London Socialist Feminist Reading Group: Striking Women

Striking Women: Struggles & Strategies of South Asian Women Workers from Grunwick to Gate Gourmet, Sundari Anitha and Ruth Pearson

About this event

Who were the women who fought back at Grunwick and Gate Gourmet? Striking Women gives a voice to the women involved as they discuss their lives, their work and their trade unions. Striking Women is centred on two industrial disputes, the famous Grunwick strike (1976-78) and the Gate Gourmet dispute that erupted in 2005.

Focusing on these two events, the book explores the nature of South Asian women’s contribution to the struggles for workers’ rights in the UK labour market. The authors examine histories of migration and settlement of two different groups of women of South Asian origin, and how this history, their gendered, classed and racialised inclusion in the labour market, the context of industrial relations in the UK in the two periods and the nature of the trade union movement shaped the trajectories and the outcomes of the two disputes.

This is the first account based on the voices of the women involved. Drawing on life/work history interviews with thirty-two women who participated in the two disputes, as well as interviews with trade union officials, archival material and employment tribunal proceedings, the authors explore the motivations, experiences and implications of these events for their political and social identities.

You can download a comic about the strikes here

We have arranged a discount for copies of the book if you are yet to buy it or would like to get the worker militant in your life a copy as a gift.

Use the code: striking25. (25% discount valid till 31 Jan)

You can apply it at the checkout stage when buying the book from the publisher's website:

https://lwbooks.co.uk/product/striking-women-2 (make sure you pick the paperback not hardback!)

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-socialist-feminist-reading-group-striking-women-tickets-220726517957?aff=ebdssbdestsearch