Ayesha Hazarika on Jayaben Desai
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stand up comedian and political commentator Ayesha Hazarika's hero is Jayaben Desai.
Jayaben led a two year strike at Grunwick Film processing factory in North London.
The majority of the workers were migrant women and they became known as the 'strikers in sarees'.
Matthew Parris remembers the strike in 1976 as he was working in Margaret Thatcher's office at the time, but only recalls the violence at the picket line and the fact that the strike failed.
Can Ayesha convince Matthew Parris that Jayaben Desai deserves the accolade of a great life?
With Dr Sundari Anitha, co- author of 'Striking Women'.
Producer: Perminder Khatkar
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2018.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service. |
| 0:04.7 | Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests. |
| 0:08.8 | Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook. |
| 0:11.2 | Technology doesn't want to be good or bad. |
| 0:15.0 | It's in the hands of the creator. |
| 0:16.7 | It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room. |
| 0:20.7 | If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, |
| 0:24.6 | you're doing the wrong thing. |
| 0:26.0 | Julie, at your service. |
| 0:27.8 | Listen to all episodes on BBC sales. |
| 0:31.3 | This is the BBC. On the 20th of August, 1976, a mother of two walked out of a factory. |
| 0:41.0 | She'd had enough of the humiliation and intolerable conditions she was working under. |
| 0:45.8 | On leaving, she said to the manager, what you run here is not a factory, it's a zoo. |
| 0:51.2 | There are monkeys here who dance to your tune, but there are also lions here who can bite your head off. |
| 0:57.0 | And we are the lions, Mr Manager. I want my freedom. |
| 1:01.0 | And there began a two-year strike at Grunwick Film Processing Factory in |
| 1:05.8 | northwest London where the majority of the workers were migrant Indian women. |
| 1:10.2 | They became known as the strikersryker's in Saris. |
| 1:13.7 | Leading them was Jayabend Desai, today's great life choice of stand-up comedian, |
| 1:19.8 | CNN commentator and columnist for the London Evening Standard and a former labour advisor, Aisha Hazarika MBE. |
| 1:28.0 | Aisha, I remember the Grunwick strike in 1976, but I'd forgotten the name of the woman who let it that may be significant |
| 1:36.2 | do you think she's forgotten by most people I think she's definitely a big figure a |
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