forensic pioneer unearthing war crimes, the anti—nuclear protest that was the biggest women—led movement in the uk since the suffragettes, and a watershed moment for canada's indigenous people. but we start in london and a story about the strikers in saris, a group of south asian women employed in the grunwick film processing factory. because of the poor working conditions there, they decided to take a stand for workers�* rights and their action captured the imagination of many other trade unionists, as lakshmi patel told me. for housewife mrs jayaben desai, her 220th day on the picket line was marked by a presentation. this is a presentation - on behalf of the north west london branch of usdaw, i the shop workers union, to mrs desai, who is the treasurer of the strike committee. - thank you very much for coming along. . translation: jayaben desai was a very strong woman. . she had made up her mind to bring the union into the factory... ..because our women were treated badly. we believed that if women have so many rights in this country, then why can't we have them too? grunwick relied upon the new influx of asians from east africa to supply its workforce. commonly thought passive and hard working, the tables were about to turn. in the grunwick factory, there was a big glass room, where the manager used to sit. he would observe us all from that room. he would keep an eye on us. if you were going to the toilet and it took too long, then he would ask why, what were you up to? the unlikely leader of the grunwick strike, jayaben desai, would challenge the stereotype of the submissive asian woman. i was on the picket line from the first day. we ladies came out with mrs desai. how long will you stay here? unless, when we will finish this dispute. . a year? any time. five years? ten years. unions from across england supported us. there were two such piles, around 70 sacks in all, and they'd been building up since the local branch of the postal union voted overwhelmingly tojoin the boycott. all: the workers united will never be defeated! | all the unions were there, with big banners. there were a lot of policemen. you could see them all over the street. and in the middle of them was jayaben. loud cheering. in spite of mass support, the strike committee found its power to act ever more circumscribed. two years after it had begun, the strike was called off. jayaben was not upset with the defeat at all. we felt that asian women in england had fought for two years for the union. and we were proud of that fact. the reason we were fighting, we have achieved. _ the treatment with the staff has already changed. - it is a great victory. the wages was - increased after that. don't you think it's a victory? i am so proud of myself that we fought for our rights. lakshmi patel remembering the grunwick strike, which inspired widespread trade union support. our next story is about mercedes doretti, a forensic anthropologist from argentina who founded a team dedicated to searching for the remains of the missing victims of war atrocities and state violence. in their search for the truth, her team has exhumed remains in more than 30 countries, among them el salvador, the scene of a brutal civil war in the 1980s. we end up exhuming the remains of close to 140 kids that were all in this very small one—room house. we were exhuming all these little dresses and whatever they have in their pockets. those kind of details are actually the ones that kind of devastate you, they're very hard, yeah. i started doing this forensic work on human rights cases since 1984 when democracy returned to argentina after quite brutal military government. i was a student. most of us were, just finishing, very close to graduating. it wasn't something that we were thinking, "0h, let's form an international organisation that will do this globally," or anything like that. it was more like, if we want to be consistent with what we think and believed, we thought we couldn't say no. in december 1981, the el salvador army entered into the hamlet of el mozote, as well as another five hamlets that were nearby, separated children, women and men, execute them, burn their houses and everything. removing any possibility of civilian support of guerrillas. at the time when we arrived, you could still see human bones in different parts of the houses. translation: these red flags indicate where we found - all the spent cartridges. this wall here was where the victims were probably lined up before being executed. we were just amazed by what we were finding. we had never worked on a case of that scale at that time. i see the work that we do in different parts of the world as a part of a reparation process. where something horrible had happened, we cannot fix, obviously, what happened, but we can provide some solace by providing information, sometimes returning back the remains of missing people to their loved ones, which we have learned how important it is. these are crimes that often, you know, started as political crimes and part of a political situation. and so you learn to wait and push as much as you can, so that the evidence can be heard and have its day in court. but it's a work that requires a lot of patience. often, we felt a very strong feeling of frustration. it was a very small courtroom, very close to where the massacre had happened. and we were testifying, something we thought was never going to happen. we were all kind of like, "ok, you know, "now this is what we were supposed to have done 30 years ago." these processes never end, so we never feel complete, you know, closure, or... you know, rarely. the forensic anthropologist mercedes doretti. next, we go back to the 1980s, when a group ofjewish feminists started campaigning for the right to pray as openly asjewish men at one ofjudaism's holiest sites, the western wall. witness history spoke to anat hoffman, one of the founders of the so—called women of the wall. i've been the chauffeur more times than i'd like to think of, taking women of the wall to emergency