29.02.1996

Dockers’ solidarity

In brief

International support for the Liverpool dockers was brought together in a meeting in Liverpool last week. Delegates from 20 different ports gathered together to discuss stopping every ship that has passed through the hands of scab labour in the Merseyside docks.

The delegates met in the council’s chambers, provided free, to the Mersey Dock and Harbour Company’s fury. The MDHC is losing an estimated £400,000 per week to the dispute.

International solidarity has already caused a sharp dip in the share price of the company. It is internationalism that is currently the dockers’ best hope of success.

The plan to ‘black’ cargo across the world will test the TGWU. If the union welcomes successful international action, it will show up the lack of support in the UK and from the TGWU in particular. It is the Medway ports that are keeping up the flow of profits in the MDHC which owns them. It is UK lorry drivers that are moving the cargo in and out of both the Medway ports and Liverpool docks.

MDHC showed its fear of international action by taking out a full page advert in the local press. It claimed that the action threatened jobs and the long-term economic base of Merseyside. Perhaps it should have thought of that before sacking the dockers.

Don Calder