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Grunwick: police propaganda and government credulity
SOLOMON HUGHES has obtained the hyperbolic and paranoid police intelligence reports used to justify violence against the famous 1970s strike – disinformation seemingly swallowed whole by the then-governing Labour Party
FAMOUR FIGHT: A lone picket is watched by police outside the entrance to the Grunwick film processing plant, July 1977
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I HAVE been looking again through the inches-thick government papers on the 1976-78 Grunwick strike because they give clues to how Labour governments can respond to big strikes.
The papers show that the police carried out intense political surveillance of the strike. They filed reports full of both detail and absurd rumours — like their fears of trade unionists mobilising hit squads of female plumbers or schoolchildren to cause havoc — which Labour ministers accepted without question.
The Grunwick dispute started when a largely Asian workforce in a north London factory went on strike to support a sacked colleague.
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