room. and of course, endless eggs, water, thrown at the women of the wall. when israel took over eastjerusalem, they built a partition between men and women at the wall. the partition is not equal. men are encouraged to explore alljewish expressions. what some people allow themselves to say about us and to us is quite shocking. "wrap them in their prayer shawl and bury them alive," and we're being called nazis by otherjewish people. and when we went to court, it would be 1a years later when we will receive a verdict. the court felt that our issue is so complex that it rocks thejewish world as we know it. we won three out of our four strategic goals. women can wear a prayer shawl now at the wall. i won't say it's a pleasure, but you can do it. i am waiting for the day where a young girl's going to be reading the torah, wearing her tallit, her prayer shawl, praying out loud and she'll say to me, "hey, old lady, it's always been this way." anat hoffman, one of the founding members of the women of the wall. our next eyewitness story takes us to the 1980s and an anti—nuclear protest outside an american air base in rural england that lasted 19 years. ann pettitt from wales organised a women's march from the welsh capital cardiff to the greenham common air base, where us nuclear missiles were being kept. a small group set up camp outside the base, but, as ann told witness history, as women from all over europe joined the protest, it grew into thousands. the first american cruise missiles are now in britain. it was earlier this morning at greenham common raf base in berkshire that a united states starlifter landed with its cargo of missiles. the women's peace camp . at greenham also represents the disquieting voicel of rebellious women, a sisterhood of dissent. ann pettitt was one | of the women who'd started the whole thing. we decided to call it a peace camp and decided to stay, asking for a public debate between everybody in this country about the siting of cruise missiles. decisions about nuclear weapons and about military things in general, they're all taken by men, just seems right that it should be women. at that point in 1981, we had two children. we moved here to west wales because we wanted to run a smallholding, grow vegetables. the possibility that the cold war would escalate into a nuclear war began to seem more and more likely. the government was sending out leaflets called protect and survive and issued a film about what we should do. a cupboard under the stairs, that is another good place for a refuge. put boxes of earth or sand on the stairs, start collecting them now. we were meant to make a makeshift little den in our house, or hide in the cupboard under the stairs with a few tins of food, and you thought, "what?! are they insane? !" so many protests have taken the form of walking. think of the salt marches in india, the marches in selma in america, led by martin luther king. itjust is a natural form of political protest. i began to have visions of women walking down the road with our banners and our placards. i'd managed to get a little mention of the march in conventional women's magazines, like cosmopolitan, i seem to remember, and there were women who had seen these and jumped at it and thought, "yes, this is for me." most of them, women who had never done anything like this before. so we walked from cardiff, the capital of wales, to greenham common. the press were not interested. trying to get on the front pages of newspapers was, well, you know, i was told to get lost i don't know how many times. we had to do something more dramatic and we decided to chain ourselves up to the gates of greenham. when we got there, we had to stay a night and another night, a week, two weeks. gradually, the support did come in. thousands of women surround the american air base at greenham common in a peaceful protest against the siting of american cruise missiles in britain. it was the biggest women's demonstration ever, i think, in this country. i think it's a brilliant title, actually, embrace the base. embrace the base! sort of... give love into the base! we decorated the fence as well. i remember seeing a woman had hung her wedding dress on the fence. i suppose relations with the police had begun on quite a courteous basis, but they got quite violent, really. security at greenham common has been substantially increased... at one time, a group - of about 15 women struggled with soldiers before being arrested. - the greenham protest forced mrs thatcher to abandon her plan to let ronald reagan station nuclear missiles on british soil. the fact that it was a movement of women who made some leaders see sense, it did change things. i'm very proud of what i did, really. ann pettitt and the formidable greenham common women. for ourfinalfilm, we go to canada in the 1990s, where indigenous canadians objected to plans to develop a golf course on the sight of a burial ground in quebec. the dispute led to a summer—long siege between mohawk demonstrators and canadian security forces. witness history spoke to mohawk activist ellen katsi'tsa kwas gabriel. to see the tanks coming in, we even had the fighter jets fly over us. the mood was very tense. this is all for a golf course. this is all for some group of rich people, the elite, and their playground. like many other indigenous peoples, we call the earth our mother. the place where our ancestors rest is extremely important. they wanted to extend their nine—hole golf course into an 18—hole golf course, but at the same time, they also wanted to dig up our burial ground to extend their parking lot. we set up a blockade on a secondary dirt road. at that time, the majority of the people who were at the barricades were women. our matrilineal, our clans come from our mothers, and we are the ones who are supposed to protect the land and it's the duty of the men to protect the people. the women said we would go to the front, when the police arrived. the men said they would watch and protect us if anything happened. so on the morning