Turning the Tide

"Give us a living wage"

Black office cleaner confronts bank chairman in replay of the making of imperial London

Abdul Khaliq Durrant, campaigner

There are four ways that most Blacks enter the prestigious headquarters of British banks in Canary Wharf, the brand new financial outpost of London's global city: as delivery men, tea ladies, security guards and night time cleaners. "We are just like invisible people, really," says Abdul Khaliq Durrant, a living wage campaigner.

But what happens when a lowly "non-person" challenges the bank's chairman to "give us a living wage"? And, hasn't the collision of wealth and poverty taken place in "outcast East London" before? Read on.

Two worlds apart
Mr Durrant, 44, cleans the gleaming head offices of HSBC, one of Britain's most powerful and profitable banks with global resources. He earns £200 ($325) a week, or £10,400 ($16,640) a year, has no pension and only a miserly sick scheme. With no job security, he supports a wife and five children and struggles valiantly to put food on the family table.

The bank's chairman, Sir John Bond, sitting on fat profits, gets £1.88 million ($3 million), and adds a pension packet of £250,000 to this annual sum. Angry investors protested against "excessive pay for directors".

Open revolt followed when Sir John awarded a business crony a £37 million ($60, 200,000) pay deal, including life-long free medical and dental care. Irate shareholders slammed these payments as excessive, and entirely unjustified given the deplorable pay conditions of night time cleaners and workers.

Mr Durrant, by contrast to HSBC "fat cats", lives in one of the 10 most deprived districts in Britain, Hackney, east London. Poverty and inequality are commonplace. Many people regularly go without a minimum healthy diet, and without proper medical care and social services. In addition, for Black men born in Britain of Caribbean descent, like Mr Durrant, race discrimination and harassment are a special burden to bear.

Barriers to overcome
Race and class play a further divisive and damning role. Night time cleaners, mostly males, are mainly of West African (Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast) and Congolese origins.

Caught up in the harshly competitive low-wage labour markets of global city London, Durrant and his fellows are prone to exploitation by contract cleaning companies, property developers and big business clients. Researchers have described the workers plight in Mapping Low Pay in East London, by TELCO, the east London Communities Organisation.

(TELCO is a group of campaigning organisations based in Whitechapel, east London. It serves the interests of local people from many backgrounds – African, Asian, Christian and Muslim, working men and women. "We work with people wherever they assemble: be it in a church, a Mosque, a Temple, a school, a housing co-op or a union branch," says leading organiser Neil Jameson.)

Goals and actions
The common idea behind these actions, says Mr Durrant, co-chair of TELCO's Living Wage campaign, is that low paid workers need the means to live a decent life. He carried this message deep into the heart of corporate HSBC headquarters recently when irate shareholders asked him to speak to the bank's annual meeting.

Imagine what it must have been like, this lowly cleaner, head sculpted by a traditional Muslim skull cap, addressing an all-white audience in unfamiliar surroundings. "I am a bit nervous as I have never been in the company of so many big shots," he said. "I don't operate a computer. I operate a mop and a bucket. I am supposed to stay invisible, working overnight."

He continued: "I receive £5 ($8) an hour. I do not get a pension and there is only a measly sick pay scheme. I am asking you for a living wage, so that I and my colleagues can have the same dignity as ordinary people."

"It is your duty to convince cleaning contractors to raise the meagre pay cleaners earn, from £5 to a living wage of £6.50 ($10.50) an hour," Mr Durrant told the board.

(In London, research shows that a "low cost but acceptable" standard of living is possible on £6.30 an hour. The National Minimum Wage is currently £4.10 ($6.50) an hour.)

To no avail
Despite his moving appeal, which gained a modest round of applause, Mr Durrant has since had naught for his comfort.

Sir John, chairman of the bank that made £6.42 billion ($10.45754) last year, said he "was very sympathetic to Mr Durrant's cause," but that he was obliged to find the best deal for the bank. He added: "I am under pressure to run this business as competitively as I can for shareholders. I cannot dictate to our contractors what they pay their workers," he told The Times reporter.

This tripartite stand off between the bank HSBC, the property owning Canary Wharf Group and TELCO campaigners has become a breeding ground for intimidating workers. TELCO reports that six of Abdul Durrant's colleagues working in the HSBC tower have been sacked because they spoke out against the regime.

Mr Durrant's own position remains precarious. His only supporters are TELCO and the Transport and General Workers Union, whose new leader, Tony Woodley, promises to lobby to raise the national minimum wage rate.

The struggle continues
But matters will not rest there. Abdul Durrant's spirited call for a living wage released a radical genie that will not be shoved or cajoled back into the bottle. Indeed, as most academics know, radicalism has a long history in east London.

The energies of wealth and labour collided in the Peasants revolt of 1381 in Mile End; again in the dock strikes and the forming of the unions a hundred years ago; and again in the suffragette actions in Bow just before World War I.

Settlers during the Victorian and Edwardian periods added to the crisis of events. Draconian and repressive laws were challenged by the incoming "lesser breeds without the law" - the poorer Irish, immigrant Russian and Polish Jews, Lascar seamen, Chinese, and refugees and asylum seekers from around the world. Many of the newcomers formed ethnic and mutual aid associations to survive and often worked together to defend their collective rights to equal treatment and a living wage.

Furthermore, history also records another important chapter of organised dissent. Black, minority ethnic and white solidarity against bondage and capitalist wage slavery had its early 19th century origins in east London.

Workers' protests against the pitiless regime in the wharf industries were common. Unity was forged in the sprawling riverside districts of workers, servants and slaves that serviced growing London and its Thames-side port traffic, reports Peter Fryer in Staying Power, the history of Black people in Britain.

The making of modern London
From these origins and efforts, the first gigantic conflict between the poor and global capitalism took place. The result was the making of London as the centre of power, finance and trade of the British Empire.

In this perspective, the specific case of night time cleaner Abdul Durrant and TELCO, on the one hand, and the HSBC bank, property magnates and cleaning contractors, on the other hand, is a post-modern exemplar of earlier conflicts.

The evidence shows that the last two decades of urban regeneration have rebranded the docklands with striking images of skyscraping architecture, stylish homes and bars for professionals, and cutting-edge money-making technology. But, policies favouring the "new economic sectors" have deprived the dependent local economy of at least 100,000 manual jobs, observes Oona King MP for the east London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow.

Who, then, can blame the vulnerable invisible people – the low paid night time workers, impoverished new minorities and their communities - for fighting for their livelihood?

Predictably, the wellsprings of unity and protest in formation now may grow into torrents of dissent. The bitter cry of outcast east London from today's denizens – Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Vietnamese and Somalis and others, all with desperately common needs – will continue to disturb our consciences until heeded.

Contact details: TELCO www.telcocitizens.org.uk