Mansfield Hosiery Strike

Mansfield Hosiery Mills, Trinity Street, Loughborough; Mansfield Hosiery Mills, Clarence Street, Loughborough.

On 27 September 1972, 500 South Asian men and women began a strike against the Mansfield Hosiery Mills in Loughborough. This was because of the monopoly white workers had over higher-paying knitting work, and the firm’s refusal to give bar loaders and runners-on a £5 wage increase to bring them in line with national levels. Becoming a knitter required significant training and securing this high-status position was a source of conflict among employees. On 10 October 1972, for example, some white workers walked out as two South Asians were employed as trainee knitters. Moreover, racism and sexism caused South Asian workers to withdraw their labour. Supervisors often refused to call South Asians by their names and most South Asian women worked on a piece-rate basis, unlike white women, who were paid a wage. According to the Race Relations Board, South Asian workers realized the pay disparity when they compared their wages and work conditions with South Asian community members who were working in other factories. These conditions caused a strike which would mark the second of three South Asian-led labour rights campaigns in the East Midlands during the 1970s, which included the Imperial Typewriters strike in Leicester and Crepe Sizes strike in Nottingham.

The strikers, led by Jayant Naik, demanded that the National Union of Hosiery and Knitwear Workers (NUHKW) recognized the strike as official. Soon after the strike began, the Loughborough District Secretary of the NUHKW, Ron Carter, told the local newspaper, the Loughborough Echo, that since the strikers did not give warning before withdrawing their labour, the union could not recognize the strike. However, the NUHKW declared the strike as official on 4 December, after strikers occupied their offices. Crucially, this meant the strikers qualified for strike pay.

The strikers held mass meetings across Loughborough, including in a home on Trinity Street and at the King Street Baptist Church Hall. During negotiation talks, it came to light that Mansfield officials had recruited forty-one white trainee knitters during the strike, which heightened tensions between the firm, union and strikers.

Other trade union branches, students from the universities of Leicester and Nottingham who donated to their cause, the Race Relations Board, the Loughborough Council of Community Relations and the Black People’s Freedom Movement supported the strike. The Shree Ram Krishna Centre, a cultural and religious centre in Loughborough, committed to offering maintenance pay to strikers. The Loughborough Council of Community Relations had predicted industrial disputes a year earlier and commissioned the Runnymede Trust to investigate the relationship between white and racialized minority workers. Stanislaus Pulle published the Runnymede Trust report ‘Employment Policies in the Hosiery Industry’ in December 1972, which stated that despite one fifth of Loughborough’s workforce being racialized minority, almost all higher-paying and higher-status jobs were occupied by white workers.

Bennie Bunsee, a South African anti-apartheid activist, advised the strikers. He was exiled from South Africa and used his time in Britain to support racialized minority strikers who were resisting economic exploitation. Bunsee was a middleman between the strikers, lawyers and union leaders and became a public figurehead for the campaign.

The strike lasted eight weeks. On 12 December 1972 a row erupted as fifteen strikers were sacked. On 13 December 1972 Bunsee told the press that the strikers had temporarily called off picketing outside the Mansfield Hosiery Mills because of potential clashes with the National Front. On 29 December 1972 the strike officially ended, after the Department of Employment intervened and assured strikers that an official not connected to the firm’s existing management would be appointed to sit on the selecting panel for knitting jobs, and that there would be no redundancies after their return to work.