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Grunwick: police propaganda and government credulity
SOLOMON HUGHES has obtained the hyperbolic and paranoid police intelligence reports used to justify violence against the famous 1970s strike – disinformation seemingly swallowed whole by the then-governing Labour Party
FAMOUR FIGHT: A lone picket is watched by police outside the entrance to the Grunwick film processing plant, July 1977
ROGER McKENZIE explains how Ibrahim Traore has sparked the flames of hope across Africa, while the Western powers seek to extinguish all attempts to build true sovereignty in the long-exploited continent
DANIEL GOVER considers the procedural complexities awaiting a Private Member’s Bill in its passage through Commons and Lords
JAMIE TUCKNUTT reports on an initiative that brings together two epochs of the city’s anti-fascist struggles
Just as German Social Democrats joined the Nazis in singing Deutschland Uber Alles, ANDREW MURRAY observes how Starmer tries to out-Farage Farage with anti-migrant policies — but evidence shows Reform voters come from Tories, not Labour, making this ploy morally bankrupt and politically pointless
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With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs
I HAVE been looking again through the inches-thick government papers on the 1976-78 Grunwick strike because they give clues to how Labour governments can respond to big strikes.
The papers show that the police carried out intense political surveillance of the strike. They filed reports full of both detail and absurd rumours — like their fears of trade unionists mobilising hit squads of female plumbers or schoolchildren to cause havoc — which Labour ministers accepted without question.
The Grunwick dispute started when a largely Asian workforce in a north London factory went on strike to support a sacked colleague.
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