Tag: activism

  • Working with oral histories of the 1976 Grunwick strike

    Working with oral histories of the 1976 Grunwick strike

    As part of their work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, three University of Portsmouth History students – Katie Kinnes, Izzy Henman and Tom Lacey – collaborated with Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (MRC). They summarised oral history interviews relating to the landmark Grunwick Strike of the 1970s. This will aid researchers using the MRC to find out more about the Strike, as well as helping Katie, Izzy and Tom gain valuable experience of work in an archives environment. This blog post arises from their work as they reflect upon what they did, the skills they gained and the Grunwick Strike itself.

    Photograph of the Grunwick mural
    Grunwick mural, 2017; source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/11561957@N06/

    We chose to create a project around the Grunwick dispute and were given interviews of the people involved, held at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (MRC), and which needed summarising to make them easily useable by researchers. Before tackling the interviews, we did some research around the topic.

    The Grunwick dispute was one of many strikes that occurred throughout the 1970s. It began in 1976 in the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories, which was owned by George Ward. Mathew Lyons has estimated that out of the 490 employees, some 137 joined the trade union called APEX, therefore becoming part of the strike.[1] But what sparked the dispute?

    The firing of a young woman named Devshi Bhudia led to many others walking out in protest, instigated by a Gujarati woman called Jayaben Desai. Many of the workers were of different ethnic origins, so this dispute became of public interest. Another significance of this dispute is that it was one of the first times the trade union movement supported immigrant workers.[2] This was important because the trade unions were predominantly led by white men, so Grunwick was special for gaining support from APEX.

    Why were they striking? The workers were claiming their pay was insufficient and they had poor working conditions – for example, they had to get permission to use the toilet and overtime was made compulsory. Additionally, the female workers were being paid significantly less than men, despite the Equal Pay Act of 1970.

    Once the strike began, the Union of Post Office Workers decided to boycott, refusing to deliver mail across the picket lines. The postmen who refused to deliver Grunwick’s mail were suspended for disrupting the postal service. The dispute continued for another two years, with the mass picketing coming to a head in the summer of 1977, with around 20,000 marchers. This gained a great deal of media coverage and increasing numbers of police using aggressive tactics to subdue the picketing lines – however this led to violence on many occasions.

    There was much political involvement in this dispute, with three Labour ministers in particular who supported APEX joining the picket lines in the summer of 1977. These were Shirley Williams, Fred Mulley and Denis Howell. Although the strike was called off in July 1978, the strikers did not gain anything. Having said that, they were led to believe their demands would be met, as the Scarman Inquiry was set to reinstate the workers. However the report was rejected by George Ward, so the workers were not reinstated, and the union was not recognised. This led to them losing the support of other unions, so they did not have a leg to stand on, leaving them with no choice but to end the dispute.

    However, even after researching the dispute, the idea of undertaking summaries for some interviews was still a daunting task as none of us had produced anything like this before. We began by trying to identify the intention behind the summaries. A problem we encountered during this stage was we had little knowledge of what exactly needed to be included to make it useful. To overcome this, we worked as a group to research what exactly makes a good summary, while talking to our contact at the MRC, James King, to make sure it was precisely what they wanted. It allowed us to conclude that the summary did not have to be an exact word-for-word copy of the interviews. Instead, we designed it to pull out key themes and points of interest, similar to the previous interviews already summarised.

    When working through the transcripts we condensed it down to only using the parts we deemed to be significant and bullet pointing any useful information to go underneath. Again, similar to the example pieces that we were provided with, we used time stamps when marking any relevant information, as it would allow anybody reading the transcript the chance to quickly jump to the relevant part of the interview for them. However, another stumbling block we encountered was trying to determine who our summaries would be aimed at. After some deliberation and research, we arrived at a decision that it would work best if it was aimed at anyone looking to learn more about the individuals, while also being useful for anyone who wants to learn more about the event as a whole.

