The plane is late. I chat with a mobile phone company sales exec. Nowhere are call rates lower than in Pakistan with fierce competition for market share. 100 million phones in a population of 170 million. Even the poorest communities use them. The bonded labourers use them to organise. After a couple of hours, my companion gives up waiting and goes back to his office.
It’s a couple of hours drive from the airport to Haripur in what used to be North West Frontier Province, NWFP, and now is Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, KPK. It’s a middle sized industrial town, a few hundred thousand, swollen with a hundred and fifty thousand Afghan refugees on the Grand Trunk Road that runs from Calcutta to Kabul. Though the city looks gerry built - the parallel with Manchester in 1844 holds good with mess everywhere – it hasn't got the dust of Multan and Karachi.
Tuesday 7 December, Haripur
The course is hard work with a group of 25, all sitting on cushions round a room that is just large enough, mostly experienced trade unionists, a good mix of factory workers, e.g. textiles and cooking oil and office workers and also the secretary of the rickshaw drivers union. On the second day, we start the course with a little recruitment activity in which people take turns to try to recruit each other and they thoroughly enjoy it. I was afraid that, as older activists, they wouldn't want to do this sort of thing but I was quite wrong. We are working in the Labour Resource Centre with a local NGO. The activists are on the left and, of course, doing far too much. Yesterday evening they arrived having driven from a flood devastated area where they are working on a project restoring schools. The leading figure is Qamar, big, bluff and not afraid to take on the authorities. He spent ten days in jail not so long ago, false charges arising from a demo. Not so different from Bolton perhaps.
Today, I’m interpreted by Zahud, a very senior local trade unionist, first active in the movements of the 1960s, and an authority in these parts on labour law. He speaks very precise and traditional English. The much younger Tariq, with various admin and finance responsibilities, was only occasionally there. Last night, though, he accompanied me for a walk. We are on the edge of the city, so there are small fields growing wheat, watered by a new local irrigation system. The young donkey sitting in the dust apparently likes sitting in the dust and may be someone’s pet. Walking past a flour mill, two young workers come out, one with hair caked in flour. They can just about earn the minimum wage of 7000 rupees a month (about £2 a day), filling 25 and 50kg bags at 4 rupees a bag. The job runs round the year but, like 95% of workers, they have no letter of appointment, no social security card and no job security. Technically unlawful, the workers accept this with resignation as most employers ignore almost all labour laws.
The best moment, perhaps, comes talking about the huge differences between Britain and Pakistan; Britain’s wealth came from the pillage of the Raj (applause). But, in Britain today we have rich and poor, ruthless bosses and victimised trade unionists, just as they do. A number of questions follow including if it is true that old people live in special homes. By the end, things were lively and the last session overruns with a poem by the national poet, Allama Iqbal, which most people join in, singing softly. As we leave, one of the class comes up and says it was so good, he thinks I must be a Muslim.
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