Something I love about being a UNISON activist is UNISON’s self-organisation, including self-organisation for Women members, Black members, Disabled members, LGBT+ members; and there are the Young Members and Retired Members Forums and the Migrant Workers’ Network.
Being in the Black LGBT+ Network and involved in Black Members’ self-organisation means I can bring the whole of my authentic self, all my lived experience into campaigning for jobs, services and equality for all.
Now as UNISON celebrates South Asian Heritage month, it provides a space for reflection on the heritage of the South Asian trade union movement and the wider struggle for decoloniality that continues today.
My mother, Rita, was an inspiration to me: she began her journey in the trade union movement as a young 18-year-old trade union organiser as a telephonist in Chennai, in the South Indian State of Tamil Nadu, just after WWII, around the time India and Pakistan achieved independence from British Colonialism in 1947. Back then, Indian women were encouraged to get involved in Indian trade unions, to fight for equality and human rights for everyone, as part of the project to free the country of its destructive colonial bonds. Rita moved to Mumbai when she married and continued to organise workers on the telephones.
As research evidence, British colonial rule in the sub-continent resulted in a drain of wealth to Britain and an exponential increase in extreme poverty, with more frequent and deadly famines. British colonialism was a ‘human tragedy with few parallels in recorded history’. It is estimated conservatively that there were over 50 million excess deaths during 1891 – 1920. This resulted in the British Empire leaving in its wake political, social and economic chaos as it departed the sub-continent.
In the context of huge unrest in India and the throughout the sub-continent, my parents responded to the call by the ‘mother country’ Britain, for workers from throughout the colonies to come to her rescue. The call was for colonial subjects to live and work in and to rebuild the UK after the devastation of WWII. What they found fell far short of a welcome with open arms. They raced rampant, hostile, aggressive racism, a struggle to find anyone who was willing to rent a room to them, a struggle to find anyone willing to employ them.
However, on arrival in Britain, my mother became a tribunal representative for union members in the new NHS. She went on to work as a clerk in the auto-motive industry, and despite huge barriers she faced as an Indian woman trade unionist, did her best to campaign for rights in the workplace.
Even though I had my own mother’s example of how South Asian women could have a voice and a role in fighting for jobs and rights, I kept hearing repeatedly in the UK society around me and from within my own South Asian community that Indian women were supposed to be quiet and meek. So, I was thrilled as a teenager in the 1970s, when I saw television pictures of Jayaben Desai, a slight yet fierce figure in a sari and cardigan, leading the Grunwick strikers. She contradicted all the restrictive stereotypes about South Asian women. If anyone spoke to me in a negative way, trying to stop me from speaking up or taking action, ‘you’re not a typical Asian woman’ I could reply ‘yeah, I’m typical… like Jayaben Desai!’.
In UNISON’s Black LGBT+ Network, we consistently highlight the impact of colonialism, which tried to obscure from view the rich South Asian heritage which, for millennia, has embraced diverse gender identities and sexualities. Celebrating South Asian LGBT+ heritage is an amazing way of continuing the work of dismantling colonial structures and ways of thinking – Decoloniality. Thank you to UNISON for embracing South Asian Heritage Month.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
Jennie Antonio, member of the National Black Members Committee (NBMC) UNISON Black LGBT+ Self-organising network.