‘ Thispandemicrevealsthatinequality is woven through the fabric of society’
Growingup in Wakefield, Jo Grady everywhere she
LIVING WITH the consequences of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership and with a colliery worker father who took part in the miners’ strike, Jo Grady says it was impossible to ignore the impact politics has “on a micro level, every day”.
Passing through the Lupset council estate as a child, which at one point was the largest local government housing scheme in Europe, on the way home from English Martyrs Catholic Primary School, the now general secretary of the University and College Union ( UCU) would wonder about those who lived there and their circumstances.
“I always remember thinking these are really nice houses, they’ve got big gardens, there’s big green spaces in between some of the roads,” she said.
“So why is it seen to be embarrassing to live here? Or why is it that there’s a kind of a stigma with living here?
“They’re just little questions that don’t make sense to a child.”
Dr Grady, 36, grew up in what she called “a political household”.
When she was born, her father, who worked at the Lofthouse colliery, among others, was on strike, while her mother raised her two brothers.
The family later went on to run the Waterloo pub on Westgate End.
“I was born in 1985 so there’s no pretend memories on my behalf of the miners’ strike,” she said.
“I was obviously a tiny baby, but that was the household that I grew up in.”
What followed was a childhood led by a “compass for right and wrong and how we should treat people”, she said.
“And also the extent to which political and economic decisions aren’t just things that dangle above us, they actually have real life consequences for people.”
And it is this that has led her to strive to make changes for workers in her sector, and further afield, culminating in her landslide election to lead the UCU last year.
“I remember, and I’m sure this is common for loads of kids at school, we would have non- uniform day, and you pay a pound not to wear your uniform,” Dr Grady said.
“I went to a Catholic school, so we would raise money for CAFOD [ Catholic Agency for Overseas Development], and there were kids every now and again who couldn’t afford to pay the pound, and to not wear their uniform.
“And there was a girl who we went to school with who, when all of her brothers got nits, everybody had their head shaved, and she did too.
“And as a kid you’re like, why is this happening? Why did that happen to that person? Why does that boy get bullied at school because his mum can’t afford a pound for him to wear his own clothes like everybody else?
“It sounds a bit of a grand thing to say now I’m a grown woman at 36, but I think you ask your parents for answers to why those things happen to some kids or not you, and I think I was very lucky that my parents gave me really informed answers about how, actually, some things are unfair, but they don’t have to be and this is why.
“I think I just grew up with quite a sharp understanding that we’re not just all players in some lottery of life, but the opportunities and life chances aren’t delivered in an equal way, but that doesn’t have to be that way.”
Dr Grady was the first in her family to go to university, but she called the journey there an “unexpected route”.
After studying at St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School in Wakefield, she was the first of her family to study A- levels, where “great teachers” encouraged her to apply for a university place, which she secured in Lancaster, and she ended up staying on for postgraduate study, which she said she did not know even existed at the time.
“I got help to apply for a scholarship,” she said.
“So I basically was offered free postgraduate education at university and from the kind of background I’m from it was like, who is going to turn that down?”
She then went on to become a lecturer in industrial relations, while being heavily involved in the UCU as a member.
“My unexpected route into higher education meant that I could teach people,” she said.
“But then I really enjoyed and thought that organising and educating through trade union activities was equally just as important, just a
saw unfairness looked. Shespoke to Geraldine Scott.
different way of reaching out to people.”
Education is in the spotlight more than ever due to the coronavirus pandemic, with tales of injustice over the A- levels saga in the summer, to how universities are reacting to trying to contain outbreaks on campus.
“I think the response to this pandemic has really revealed that unfairness and inequality are kind of woven through every fabric of our society, but also unfairness and
inequality is maintained by choices,” Dr Grady said.
Pointing to the situation with A- levels, she said it took 18- yearolds
taking to the streets to force a Government U- turn. “I think the reason that trade unionism, but also community activism more broadly, is important to me is that nothing that has ever been achieved in the last century has been achieved because politicians have given it to people, it’s been because people have demanded better. It’s about inequality. But it’s also about unfairness and the extent to which some people are just supposed to be the endless shock absorbers of the unfairness.”
It’s about how some people are just supposed to be the endless shock absorbers of unfairness.