Mike Grindley
Michael Grindley (born August 1937) is an English trade unionist, linguist, and former employee and branch chair of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) based in Cheltenham. From 1984 to 1997, Grindley led mass protests against the Conservative government after he and 13 colleagues at GCHQ were dismissed for refusing to give up trade union membership. The issue became one of the most important trade union issues of the 1980s and the ban was the second longest continuously fought dispute in British trade union history. Grindley is regarded as a folk hero in the trade union movement.
Early life
Grindley served in the Royal Air Force in Hong Kong, learned Mandarin Chinese during national service and then studied Classical Chinese in Cambridge. Grindley was part of a secretive British programme which ran from 1955 to 1961 to school young men in Chinese before sending them to the Far East to spy.
Like his father, Grindley is a member of the Labour Party, and joined a trade union at an early age.
Career
In August 1961, age the age of 24, Grindley joined Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) after an employment recruitment officer recruited him on university campus. He earned a starting salary of £768. As a Mandarin-Chinese technical linguist, his job was to provide information about surveillance targets in China, and he progressed through the ranks. When he left in 1988, his annual salary was £19,000. As Grindley was the only Chinese technical linguist at GCHQ, the department was subsequently closed after he left.
He later, chaired the organisation that campaigns from two rooms over The Co-operative Bank in Cheltenham.
GCHQ trade union ban
During his employment at GCHQ, Grindley had no record as a champion of unions before the Government tried to stop him belonging to one. Grindley, along with 13 colleagues at GCHQ, refused to give up trade union membership and were dismissed on the order of the Conservative government after refusing to relinquish trade union membership in exchange for £1,000. Grindley (who was branch chair of GCHQ) was suspended from GCHQ in 1984 and dismissed in November 1989.
Trade unions said the ban was a breach of civil liberties and mass protests followed. It sparked a dispute which became a cause célèbre and prompted a series of 12 annual union rallies in Cheltenham. Grindley says he was spied on and shadowed by members of his own agency during the protests. Grindley blocked any compromise by national union leaders with more amenable ministers and insisted that essential services have always been maintained during industrial action - a contention supported by Sir John Nott, the then secretary of state for defence, who said the industrial action had "not in any way affected operational capability".
On 13 May 1997, after 13 years of hundreds of speeches and visits to union conferences, the new Labour government offered Grindley and his former colleagues re-employment at the GCHQ and allowed staff at GCHQ to join trade unions. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook announced the Government was lifting the ban on trade unions at GCHQ as part of the Government's commitment to "open and fair relations" in the work place. The ban was the second longest continuously fought dispute in British trade union history. After the announcement, Grindley said: "It's been a mixture of tenseness, tiredness, excitement and endurance. We always knew in our heart of hearts that we would win our rights back, but if we had been told it would take 13 years, the prospect would have been daunting indeed."
In February 2000, the government announced the sacked GCHQ employees shared compensation payout up to £550,000 after tax to compensate for lost earnings and pension rights. After this announcement, Grindley said: "We are relieved that at long last our pension rights have been sorted. We have not got everything back we were owed, but we have written that off. It has been a long, hard struggle."
Personal life
Grindley lives in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire and has three children. He uses a walking aid after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
On 4 July 2017, Grindley was assaulted and robbed by a teenager on Prestbury Road, Prestbury, Cheltenham as he was walking home after going out for a drink with a couple of visiting friends at the Suffolk Arms pub in Suffolk Road. The thief fled with an address book containing the names and addresses of relatives and many of the people he made friends with during the GCHQ trade union dispute.
See also
- Trade unions in the United Kingdom
External links
- Dropkin, Greg. Mike Grindley, Cheltenham, former GCHQ Trade Unionists Chairman. LabourNet UK. 21 November 2001
Further reading
Grindley, Mike. The GCHQ Union Ban. International Union Rights 1:5 (1993)