    From this point we worked at summarising as many of the interviews as we could. Each interview we summarised only had one individual being interviewed making it easier for us to focus on what they were saying rather than trying to balance two interviewees. To do this in the most efficient way we went through the list of interviews provided to us by James at the MRC, and assigned one interview to each group member, enabling us to get through more interviews in a shorter space of time. If we thought a particular part was important, we made sure to listen to the entire sentence before beginning to summarise and transcribe it so we could understand context and avoid misunderstandings.

    During the summarising process we also made sure to know as many of the relevant abbreviations and names to give us a better understanding of the significance of different points during each interview. But to ensure our summaries were up to the same standard and in a similar style we sent our interview to the other group members to have them double-check it. To better make sure it was up to the quality of our MRC contact, we each sent the transcript to them, giving us edits and any extra useful information we were yet to include.

    If anyone is thinking of taking on a similar task: it takes longer than you think! After choosing the interviews we would be working on individually, we definitely underestimated the amount of time that it would take to complete a full one. A task we thought would take an hour took us multiple, so it was important that we began to set aside time to complete it. Initially, we thought we would be able to complete multiple interviews from the list that we’d been given, but this was an overestimation. Because of the time it took to complete them, we found the deadline fast approaching having only done one. Though I think this was also due to waiting for feedback on our work also, which was ultimately out of our control – a challenge of working in a team and relying on others who had other deadlines.

    It also takes a lot of concentration to complete. It is especially difficult when the interviewees are sometimes a bit difficult to understand due to accents, etc, so this is also something to bear in mind. It may have been due to the age of those who had been interviewed and where they had come from, but this hadn’t been something that we had thought would be much of an issue, until we began to complete the summaries. This also added more time onto the task, as we’d have to watch parts a few different times to make sure we were getting the most out of it.

    The task was definitely valuable in other things that it taught us. We improved our group collaboration skills and also learnt how to take important details out of a wider source in order to get the most out of the task. This was probably the most difficult thing for us. We had to decide on the audience – who would be reading these summaries, such as what kind of historians or researchers – then try and deduce what kind of things may be useful for them. We spoke as a group a few times and even consulted our outside contact at the MRC as to just what would be most beneficial to those who would go on to use our summaries. This had been an issue we’d had from the start of the process, so it was important to us to all be on the same page about what to note down. This is probably one of the most important aspects of summarising sources, so make sure you’re clear of how to make sure the audience gets the most out of the piece, otherwise it isn’t as valuable as an aid.

    While this process has its difficulties, we learnt a lot of valuable skills and what kind of things to consider before undertaking a task such as this. Alongside just being a fulfilling experience, knowing that we would be helping researchers and a recognised archive institution with their work was important, and the skills we learnt will be of great use in the future.

    Katie Kinnes, Izzy Henman and Tom Lacey

    The MRC’s holdings relating to Grunwick – including the summary Katie, Izzy and Tom worked on – can be found here.

    [1] Mathew Lyons, “The Grunwick Dispute Begins” History Today, Vol. 72, no. 8 (2022)

    [2] Mathew Lyons, “The Grunwick Dispute Begins” History Today, Vol. 72, no. 8 (2022)

  • Heritage and Memory: The NAMES Project Quilt

    Heritage and Memory: The NAMES Project Quilt

    Sophie Loftus, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on Cleve Jones’ NAMES Project Quilt for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Sophie discusses how the quilt acts as an important memorial to the people who lost their lives to AIDS, while at the same time challenging social and cultural understandings of the disease. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.

