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

Art, Activism, Race and Social Justice - 1900/1976
1974
Imperial Typewriters strike, Leicester
In May 1974, 1,100 Asian workers at the
Imperial Typewriter Company in Leicester
went on strike over unequal bonus payments
and discrimination in promotion. The shop
stewards committee and union branch
refused their support, but the strikers,
supported by Benny Bunsee, a South
African Asian, the Indian Workers
Association, Race Today and others, stayed
on strike for almost 14 weeks. The dispute
was important in shifting the attitude of
British trade unionists to immigrant workers.
This would bear fruit with much wider
support for the largely Asian Grunwick
dispute three years later.
Bennie Bunsee (right) was born in Durban,
South African in 1935 He joined the Pan
Africanist Congress (PAC) in the early 1960s
and was part of the first group that went to China
for military training with other PAC stalwarts.
Bunsee was influenced by the ideologies of
Robert Sobukwe and, later, Steve Biko. He
moved to Leicester in the late 1960s, and was a
champion of black workers and blazed a trail as
leader of Asian strikers at the Mansfield
Hosiery Mills in 1972, and the Imperial
Typewriters strike in 1974.
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