Posted 5th September 2023

I apologise for the long gap in posting a blog since the last one, there is no excuse other than that I was busy writing my first chapter of my thesis and spent most of July and August in archives around the UK.

The Burnsall Strike

The 1970s saw a proliferation of strikes and copy cat strikes throughout Britain. Indeed to was the reason why when Margaret Thatcher came to power she curtailed the powers of Unions and striking in general. Thatchers fight with the miners was at such an unprecedented scale that she hated the idea that the Unions could wield so much power and hold the country to ransom. 

Asians, in particularly Asian women were not immune to the strike fever that engulfed the country in the 1970s. The more famous and popular Grunwick strike 1976, in London, which garnered support from all round Britain, was front page fodder for many weeks in the tabloids. The Imperial typewriter strike 1974, which involved Asian men and women who were fighting for their rights and to stop the exploitive working conditions that their company was getting them to endure, was also very popular locally and nationally. 

But a much lesser know strike in the 1990s involving mainly Asian punjabi women is less talked about and even less publicised is the Burnsall strike in Birmingham in 1992-1993. 

This research will look at this strike, the causes and grievances from both sides of the fence and why it was significant at a time when unions had been relinquished from any sort of clout. Were these Asian women supported by the union that represented them? That will be the question.