By Owen Gallagher
I can still see that four-foot, ten-inch lioness,
in an orange sari, striding
towards fellow strikers on the picket line.
Hundreds of police flanked the crowds
to ensure scabs were delivered
to this film processing plant.
Twenty thousand supporters from Cardiff,
Glasgow, and Liverpool cheered.
When she reached her workplace,
and raised a megaphone, you could hear
a leaflet drop.
‘We were sacked for joining a union!
United we will never be defeated!
Stop the scabs!’
Police and pickets clashed.
You could hear her boss
and ministers in Parliament rage
as support for the strikers grew.
Her words changed lives.
Workers across the globe could rise,
seize the world, take
everything they were denied.
When the odds against me are cliff high,
I think of Mrs. Desai.
This poem is one of the many from the new poetry anthology Shoulder to Shoulder: Poems to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1926 General Strike read the foreword by Sharon Graham here.
