After one and a half years
Liverpool dockers fight on
On September 25th 1995 the men who worked for Torside Shipping
Company (a private contractor) were ordered to work for a disputed
overtime rate. They refused. The following day all 80 men were
sacked. They mounted a picket and the Mersey dockers refused to pass
it. The 329 men of Mersey Docks and Harbour Company were sacked.
Within 24 hours their jobs were being advertised in the local
press.
Since then precious little else has been seen in media about
this strike which is now longer running than the miners' struggle in
1984. Indeed it took Robbie Fowler to lift his football shirt and
reveal a t-shirt supporting the dockers during a European football
game, and a minor riot in London, for the dispute to gain access to
the headlines again.
In September 1995 the dockers of Liverpool had handled the
highest tonnages ever recorded in that port. Since 1989, the
European Regional Development Fund has paid over £13 million to
Mersey Docks to create employment. The irony is that all they've
succeeded in doing is locking 400 men out of work. Yet the
Managing Director of Mersey Docks pocketed an £87,000 pay rise
just prior to kicking 329 men onto the dole.
The dockers are members of the Transport and General Workers
Union, which has refused to make the dispute official because the
dockers' actions were against the law (the stringent laws brought in
by Thatcher to strangle the remaining power out of the right to
strike). As John Magginnis, who has worked on the docks since 1951,
put it "We worked in dirty, unhealthy, dangerous conditions.
But if the men had a grievance and sent for a delegate (trade
union representative), he would walk round the sheds, straight into
the office, come out, walk past the men without saying a word and you
would find out later that nothing had changed. A case of "My hands
are tied. What can I do?"
The striking dockers were offered £25,000 redundancy and 40
jobs as a settlement offer. It was rejected. As Jimmy Campbell
said, "Our fathers and grand-fathers fought and died for jobs we
could be proud of, I did it for the young ones."
The strike has gone on to bring forth an international show of
solidarity with the struggle of these men to hold onto their jobs in
an age of increasing globalisation and rationalisation. The
international support has been nothing short of phenomenal.
On January the 20th an inter-national day of action took place
around the world for the dockers. In Liverpool eight dockers and
seven environmentalists occupied three cranes at the grain terminal
and thus prevented the unloading of the "Lake Erie" which was delayed
for a total of 35 hours. The activists were arrested and charged
with aggravated trespass.
Actions occurred in Australia, New Zealand, Japan,the United
States, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Quebec, Sweden, Norway, Russia,
Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland and Greece.
These actions ranged from union meetings during working hours to
stoppages to occupations, and even a general strike of transport
workers. On the west coast of the United States, the Los Angeles
Times reported:
"Pacific rim trade spluttered to a halt and dozens of mammoth
cargo ships sat idle in their ports on Monday as union dock workers
from Los Angeles to Seattle stayed off the job in a one day show of
support for the striking longshoremen in Liverpool, England....."
One vice president of a shipping company complained that "This is
going to cost us millions of dollars in delays.'
What the workers throughout the world who have heard of this
strike realise is that it is not an isolated issue. At stake here
are the 400 jobs in Liverpool, but these men are also fighting for
the right to decent pay and proper working conditions. For many
years, dock work was some of the most brutal work, and was conducted
in the uncertain air of casualisation.
Now the bosses are trying to return to this time and the workers
are resisting. This tactic of the bosses is not confined to one port
or one workplace but it is rearing it's ugly head in practically all
places where people gather to work. It has to be fought before we
all end up working on weekly contracts with no rights or privileges.
Despite the widespread international actions, the media in
Britain have kept this long-running dispute almost completely out of
the news. Marchers took to the streets of London on April 12th to
focus the attention of the public and the politicians on the
Liverpool dockers. The Social Justice March attracted 15,000
marchers and over 1,000 riot police who did not hesitate to smash
them off the streets.
The march was divided into two parts by a police charge on
horseback. Some protesters managed to get into the Foreign Office
and scattered papers from an upstairs window. As usual the media
stepped in to cover the story in their usual biased way, not covering
the reasons for the events and turning a blind eye to the police
brutality.
Now, once again the story has sunk into oblivion. The situation
is not going to change with a change in government, as the Labour
Party spokesperson on Industry considers the strike to be an
"industrial issue" and not a political one, so he refuses to comment.
The workers who have shown their solidarity throughout the world
know different. Nothing is more political than the right to work
for decent pay and in decent conditions. They know that right had to
be fought for in the past and now that battle is being fought again
in Liverpool. Coming to a workplace near you. Fight on.
Dermot Sreenan
