling impact on conditions of work and wages. A large proportion of these workers are
Asian women – far larger than one would expect from the proportion of Asians in the
population as a whole.

In the 1950s and 60s Asian workers in Britain were almost always male. They came mainly
from Punjab and Gujarat, in India; from Sylhet in Bangladesh; and from Punjab and Azad
Kashmir in Pakistan, They migrated often in response to advertisements to fill the low paid jobs
thrown up by the post war economic boom in Britain. They went to the textile mills of Bradford
in the north of England for example which did not modernize but simply waited for Pakistan
workers before starting to run night shifts on their machinery. In the south of the country and
London it was service sector work in public transport or the National Health Service. In the
Midlands it was the motor industry and the factories, particularly the foundries which served
its needs, By the 1960s however, with the end of the boom, Britain had imposed racist
immigration legislation which made travel to and from Britain difficult if not impossible. It was
because of this that the male immigrants asked their wives to leave their villages and join them
in Britain. This was why the Asian communities established themselves - in the face of racism,
landlords, poor housing, and hard exploitative work.


1. Asian workers and trade unions in the 1950s and 60s

In the sixties, the hierarchy in the factories was entirely racial. Avtar Johal, now General
Secretary of the Workers Association, told me of his experiences. "In Shotten Brows, there were
labourers who got $7.50 and moulders who got $16. All labourers were Asians and all moulders
were white. It took ages to organise the union and even after that we felt that it was not
defending us. When we went on strike white workers scabbed on us. We set up an Indian
Workers Association and through it we pushed the unions and also assisted them. There were
struggles taking place in Shotten Brows, in Coventry Art Castings, and we won a really
important strike at Congreves, after that there was a snowballing effect throughout Smithwick.
Indian foundry workers went on strike - this meant that 77% of heavy vehicle castings were affected. But the irony of it was that though we had assisted and led unionisation certain unions
like the ANEW became suspicious – they said that Indian workers don't listen to them, they
only listen to the IWA. Later the [Labour] government instituted an inquiry which reported that
all the best jobs were white and that black labourers had to actually bribe the personnel
manager to get a job.3"

The IWA was undoubtedly in those days a militant workers' organisation but it was entirely
male – wives of members remained at home and did not participate. They were in fact never
seen on political occasions, except when the whole community – women and children included –
would turn out for massive national protest demonstrations against, for example, the
introduction of further racist immigration legislation. "Politics," I was told by one IWA member
at the time, "should be left outside the home."

Unfortunately the ideology of the IWA remained intensely patriarchal. It never evolved to take
on the political needs of women or even of the younger generation of Asians. As a result, in the
90s it has become comparatively ineffective, even in workers' struggles.

In the context of trade unionism in the sixties and seventies, however, the IWA was an
instrument with which Asian workers could push for their basic rights. These rights were of
course ones which British trade unions had fought and won for themselves, and proper channels
and procedures had been established to demand them. Unfortunately the racism of union
officials and often of white workers meant that black workers had no access to these channels.

However male workers did succeed in controlling shop floors in numerous foundries and
factories. They were key organizers and shop stewards. Unfortunately what is also striking is
that in that entire period, from the mid fifties to the mid seventies, not one Asian was employed
by any union as a paid official and in Britain Š in the final analysis – it is paid officials who
determine and control local and national decisions and strategy. 


2. The trade union bureaucracy and paid officials 

In fact these paid officials and the union bureaucracy at all levels have played a crucial role in
the betrayal of the interests of blacks, both in the earlier phase when male Asian workers fought
for union rights and also in the late seventies and early eighties when the struggles of low paid
women workers blazed across the British industrial scene. This bureaucracy may come from a
variety of class backgrounds, but they are and traditionally always have been white and almost
always male. They are paid salaries far greater than the wages of the workers they represent. Of
course the trade union leadership is not ideologically uniform or monolithic but over the last
twenty years or so their dominant sections have been concerned with not rocking the boat. This
attitude can be traced to the immediate post-war boom when the Labour government
established a politics of consensus and cooperation in which trade union leaders were consulted
in the process of decision making.

