Audrey White

Audrey White   (political activist)
Party	Labour Party

Audrey White is a Labour Party political activist and member of the Merseyside Pensioners Association (MPA).

On 30 July 2022, Audrey White tweeted:

"Four days after I challenged Starmer to his face about lying to party members, I receive this letter from Labour HQ terminating my membership. Shameless & vindictive. A party rotten to the core, that can’t tolerate being held to account by a 71-year-old. Even Stalin might’ve blushed.

Business as Usual

Glenda Jackson (left) played Audrey White's character in the 1987 film "Business as Usual"

"Business as Usual" is a 1987 drama film written and directed by Lezli-An Barrett. It stars Glenda Jackson and John Thaw. Babs Flynn (Jackson) is the manager of a Liverpool boutique. When she accuses the regional manager of sexual harassment, she is sacked. Flynn then mounts a public campaign to get her job back. The story is based on a real case of Audrey White who, in 1983, was a branch manager in Liverpool at the chain of 'Lady at Lord John' boutiques:

But Audrey was a TGWU (now Unite) member and she was going to fight. Her campaign put sexual harassment at work in the spotlight and ultimately led a long campaign and a change in employment law in 2005. Audrey describes how she was sacked over the phone:

I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” My manager replied, “Isn’t plain English bloody good enough for you? I’m sacking you.” The company thought they could treat me like garbage but they hadn’t reckoned on me being a union member. The advice from my union was to keep going to work until they sacked me in writing.

The staff didn’t stand up for me – they were too scared of losing their jobs. The company refused to meet with my union so we started picketing outside the store the next day. We were there with banners and petitions from opening time to closing for five weeks. And no one crosses a picket line in Liverpool!

You can’t tell people who haven’t experienced solidarity what solidarity is like – it’s priceless.

On the picket we had dockers, car workers, staff from unemployed centres, union members, local activists. I feel such warmth when I think of those ordinary people who invested so much time and energy in supporting the cause. It was wonderful, but it was also bitter and harrowing and my nerves were on edge because all these people were fighting for my job and I didn’t want to let them down.

We learned how bad things were: women came up to us on the picket and said, “I had a wonderful job but my boss would do this, so I had to leave.” And, “I didn’t go along with what the boss wanted, so I got demoted”. When the company finally agreed to meet with us, they wouldn’t discuss the sexual harassment complaints, even though I’d got statements from the girls. They claimed I’d been sacked because I wasn’t ‘bubbly’ enough.

Once we lined up pickets at the Manchester and London stores, the company relented. I remember phoning the pickets from London and saying, “You can take the pickets off because we’ve won!” That night I got back to Liverpool and had the most fantastic night of my life, singing, dancing and celebrating. I got paid for lost earnings and walked back into my job.

My story shows that a woman can win – even a woman in a shop in 1980’s Britain.

When I’m in the supermarket I’ll always chat with the women on the tills. If they have a little moan about their work I’ll say, “Are you in a union?”. They’ll shake their heads and say, “I’d be the only one…” But even one woman in a workplace can change conditions if they’ve got their union behind them. And they’ll inspire other women to do the same. We can fight – and we can win.

Discriminatory mourning

Diggers festival 10 September 2022 cancelled

Two days after Queen Elizabeth II died, Audrey White tweeted:

Where’s the logic in this?

Football cancelled; the Diggers festival cancelled; Hackney Carnival cancelled; Strikes cancelled; TUC cancelled.

Yet cricket and rugby can go ahead.

Is it that people are so intimidated by the ruling class that these working class events are shut down?

Antisemitism libel

In 2019, Audrey White was libelled as an antisemite in four articles by Lee Harpin published by the Jewish Chronicle and, following an adjudication by the Independent Press Standards Organisation, was awarded substantial damages against the newspaper.

MSM silence

Full statement by the Merseyside Pensioners Association

On 3 December 2019, the MPA released a full statement on the IPSO ruling against Lee Harpin and the Jewish Chronicle:

On 6 December 2019, Audrey White tweeted:

The failure of the mainstream media to cover the damning adjudication by the Independent Press Standards Organisation against the Jewish Chronicle for their lies against my constituency suggests a conspiracy to damage the Labour Party during an election.

Confronting Starmer

On 25 July 2022, Audrey White welcomed Keir Starmer to Liverpool, telling him exactly what she thinks of his leadership of the Labour Party:

“I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to come to this city, after you’ve been interviewed and doing columns for The Sun newspaper, after the way we as a city were abused and the Hillsborough victims were abused by that paper.

“Secondly, you lied to us about uniting the party. I’m still a Labour Party member and you’ve expelled and witch hunted in the most vicious way I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. And I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for a long, long time.

“You have absolutely said you had ten pledges, you were going to carry on the Corbyn legacy, and ever since you’ve done nothing but distance yourself from the ideas which tens of thousands of people joined the Labour Party to support.

“All you’ve done is feed into the Tory ideology of not supporting strikes, of carrying on with the privatisation of our health service. You're doing everything to feed into a Tory victory. We may as well have a Tory if we have a person like you who lies to the Party.

"You're dishonest and our health service is going down the pan. And you have a big responsibility for the working class people of this country."

Videos go viral

Audrey White welcomes Keir Starmer to Liverpool

Videos of Audrey White's confrontation with Keir Starmer gained over 2 million views on social media in the following 24 hours.

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