Before diversity became a political slogan, a Gujarati woman in a sari stood outside a London factory and changed Britain’s labour movement forever. Jayaben Desai’s walkout at Grunwick in 1976 not only exposed the racial hierarchies shaping British workplaces but also placed migrant women at the centre of a battle for dignity.
On a hot August morning in 1976, a woman in a sari walked out of a North London factory, setting into motion a series of events that would change the course of British trade unionism. Long before hashtags and viral campaigns, a group of South Asian women in suburban London forced Britain to confront the inherent racism in its labour market. At the centre of this was Jayaben Desai, whose walkout made her an unlikely but unforgettable face of a British industrial dispute. Her story now greets visitors at Manchester’s People History Museum, electrifying and yet quite understated. Astonishingly, little known in her country of birth, India.
Jayaben was born in Dharmaj, a small village in Gujarat’s Anand District known for its extensive diaspora networks. The village’s history of migration started in 1895, when two Patels from the village set off for Uganda. Today, approximately 1,700 families from Dharmaj live in the UK, and another 1,100 in the US and Canada.