Dockers: Remembering the Liverpool Dock Strike: Standing up and the cost of being counted!

From: Liverpool Dockers dispute photo gallery 1995

On the 28 September 1995 the Liverpool dockers strike ignited. It ran 'til end of January 1998. Two years and four months. Over 850 days of being out, on picket line, organising, staying strong and not having a wage coming in. That's a blurry long time to keep staunch.

Lets do the sums on this un'. In recent indoostrial disputations.
The recent lock-out at Hutchinsons (Port Botany, Sydney, New South Wales). The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) supported its membership. The lock-out ran for 136 days - ending in December 2015. It seemed like a long, long time.

From the Newcastle (Upon Tyne) Chronicle newspaper: On 6 March 1984, the National Coal Board announced that the agreement reached after the 1974 strike had become obsolete (Thatcher was itching to pick a fight with the unions and the miners were the target for this one), and to rationalise government subsidisation of industry they intended to close 20 coal mines, with a loss of 20,000 jobs, and many communities in the North of England as well as Scotland. On 12 March 1984, Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Miners (NUM), declared that strikes in the various call fields were to be a national strike and called for strike action from NUM members in all coal fields. On 22 March  1984 that the strike was official. The strike ended on 3 March 1985..." 9 days short of a  brutal year for unionism and working class people.

Aye most of us remember the miners strike. In 1981 we thought with Thatcher in power, Britain was going to go up in flames. There were urban riots and when four years later the miners called enough and went on strike, many of us thought Thatcher and the neo liberal Tories had finally met their match. The sleaze of Murdoch's media meant the issues were never put to the public - cheap coal from Poland vs keeping industry working in Britain. Short term gain for long term devastation. Union busting to make it easier to remove fair working conditions. The pillage of publicly owned resources by privatisation - government sanctioned greed. The mantra of public - wasteful- private efficient and the social darwinism of competition- the market decides. Tossing peoples lives on the scrap heap was seen as hard nosed bosses showing they could do the necessary for big fat pay cheques and bonuses. Then the use of police to physically break pickets. The South Yorkshire police involvement in the disgraceful attack of Orgreave on 18 June 1984. No more than state sanctioned legalised violence against the miners. And for all those knockers of Scargill - remember he was arrested at Orgreave. For all the demonising of him post strike Scargill had bollocks, big bollocks. He led from the front. Aye by the end of 1985 there was not much fight left in the unions and the damage done still haunts unionism today. We are left with the legacy that somehow unions were all self serving dinosaurs standing in the way of progress. Flexible work arrangements. Stopping the robber barons from getting on with the business of...well, robbing us blind so it turns out. The return of casualisation. Being able to go back to the lump - choose who you want to have work on the day.  We forget the fight to get a 40 hour working week, holiday and sick pay, safe work conditions, penalty rates and the right to consult about work conditions.

The destruction following the miners strike was devastating. It ripped out the guts of a big part of Britain's industry for fook all!  It shat on the working class north of Nottingham, west in the Valleys, and to this day these areas are still a basket case of wounds that no amount of open air museums of what it were like can ever heal. Still na jobs, trades lost and communities scrapped for Tescos and reality TV lifestyles. Travelling across the former Durham coalfields is a sobering experience to see villages clinging to identity that was once fed on hard, brutal work- but work none the less. The scars on the working communities festering deeper than the skeletons of closed pits and hills of tailings now grassed over.

Now technically Liverpool were not a strike - or was allus presented as an illegal strike. Boot the sacking of 500 men in Liverpool in September 1995 dus not begin to tell the story. These jobs went in what now looks like a fit of pique by management over the formation of a picket line. The wholesale sackings supposedly justified by the refusal of dockers coming into work to cross it. It brought into focus the repressive laws around the right to strike and raised the merits of civil disobedience. Then came the ugly spectre of scab labour.  The Liverpool Dockers had no meaningful support from their union. The mainly gutless leadership of the Transport and General Workers Union. What gave solace was the dispute went international, it crossed the political lines of the left and environmentalists, social activists - that the miners strike had started to forge but struggled to maintain. The international links with waterside workers worldwide is an inspiration in itself. Here in Australia the MUA was an early supporter - and the support was often more than words of encouragement. There were actions taken America, Canada, New Zealand and Japan (where 40,000 workers held a stop work in solidarity). As importantly it focused dialogue on the cruel impact of casualisation. Not just on the waterfront but in the insidious creeping of globalisation. Seen currently in the UK in zero hours contracts. In Australia the loss of manufacturing and industry and the current attack on penalty rates. The trickle down of the economic wealth no more than being pissed on from a great height.

