22.08.1996

Class fighter

Obituary: Michael Fenn 1938-96

The Unemployed Workers Charter was saddened to hear of the death of Mickie Fenn. Mickie was no ordinary dockers’ leader, but a class fighter who joined and inspired those struggling against exploitation and oppression throughout society.

Over the last few years Mickie had worked with the UWC in its fight against unemployment. The scourge of unemployment was very close to Mickie, whose family, like himself worked on the docks. He had seen the misery of casualisation and the dockers’ militant battle to organise and raise themselves from victims to fighters against slave labour.

Mickie joined the UWC in commemorating the work of his comrade, Jack Dash, on the docks. For both Mickie and Jack the fight against unemployment was bound up with their struggle on the docks and a wider class perspective.

Joining the docks in 1965, Mickie immediately began the task of organisation, as the dockers’ shop stewards were not recognised. He joined communists Jack Dash and Vic Turner in the unofficial Liaison Committee. After the picket against Midland Cold Storage in 1972 Mickie fought for the release of the Pentonville Five, which was to develop into a mass campaign, forcing the government to backtrack and release them.

After the 1989 dock strike Mickie, along with 136 other Tilbury dockers, was victimised and sacked. Four years later the Tilbury dockers won their case at an industrial tribunal, but Mickie had never returned to the docks. Frank Shilling, one of the Tilbury dockers told us, “We remember Mickie not just as an exemplary fighter in the trade union movement, but in the wider movement as a whole.”

Mickie’s time with the UWC was short in comparison to a lifetime of struggle. Though he was only organised politically for a short time in the CPGB and the International Socialists, the UWC learnt much from his battles and is proud to be associated with him and the other tireless class fighters on the docks.

Linda Addison