    In 1989, activist Cleve Jones stood in front of the White House with a message. Jones stated: ‘We bring a quilt. We hope it will help people to remember. We hope it will teach our leaders to act.’ [1] In that year, with limited response or recognition from its government, the death toll from AIDS in the United States of America – not simply homosexual men, but also heterosexual women, children and men – already stood at almost 90,000. Some three years earlier, in 1986, Jones realised that the dead in San Francisco from HIV/AIDS had already reached 1000 people. At the annual march, held in honour of Harvey Milk on the anniversary of his assassination, Jones asked members of the march to put the names of those lost on placards as a form of remembrance. These were then hung on the side of the old federal building. The effect reminded Jones of a quilt, something familial, cosy, handed down through generations for warmth and memory. [2] Jones wanted to create a memorial to those who had died from AIDS. In the Quilt, Jones argued that he wanted to take AIDS from ‘a “gay disease” into a shared national tragedy.’ [3] By the time the NAMES Project Quilt was displayed on the Mall in Washington DC in October 1987, as part of the National March for Lesbian and Gay rights, there were almost 2000 panels. [4] As of June 2016, The AIDS Memorial quilt makes up more than 49,000 panels, each one to commemorate someone lost to HIV/AIDS. [5] This blog looks to examine the power of collective memory and remembrance and how historians can engage with these sources to understand the power of memory not just as a source, but also as a subject. [6]

    The AIDS quilt. Image from Wikipedia.

    Arthur Marwick argued that the definition of a primary document was one which ‘by its very existence records that some event took place.’ [7] However, it must be argued that when historians are looking at other types of sources for historical importance, by simply reducing an object to little more than evidence, this can remove any form of emotive understanding of an event. [8] Sarah Barber argued that each type of source has ‘its own history which overlaps and influences those of other sources.’ [9] Here, the AIDS memorial Quilt can be seen as a useful tool in the understanding of other forms of source doing the work of memorialisation. Elaine Showalter, argues that the Quilt is seen as a ‘metaphor of national identity.’ [10] Cleve Jones, in the Quilt, attempted to represent familial bonds. By creating a memorial to the sheer size of the AIDS problem in the United States, he wanted to create a ‘way for survivors to work through their grief in a positive, creative way.’ [11] By attempting to create a positive representation of the AIDS epidemic, Jones may not have realised that he was also tapping into the ways in which scholars had begun to understand that there was a violence to the 20th century, which meant that people attempting to understand and process grief would require new ways to do this. [12]

    In the 1920s, Maurice Halbwach argued that collective memory was a ‘product of social frameworks.’ [13] He argued that history was the recording that remained once social memory faded away, and that ‘there is only one history.’ [14] However, this cannot be seen to be true; when understanding collective memory, one must understand that as a source, it is as unreliable as any other due to its potentially personal nature. The Quilt is a highly emotive piece, and some members of the LGBT community argued that it was too sanitised in its remembrance. Douglas Crimp argued that AIDS Activism hinged on how the gay community wished to be remembered, or how the crisis was intended to be seen: whether it was a disease ‘that has simply struck at this time and in this place – or as the result of gross political negligence.’ [15] Some members of the LGBT community argued that the Quilt was simply making the problem more palatable to heterosexual viewers. Thus, Marwick’s theory cannot be substantiated, collective memory cannot be seen as one history, for memory can be to some, a moment for grief and mourning, and for others a call to action and activism. [16]

    Scholars such as Bill Niven have argued that collective memory can be fruitful in understanding the way in which states and governments have attempted to encourage groups to certain views. [17] The AIDS Memorial Quilt however, is a vital example of how collective memory can challenge this. At the time of its conception, the American government were doing everything in its power to ignore AIDS. President Ronald Reagan did not mention the word AIDS on television until 1986, by which point almost 15,000 people had died of the disease. It is here that it can be seen that collective memory, or what John Bodnar has called ‘vernacular culture’ is crucial in describing the way in which groups form ways which ‘reflect how they want to remember historical events’. [18] This can be important for underrepresented groups who wish to control the narrative surrounding the memory of their own. The Quilt can be seen as what Mary Fulbrook describes as a ‘remembering agent’, or as what Jennifer Power calls a ‘counter memorial’, a piece of history which can be seen as not only a political protest, but also arguably showcasing the human side of the AIDS crisis. [19] It is not as some memorials, including those also represented at the Mall where the first showing of the quilt was presented, are normally envisioned. It is not made of stone, it moves and grows. The Quilt travels the nation and the world, in an attempt to challenge social and cultural understandings of AIDS.

