02.10.1997

Dockers call for solidarity action

'Two years too long - victory to the Liverpool dockers’. This was the central slogan of the 3,000-strong march and rally in Liverpool on September 27. The demonstration marked the second anniversary of the locking out of 500 Transport and General Workers Union dockers by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company. A large number of trade union banners were carried by the marchers, including those of delegations from other long-running disputes - Hillingdon hospital workers, Magnet workers and MSF Project Aerospace.

International delegations were present from the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and Seafarers Union; from New Zealand Seafarers; and from dockers’ unions in Australia, United States and Sweden. A delegation from the Iranian Strike Support Group was also present. Socialist organisations were well represented, with particularly large contingents organised by the Scottish Socialist Alliance and Edinburgh Dockers Support Group and by Day Mer, the Turkish and Kurdish Community Solidarity Centre.

Jimmy Nolan and Jimmy Davies, chair and secretary respectively of the Mersey Dockers Shop Stewards Committee, opened the rally. They expressed the dockers’ deepest appreciation of the worldwide solidarity actions which took place on September 8, the third international day of action for the Liverpool dockers. Stoppages had taken place in 100 ports in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal and South Africa.

The South African strike took place despite a threat of legal action and, in a development of immense significance, the South African dockers are to boycott indefinitely ships destined for MDHC-owned ports.

This action will particularly hit the recently announced 20-year contract for the importation of Capespan fruit via Sheerness docks, where the MDHC has spent £17 million on new cold store and distribution facilities.

Jimmy Davies contrasted his jubilance at the international solidarity with his deep shame that on September 8, as normal, TGWU members employed as tugmen and ancillaries continued to bring ships into Liverpool to be unloaded by Drake International’s scabs. He went on to make a further telling contrast. In Los Angeles, in Colombo, and in Cairns, Australia, port employers have moved recently to break union organisation by bringing in non-union labour to work ships.

In each case the International Transport Federation has moved to coordinate action by its affiliated unions to counter these moves. In Cairns joint action by the Maritime Union of Australia and the Seafarers’ and Dockers’ sections of the ITF was successful in halting the replacement of unionised workers with non-unionised contract workers, thus dealing a serious blow to the Australian government’s plans to undermine the MUA.

Yet for two years Liverpool has seen no official action by the ITF against the union-busting employers. The ITF’s explanation for this anomaly, Davies told us, is that TGWU leader Bill Morris has told them that he cannot “morally” ask them to support the Liverpool dockers when the TGWU was not itself supporting them. Nolan, Davies and TGWU general executive committee member Mike Cardin all told the rally, in the starkest terms, the dockers’ opinions of Morris and the TGWU executive committee:

“Bill Morris is clearly working to defeat this dispute”; “The general secretary of the TGWU should resign”; “The scoundrels of the TGWU executive committee and the trade union officials must be forced to do their job. If they don’t they must be thrown out”; “Bill Morris and the TUC - get off your knees, organise the working class, or resign”.

It was revealed that the dockers’ shop stewards have been considering resigning their union positions. Doreen McNally, chair of Women of the Waterfront, implied a criticism of any such move when she stated that enclosed with her letter demanding Bill Morris’ resignation would be her application for his job. Doreen recalled Tony Blair’s pledge, from the steps of No 10 Downing Street on May 2: “New Labour will govern for all of the people.” It was now clear that “all of the people” excluded the Liverpool dockers, the Hillingdon hospital workers and the Magnet workers.

Doreen and Jimmy Nolan both reported that a Liverpool dockers’ delegation was to travel the next day to the Labour Party conference, where they would seek an audience with prime minister Blair. Blair had already signalled his refusal to meet them. The delegation would tell him that he does not represent the working class, and that the Liverpool dockers were determined to carry forward the fight for representative democracy, in the spirit of the Chartist movement of the last century.

Journalist John Pilger commented on the discovery of the Liverpool dockers’ dispute, after just two years, by the ‘people’s paper’, the Daily Mirror. He slammed the slavish line being peddled by most journalists. They describe the dockers’ fight as a struggle of ‘dinosaurs’. “No way,” he said. “It is one of the most modern struggles of working people in the world. It is a struggle against the effects of globalisation. Already, in the US, casualisation of labour is a disease. In the new South Africa dockers are fighting for a dock labour scheme ... Stop writing sentimental stories about white-haired men on picket lines,” he challenged. “Write the political story.”

John Hendy QC, who had represented London dockers sacked during the 1989 strike against the smashing of the Dock Labour Scheme, had some advice for the Labour foreign secretary. Robin Cook has announced his intention to implement government policy of linking foreign trade, especially arms trade, to human rights demands.

Hendy asked:

“When are the government going to take action against the MDHC which is abusing human rights? The British government, with its trade union legislation, is in breach of International Labour Organisation conventions, to which it is a signatory. These are the conventions on the right to strike and on the right of trade unions to take action to defend their members. The ILO has told the British government of these breaches every year since 1979. Yet Blair’s election manifesto stated the intention that those breaches be continued by maintaining the most restrictive trade union legislation in the western world. Britain is an international law breaker. Cook’s crusade should start at home.”

Following the messages of support from the international delegations, the rally closed with a call from the dockers to the organised working class:

“Two years is too long. We want a victory in this struggle soon. You know that, if such circumstances had occurred elsewhere, we would have come out for you. We want your financial support to be extended to physical action.”

There is clearly a desire by the dockers and their families to achieve a successful conclusion. They want to see decisive solidarity action. Their disgust at the betrayals of the union and Labour bureaucracies is total. They are looking for action from below. The dockers’ support groups, the socialist organisations and trade union organisations will now have to consider how to respond to the dockers’ call.

Derek Hunter