In Britain, the demands of black workers and women workers are potentially revolutionary
because society is acutely stratified into class, racial and sexual divisions. Not surprisingly,
therefore, trade union bureaucrats consciously (and unconsciously, given their own deep-rooted
patriarchal and racist attitudes) ignore these workers and want to suppress their struggles. This
is true on the level of everyday practice as well as policy. One example of this is the way the
TUC did a deal with prisons which permits employers to farm out their work to prisoners for a
nominal wage, thus undercutting low paid Asian women workers fighting for union rights in
factories manufacturing the same items. The attitudes have become even more important than
ever before in determining the course of working class struggle as a whole, because the
gradations within the British working class have changed drastically.


3. Asian women workers make history

By the mid seventies Asian women joined the British working class as low paid workers in
small light engineering factories or in the service sector (as cleaners for example). It was they
who launched the first struggles for unionisation and basic rights struggles at Imperial
Typewriters4, Grunwicks photoprocessing Laboratory5, Cutters paint factory5, Chix bubble gum
factory6 and many other workplaces – struggles which made history in Britain. Here the spark
which ignited the womenÕs anger was not just exploitation but racist abuse – an attack on their
self respect. For them the experience of class oppression was manifested through racism –
making class identity also Black/Asian identity. In each case, the first battle the workers had to
fight was with their union bureaucracy who were unwilling to fight on their behalf. The
Grunwicks struggle illustrated the alienation of the British working class from their union leaders
– while thousands of British workers supported the strike with their physical presence at mass
pickets leading to a upsurge of trade union consciousness. The trade union leadership and
finally the TUC capitulated and betrayed the workers. Then in the wake of the Grunwicks
strike, in the first year of Mrs. Thatcher's regime, came the first government attack on trade
unions and the outlawing of well-established practices like mass pickets and secondary
pocketing.


Now in the 90s in Smithwick the foundries lie idle like monuments to some grim ancient
civilisation. Around them has grown a plethora of sweatshops which are all that remains of
BritainÕs industrial midlands. More than 50% of the skilled and unskilled male Asian workers
are unemployed, despairing of ever finding a job and often suffering from mental and physical
ill-health – a legacy of their appalling conditions of work.7 The workers in the sweatshops are
almost all women and they are manufacturing spare parts, the production of which is
contracted out to small employers by large (often multinational) companies. The employers are
all male. Most of them are white but they have been joined by a significant number of Asian men
who with their redundancy pay (retrenchment compensation) have bought small factories. Here
these once committed trade unionists who fought for their own rights are now like white
employers employing undeclared female labour from the Asian community.

A consideration of skills now required suggests that gradations have vanished. There are
unskilled labourers – increasingly women – and highly skilled workers who merge in to
management.

Meanwhile the effects of fifteen years of monetarist policies have served to amplify the impact
of the recession on the British economy. This happens in three ways which are particularly
relevant to women workers' struggles. Firstly it has meant the closure of all those industries
which are considered not sufficiently profit-making and the sale of vast sections of the public
sector to private owners – leading to unannounced and low paid contract work, often with no
consideration for health and safety. Secondly a series of anti-union laws was brought in.
Pickets of more than six persons are now illegal, as is solidarity action by workers; and the
recent Criminal Justice Act allows the banning of any public meeting. Trade unions which have
broken these laws have had their funds sequestered. The result is a climate in which trade union
bureaucracies are less willing than ever before to take a stand on behalf of their members.
Thirdly the last safeguards for low-paid workers, the Wages Councils, which negotiated
minimum wages within certain industries, have been dismantled and since there is no national
minimum wage agreement  this leaves workers entirely open to exploitation.