From it.canada.org

Sadly, reading some of the debate from the far left ideologues, the word smiths who would have organised so much better - is disappointing. Strikes and human emotions are messy things and the ending may have seen on a level as a whimper but it was also a massive act of courage and dignity. 850 days of courage and commitment, not just by the dockers but also their families and their community and so what there were fly by night people making a point and disappearing. It does not detract from the core. Working class, socialist principles lived at their best. Something in Liverpool (like Newcastle) is in the water for many.

Recent like I were fortunate to meet one of the shop stewards from the Liverpool strike. It were time well spent. Its a thing I've noticed, the difference between working class Scousers and Geordies of a certain age is in the width of a cigarette paper. So it were no surprise this dispute blew up on the Mersey as like with Geordies - Scousers know nowt about taking a step back. When the cause is right they know how to fight. And despite sum of the shameful tosh written up on nettie thingey by the right and far left idealogues, for over two years these families held their heads proud. Talking with Kevin Robinson (he's the baldy in photo up top and below) and MUA stalwart James Donovan is like a  strong brew of tea at end of day - satisfying! Thirst quenching about working class history and solidarity. That these two men are still fighting the fight. Mr Donovan moost be pushing 103*. Mr Robinson is now galvanising the retirees in the UK.

Mr Robinson and Mr Donovan in Sydney in April 2016

Should be said at the end of the Liverpool strike (call it what it was) Mr Robinson did not get his job back and turned down a settlement - speaks of the kind of man he is.

First lastly, there is a great filum on this event "Dockers".  It runs for just over two hours. The product of a 1996 Workers' Education Association (WEA) project supported by Jimmy McGovern and Irvine Welsh but at guts the work of sixteen of the sacked Liverpool dockers and their hennies. The documentary on the making is hilarious and again like the pitman painters it shows what can be done with a sharpened pencil and paper to record life true to working class life. The women are particularly inspiring as was the actions of the Women on the Waterfront (WOW). They had the added burden of confronting the chauvinism of their men and did so with great skill and humour. One of the characters in the film "Dockers" said the Merseyside dockers were nowt special and if the docks were a factory it would have been rolled up and sent on a container boat to Taiwan. Boot, as this dispute and the film show, after the destruction by Thatcher of the miners, waterside workers, not just in Liverpool, but across the world are amongst our most militant and courageous union workers. And the Liverpool dockers were summat very special.

WOW at picket Liverpool Echo

Second lastly is the humungous and about bloody time win for justice for the Hillsborough 96 (and those who died afta and as a consequence and the 766 injured). 15 April 1989 goes down as a day of shame on all those involved in a cover up. Thatcher, the South Yorkshire Police, the vile Sun. All those who believed the shite peddled that Liverpool football fans were responsible for the deaths at Hillsborough.

Wor Robbie supports dockers from redandwhitekop.com

Nicked from a book about Bill Shankly - a great man!

Colin Jones from Grafters the lump at Liverpool docks 1963

Colin Jones from Grafters-how in 1963 work was decided at Liverpool ports

*It were pointed oot ta oos in na room fur misoonderstandin' James Donovan is not 103 as is said in yon blog. Mr Donovan, who was at the storming' of the Winta Palace, is of sufficient age to be smarter than any cheeky Belgo Geordie. If I knew how it goes, I would apologise for any intentional insult this nasturtium caused by the ink blot on Mr Donovan's certificate of birth at the time of going' to print like.