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Richard Grassick (Photographer)
Photographer’s statement, 2003:
There is probably only one achievement for which working class people in Britain will thank New Labour - the National Minimum Wage. Introduced in its first year in government, Labour’s manifesto promise was largely the result of over 20 years of campaigning by trade unions representing the low paid, and particularly the National Union of Public Employees.
My work with NUPE in the Northern Region began during the infamous Winter of Discontent of 1978/9, when the then regional secretary Tom Sawyer supported me in my documenting of two union branches in Darlington throughout the dispute. The relationship continued until NUPE amalgamated with two other unions into UNISON, Britain’s largest trade union, in 1993. During that time I came to know many of the local activists who kept the campaign going around the region, following their fight for a minimum wage with the Labour Government of James Callaghan, the nurses’ pay dispute of 1982, the long hard battles against privatisation throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as well as travelling with them to conferences and national events.
I also helped to establish a regional magazine for the union that broke the mould of trade union journalism, ‘Northern News and Views’. An informal photographic policy was established from its inception, that the journal would feature no PR shots for full-time union officials, the meat and drink of contemporary trade union photojournalism. Instead, I concentrated on documenting the activities of shop stewards, branch secretaries and officials, and ordinary members going about their work. An exhibition of this work was produced for the regional headquarters of the new union in 1994, where it still hangs today.