At the same time racism is on the increase. In the last year alone there have been 15,000 racial
attacks reported to the police,8 which means given the racism of the police themselves that the
real figures, which would include unreported cases plus police attacks, would be several times
more. And racial attack is only one indicator of a society where racism is both institutionalised
as well as internalised, and where the violence of the state is such that on average one person
dies in police custody every week.9


4. Economic restructuring and "Asian culture"

Through all these changes in woman's economic role, obviously they are often the main wage
earners whether as home workers or in sweatshops. Family structure remains unchanged.
However, as in another phase when capital was reorganising in Britain – the industrial
revolution – the family is under tremendous strain. In an area such as Smithwick alcoholism
among men is increasingly common, as is domestic violence. Suicides and homicides of women
are frequent. Large dowries are still paid and huge sums of money spent on weddings. In fact,
aspects of the arranged marriage system have been institutionalised within the capitalist
framework – there are agents who book halls, others who specialise in catering and yet others
who ...But this institutionalisation is not seen as anything western or in any way threatening to
tradition. It is acceptable and even seen as desirable by the dominant conservative forces within
the family and community. On the level of everyday life, faced with and constancy aware of the
racism of British society, there is a desperate attempt by these same forces to pull in and
preserve "our culture" which in fact in many ways is the culture of the 1960s Punjab village.
When the oppressed – the daughters, the daughters-in-law and the young wives – rebel against
their oppression they are seen as westernised or attempting to destroy Asian culture. They are
perceived in this way by their families and incessantly stereotyped in the media as "caught
between two cultures." As always it is women who are made responsible for the community's
culture. Mothers-in-law are accountable for any one who steps out of line. If there is often - in
most patriarchal societies - conflict between younger and older women, for this reason in Britain
today this conflict is unusually acute10. The reason appears to be the ossified nature of British
Asian culture which allows no room to manoeuvre. In the South Asian subcontinent women who
take on the strictures laid down by society may be ostracised or even attacked, but they are still
Indians and their actions inevitably, in however small a way, have some effect on culture. They
can even become role models for other rebels. In Britain, in contrast, such young women are seen
as having stepped into the enemy camp as having "become white" while "Asian culture," which is
not culture at all but tradition, remains frozen.


5. The Burnsall strike

How will Britain's new female working class organise for basic justice in this tense social and
political situation? The Burnsall strike which lasted from June 1992 to June  1993 provides some
clues. Burnsall's is a metal finishing company in Smithwick supplying the multinationals Jaguar,
Rover and Ford. The total workforce was 29 and conditions of work appalling. For example,
workers came into daily contact with dangerous chemicals including sulphuric and nitric acid
but were not provided gloves; there were no proper washing facilities and toilets were cleaned
every four weeks; all workers were forced to do overtime and worked an average of 60 hours a
week for an average of just over $2 an hour; women ware paid $30-40 less than the minority of
male workers; there was constant racial abuse and harassment with the management even
preventing workers from going to the toilet.

Some typical experiences are as follows:

Normal Kaur took one Friday off sick and returned to work the following Monday but when she
received her next weekly pay packet she had been docked a full week's wages for failing to
produce a sick note.
Legally a sick note is not required for up to three days off work. Surinder Bassi injured her
shoulder but was not allowed to go and see the doctor. The manager asked her to take some
pills prescribed for his own wife which happened to be in the factory. A young woman worker
(who does not wish to be named because she does not want her mother to hear of her
misfortune) was pregnant but was refused time off to visit an anti-natal clinic. Her requests for
lighter work were also refused. She had to continue with the heavy task of lifting metal parts in
a cage out of a tank with a jig. She finally suffered a miscarriage at three months which her
doctor believes could have been triggered by her workload .

The workers joined the General, Municipal and Boilermakers (GMB) in March 1992. Two local
officials of the GMB visited the management but they categorically refused to recognise the
union. On June 15th, 26 of the 29 workers came out on strike. The union head office quickly
declared the strike official and provided strike pay. The local officials then lodged a series of
Industrial Tribunal claims on behalf of their members over issues such as equal pay for women,
unlawful deduction of wages, etc. In other words they did what was possible to help workers
take on the management as individuals using laws which although important were not central to
the changes in the economy.