ofjuly11th, we were interrupted at 5:15 in the morning by a swat team and so we went towards the front of the barricade, towards the highway, with our hands in the air to make sure that they saw we had no weapons. but they still met us with a lot of aggression and a lot of force. what i said to them was that this is our land and we have every right to be here. they were not too happy with that. that's why they wanted to talk to a man, because the women were, i guess, being very unreasonable to them. originally, people said there would be no weapons, but there were individuals who carried their weapons. we couldn't do anything about it. we said, "it's a peaceful barricade." around 8:30, the police started firing tear gas and concussion grenades at us. concussion grenades, for those who don't know, sound like gunshots. they're quite a loud noise. i had to tell some of the people i was with to run, you know, let's run for cover. it was scary because we didn't know if anyone was killed. you know, on both sides. the police force continued to block the roads, people coming in or out. they prevented food, medicine. they were quite aggressive and always provoking. it was a siege. a 78—day siege. well, we did decide to end it. wejust had enough and we said, "we're going back to our homes." september 26 is when it was supposedly finished. a big melee happened. some of the soldiers had their bayonets on, because they were afraid. they were totally, totally afraid of the people who were coming out. there were a lot of arrests on that day. and this ain't a surrender either! we were still not surrendering, because the land dispute is still in full force. it's not been settled. i mean, the golf course sparked a discussion about the real issues that indigenous people have been fighting for for centuries, which is land dispossession, protection of our languages and culture, our way of life. so it woke up people, i would say. it woke up people. the mohawk activist ellen katsi'tsakwas. well, that's all for this edition of witness history here at the people's history museum in manchester. from me and the rest of the witness history team, goodbye. hello there. a particularly wet months, for the same reason we have clouds close by at the moment. a very active jet stream from the us, which has always been close to the uk, and areas of low pressure formed, this week we got a broad area of low pressure across the atlantic. on the base of that, deepening areas of more potent low pressure systems around. thursday we are between those, a brighter day, almost april showers, mild with the south—west winds but big storm clouds possible. the home counties heaviest with hail and thunder through the midlands and north—east england. the gathering strength of the sun, potentially the warmest day of the year, 17 celsius possible. through the night and on friday, another area of low pressure bringing heavy rain to begin with. as it tracks across the southern half of england and wales, with the strongest winds to the south affecting france, but it could have impact on friday across southern england, wales and the channel islands, winds 65—70 mph in some spots. the rain lingering through the day across south—west england and wales. northern ireland looking quite soggy, further north and east it is showery with lots of cloud, temperatures down on thursday but still above the levels we should be at this stage. low pressure pushes off into northern europe into the start of the weekend. it leaves a trailing weather front which almost becomes fairly stationary across southern and western areas on saturday. here western areas on saturday. here we will see outbreaks of rain which should turn the light and patchy through the day, a lot of cloud, there will be some brighter breaks. the sun has enough strength to make it feel warm enough. for many, with the eastern coast feeling a touch cooler. the same weather front almost decay is in situ as we go into sunday, pressure builds around it. that squeezes out the rain, but we have a legacy of cloud across many areas. particularly scotland, western england and wales. either side of that, some sunshine, temperatures 10—13. sunday into monday, high pressure building and more widely it could be a chilly start, the chance of a bit of frost, but these weather fronts pushing their way in. northern ireland and scotland, after a bright start, turning cloudy with some rain. eastern scotland and other parts of england and wales, staying dry in the daylight hours, the best of sunshine to the south and east. temperatures listing across western areas as we developed a south—westerly wind. something drier next week hopefully. thejet wind. something drier next week hopefully. the jet stream starts to buckle towards the north, and this helps promote the relative high pressure. we will stay see —— we will still see rain to start the week, the low pressure pulls away and then the high pressure builds in. the position will be crucial to the cloud, the potential for showers in crucial to the cloud, the potentialfor showers in it, but overall, in the run—up to easter, we could turn a little bit drier, i'm not promising any warmth, temperatures look close to average, but hopefully longer breaks between the downpours. welcome to bbc news, i'm lisa—marie misztak. our top stories... the vatican says pope francis is spending a few days in hospital in rome to be treated for a respiratory infection. the un adopts a resolution, asking the world's highest court to define the obligation of countries, to combat climate change. i celebrate today with the people of thanyou are two, who are still reeling from the devastation of two macro back to back cyclones. prosecutors in mexico say they're treating the deadly fire at a migrant centre as suspected homicide and identify eight suspects. king charles is in germany on his first state visit as monarch. he praises germans for their extraordinary hospitality. over all these years, and in so many ways, i have been struck by the warmth of the friendship