Me to the new front line

e for it. But the d was amazing. We anted the same pay or the same conditions in the same city for the same job. And in the end, we won.” At St Peter’s Square, O’grady meets the inspirational TGI Fridays strikers, some as young as 18.

“We were suddenly told that 40% of service charge payments were now going to top up kitchen wages,” a waitress tells her. “We understand kitchen staff are underpaid, but why is their pay rise coming out of our pockets? This isn’t a struggling family business.”

The 150th Congress, which O’grady will address on Monday, takes place within hours of the 10th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which former staff are celebrating with a party.

“I don’t have a problem with reunions,” says O’grady, dryly. “But I feel sick nothing’s really changed. Those bankers got off scot-free.

“Yet there are one million more children in relative poverty since 2010. And for the majority of poor children, their mums and dads are in work. So the Tory idea that work is the best route out of poverty is one big fat lie. They work all the hours God sends and yet they are no better off. We have to do something about the greed at the top. It’s not about resenting someone’s success but about being made a fool of, taking people for mugs.

“A lot of people heard Theresa May talking about the Just About Managings and thought maybe she would do something about it. Apparently not.”

The youngest of five children in an Irish, working-class household, O’grady grew up in family that was often just about managing. As we talk about a free uniform scheme in Manchester, she nods.

“I remember we couldn’t afford the school skirt, which was boxpleated. I had to have one with pleats all around it. It was amazing how conscious I was of it.” She shakes her head. “We’ve got to get wages rising. We need a bloody big lift to the minimum wage.”

O’grady grew up the youngest daughter of James, a chrome fitter and shop steward at the British Leyland carworks in Cowley, Oxford, and Rita, a shopworker who later worked for the NHS.

In 2014, she went to visit her dad’s former workplace as General Secretary. She says: “I was so moved when the shop stewards proudly told me how they were helping outsourced cleaners get the living wage.”

She said recently she had met Angela Merkel more times than Theresa May. “I’ve met the President of Ireland more times too,” she says. “I don’t care for me, but six million workers and 50 unions deserve a bit of common courtesy, don’t you think? We might have one or two ideas about how to make things better.

“We are facing a second crash, that economists say could be harder and faster than the first.

“Has the Government taken steps to protect people against that? It’s like the last days of the Roman Empire – they’re swanning round the world making trade agreements while back at home no one’s minding the shop.”

But while Rome burns, workers are getting organised. O’grady sees the spark of a new mass movement in recent union action against companies as diverse as Uber, Mcdonald’s, Sports Direct and Picturehouse Cinemas. Since our visit to Manchester, the women and men of the Wigan Hospital dispute won a resounding victory against privatisation.

I think of something one of the women on the picket line said to O’grady: “They’ve messed with the wrong women.” When there’s a big painting of Frances O’grady up in the Mechanics Institute, that’s what it should say underneath.