Former Gate Gourmet employees gather at a union meeting, August 2005. The actions of women such as Pammi Bains (below) have largely been forgotten, says Kavita Puri
It's late on a Sunday evening in a street in west London, and the air is thick with the smell of freshly fried pakoras. Pammi Bains, who lives in one of the terraced houses, has been cooking.
Pammi was part of a strike action that disrupted Heathrow airport for two days in the summer of 2005. It was an act of resistance with links to a far longer history of female south Asian protest in Britain. She says it changed her life, but few know the story of her and her fellow strikers.
Pammi was part of a workforce of predominantly Indian Punjabi women, who were employed at Gate Gourmet preparing food trays for British Airways flights. She had happily worked there for 12 years and her colleagues had become her friends, singing along to Punjabi music while they worked at the conveyor belt. But by the summer of 2005, Gate Gourmet's BA contract had been renegotiated. Pammi's employers were making cuts and trying to alter working conditions, and her union was pushing back.
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