The local officials were not prepared to go beyond this. They had no strategies for winning the
strike, they did not even approach workers in firms supplied by Burnsalls and ask them to
boycott these goods. And they did not see the importance of publicity, either nationally or
locally. In Smithwick there were dozens of factories like Burnsalls which are a key to any long
term strategy. In fact they did all they could to isolate the strikers. They did not even inform
other branches of their own union. They actually went so far as to not issue membership cards
to strikers or inform them of the regular branch meetings – in fact it was nearly a year later that
the strikers discovered what branch they were in. A strike committee was set up but it was
always chaired by one of the officials with thinly veiled racism and sexism. There was no
translation provided for the women strikers, most of whom did not speak adequate English .

Essentially the union officials tried to prevent the stickers from fighting back as a group. From
January 1993 on they frequently told the strikers that they should call the strike off. The
workers, however, were determined to carry on the struggle not only on an individual level but
as a body. Through the bitterly cold winter of 1992/93 they maintained the picket line in front
of the factory despite racist abuse from the management and continual harassment from the
police. About five months into the strike with news of the strike gradually filtering through into
the Asian community both in Birmingham and outside, two support groups were formed (in
London and Birmingham) consisting mainly of young Asian women. The London support group
was particularly dynamic and enthusiastic and quickly became active, providing regular groups
of supporters to the picket line, producing leaflets, holding meetings and putting the strikers in
touch with a variety of other black struggles and workers. Such struggles included refugee
organizations on the one hand and Women Against Pit Closures (an organisation of Miners
families) on the other. It was from then on that the conflict with the union officials began to
grow. Essentially they could see that the Burnsall strike was developing its own momentum and
reaching a point when the strikers themselves supported by Asian community activists would
take control of the tactics and demands of the struggle. Their main concern became to keep
control of the strike, to keep it from attracting further attention, and most of all to prevent
community activists from getting involved. As months went by the union's attitude to the
strikers became more and more hostile: they always insisted on chairing strike committee
meetings normally only strikers are meant to attend these. They even tried to give the workers
an ultimatum that they must cut off relations with the support groups or else leave the GMB.
The manner in which the strike was called off throws some light on the union's fears. Only two
weeks before this the strikers and their supporters had celebrated one year of the strike with a
massive picket (this was, when first suggested, vehemently opposed by the GMB and later
reluctantly supported by them). A national demonstration was planned for July 3, again
organized mainly by the strikers themselves working with the support groups.  It was at this
point on June 30 that the strikers were called into the regional office of the GMB. According to
the strikers, "The union officials told us that they had closed the strike and there was nothing
we could do about. If we agreed with them that was OK if not, then too bad. They said that if
we criticised them, talked about it or attended the 3 July demonstration, they would drop our
Industrial Tribunal cases.... Then they said that if we went to the picket line or the July 3
demonstration, then we would be arrested by the police and the union would not help us. We
said that we should be given two weeks to discuss things and decide about the strike. They told
us that they had already closed the strike, it was up to us to agree with them12." To add insult
to injury, the women strikers were told that the union had been approached by other employers
similar to Burnsall's with offers of jobs for the strikers and they would be told about this soon.

In the 1990s, with the ban on secondary pocketing and other anti-union legislation making it
harder than ever to mobilise through traditional trade union structures, strikes such as Burnsalls
can only be successful through mobilising wider community support and developing new
strategies. But clearly union officials were less interested in winning the strike than in keeping it
under their control and preventing any wider involvement which might force them to listen to
the demands of the strikers themselves.13


At Burnsalls the role of the support group had consisted mainly of pushing the union in to
action. After the strike was crushed, some members of the support group felt that the unions
would not break the law to win the strike. But strikes cannot now be won without breaking the
law. This does not mean we cannot win strikes, we have to organise to force the employers
ourselves. Independent action is the most effective thing in both pushing the union and
frightening the employer14.

