Coming of Age : 1976 and the Road to Anti-Racism

Laxmiben Patel
Harsha Ahyave, talks to her mother, Laxmiben, one of the women who went out on strike at the
Grunwick factory in North London in 1976
Although my memory is somewhat sketchy, there are some pivotal moments in my
mothers’ life that remain permanently vivid and etched in my heart, because her thunderous
quality left me spinning. Her education in Kenya was limited. English was not her mother
tongue and she was not raised in a home where politics and current affairs were discussed
at the dinner table. However I believe her fighting spirit is innate, but also stems from the
many challenges she’s faced and knocked down. With endless ammunition she has always
been equipped to cut through injustice, maybe the pace has slowed down but not the passion.
She once said to me in Guajarati, “This generation has so much at their doorstep. You
press a button and get an answer. You have access to all the education and knowledge from
all over the world, but if you were stuck in a jungle or a city without your smartphone you
wouldn’t know which direction to go. Wrong or right in my days we made a move, without
the equipment you have.”
My mother came to London on her own in 1966 on a Friday and the following Monday
she was working as a machinist for Ladybird, a Children’s clothing company. Ten years later
she was working for Grunwick, a film processing Laboratory in Willesden that soon made
controversial headlines.
Here is a small part of my mother’s journey…
“It’s important to have guts in life because then you can do anything. With guts you can
make the life you want in this world. If you sit in silence unhappy, than what is your life?
In 1976, I walked out of my job at Grunwick to support the Grunwick Strikers. I was working
for a photographic company in Willesden. The conditions there were not good, the pay
was very low, people had to work very hard and you didn’t have your freedom like a normal
human being, some workers had to ask for permission to go to the toilet. Some ladies
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