    The Quilt was nominated in 1989 for a Nobel Peace Prize, and is the largest community art project in the world. [20] Cleve Jones created a memorial that grows every day, and can easily challenge historians regarding appropriate representations of remembrance. While some historians argue about the validity of collective memory as a source due to its potentially unreliable nature, the Quilt shows that counter memorials and representations of collective memory can be so important in understanding underrepresented history. They can place in the hands of historians and the world the ability to understand a past and a present which for some will never be memorialised in stone, but that people still require to grieve, to process, and to remember.

    NOTES

    [1] Cleve Jones, When We Rise: My life in the Movement. (London: Constable, 2017). 194.

    [2] Peter S. Hawkins, “Naming Names: The Art of Memory and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Summer, 1993). 752-779.

    [3] Hawkins, Naming. 752-779.

    [4] Ibid.

    [5] The NAMES Project, “AIDS Memorial Quilt FAQs”. https://www.aidsquilt.org/about/faqs, last accessed 11 April 2019.

    [6] Joan Tumblety, “Introduction: working with memory as source and subject” in Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject. ed. Joan Tumblety. (London: Routledge, 2013). 1-17.

    [7] Sarah Barber and Corinna M. Peniston-Bird, “Introduction” in History beyond the text: A Students guide to approaching alternative sources. ed. Sarah Barber and Corinna M. Peniston-Bird. (London: Routledge, 2009). 1-13.

    [8] Barber, Beyond. 1-13.

    [9] Ibid.

    [10] Elaine Showalter, Sister’s choice: tradition and change in American women’s writing. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1991). 169.

    [11] Ibid.

    [12] Tublety, Memory. 1-17.

    [13] Bill Niven and Stefan Berger, “Introduction” in Writing the History of Memory. ed Bill Niven and Stefan Berger, (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 1-25.

    [14] Ibid.

    [15] Douglas Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy,” The MIT Press, Vol 51, (Winter 1989): 3-18.

    [16] Jennifer Power, Movement, Knowledge, Emotion: Gay activism and HIV/AIDS in Australia. (Canberra: ANU Press, 2011). 157.

    [17] Niven, Writing. 1-25.

    [18] Ibid.

    [19] Mary Fulbrook, “History Writing and ‘collective memory’” in Writing the History of Memory. ed Bill Niven and Stefan Berger, (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 65-88; Power, Movement, 148.

    [20] The NAMES Project, “AIDS Memorial Quilt Background.” https://www.aidsquilt.org/about/medianewsroom, last accessed 11 April 2019.


  • Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland

    Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland

    Dr Jodi Burkett is Principal Lecturer in History at Portsmouth, where she teaches on a range of undergraduate units, including Society and Culture in Twentieth Century Europe, Being British After the War: Continuity and Change in British National Identity, 1945-2005, and Students and Youth in Postwar Britain. Jodi researches British national identity and the legacies of empire in the postwar period, and her current work evaluates student anti-racist activism in the 1970s and 1980s. She has recently published an edited collection of chapters on Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland. See below for further details. To purchase the book click here.

    Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland explores the experiences and activities of students across the twentieth century and throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. The daily experiences of students, their involvement in local communities, national political organisations and widespread cultural changes, are the main focus of this ground-breaking book. It takes students themselves as the subject of inquiry, exploring the fundamental importance of student activities within wider social and political changes and also how some of the key fundamental changes across the twentieth century have shaped and changed the make-up, experiences, and lives of students. This book explores the experiences of students throughout a period of unprecedented change as being a student in Britain and Ireland has gone from the endeavour of a small number of elite, mainly wealthy white men, to an important phase of life undertaken by the majority of young people.