Burnsalls suggested that the GMB had given very little thought to the new economic policies,
and as a result had no analysis and no strategies. They did not see the strike for what it was:
an inspiring start to the unionisation and mobilisation of low paid workers as a whole. And
given that such factories are always small, they have to be mobilised as a group for industrial
action to be effective. In private conversation the two trade union officials even expressed their
concern for the factory owner, saying that if the workers got their demands he would have to
close down because the factory would no longer be effective. They were willing to fight single
mindedly for the workers they were supposed to represent and they could not conceive of a
situation where such demands would be widespread all over Smithwick, all over Britain and
perhaps with growing international solidarity, worldwide.

However the trade union movement and (even the GMB itself) is not monolithic. It is divided
not only between workers and bureaucracy, but there are deep political differences and increas-
ing polarisation between left and right. As the British state increasingly moves to take control of
the movement this polarisation is likely to increase to breaking point.

Currently the Labour Party is transforming itself into a party of the centre. It has severed its
traditional links with the unions. The effect of this may be that in the not too distant future the
trade union movement will actually split allowing the left to pursue the policies required by the
new working class. What these policies are will then emerge from the new struggles. However if
they are to succeed they will inevitably have it involve an alliance between unemployed people,
workers at factories like Burnsalls, home workers and what remains of the skilled labour force
in the organised sector. Support groups are likely to play a crucial role in cementing this alliance.


6. The possibility of transforming culture

The most striking images of that period from June 1992 to June 1993 are of Asian women 
standing on the picket line through rain and snow, doggedly determined, yelling at scabs,
challenging the owner Jimmy O'Neil or welcoming their supporters with warmth. What also
made the Burnsall strike unique was the support groups. While there have been regular groups
of supporters in many earlier strikes, in the Burnsall strike, the support group was an entity in
its own right. It represented the emergence of a new if not fully developed method of struggle.
Members of the support groups were mainly young Asian women who represented the more
progressive elements of the Asian community – and here community must be redefined to
include not only a physical community but an imagined community of interests. The young
women in the support group were activists who on a personal level had often taken a stand
against the restrictions imposed on them by older women in their own families, women not very
different in age and outlook from the strikers. At the same time the children of strikers also
showed enormous pride in the stand their mothers were taking. All these interactions, some of
them made possible by the existence of the support group, inevitably created a new
consciousness, a new space which would enable the frozen Asian culture to move ahead.
Because when women go out and address mass rallies and travel the country speaking at public
meetings, it shatters the notion of the subservient traditional wife and brings and intense hope
and energy for change. As Surinder Bassi, one of the leaders of the strike put it, "We are not
tired. We are very happy. Yesterday at the demonstration we saw bosses going past with their
heads down, they have never done that before...Our kids will be really pleased with us...even if
what we have done doesn't help us, the kids will get something out of it."


References

1.  Will Hutton (1995), The State We Are In, Jonathan Cape
2.  Swasti Mitter (1986) Common Fate, Common Bond, Pluto
3.  Interview with A.Johal, September 1992
4.  A. Wilson(1978) Finding a Voice- Asian Women in Britain, Virago
5.  Race and Class, Winter 1977, Institute of Race Relations, London 
6.  Amrit Wilson, (January 1979), New Statesman
7. About 80% of Asian men who worked in foundries have serious hearing problems.
(HASAC Pamphlet 1990)
8.  Report on Wages Councils, Low Pay Unit
9.  Guardian, June 19 1995
10. Naseema Hussein, in Direct Work With Black Young People, British Association for
Adoption and Fostering (In Press)
11. London Support Group Leaflet, October 1992
12. London Support Group Leaflet, June 1993
13. London Supports Group Leaflet, June 1993
14. Sarbjit Johal (1993) The Burnsall Strike, Inqilab (South Asia Solidarity Group Magazine)