27.11.1997

STUC shuns dockers

Last week Dundee dockers support group organised a fringe meeting at the STUC Women’s conference, held in the city, under the title ‘Solidarity with the Liverpool dockers’.

Almost 40 delegates and supporters of the dockers took part in the lunch time meeting. It should be noted that no official invite was made to them by the STUC to speak to the conference itself. Doreen McNally, from Women of the Waterfront, started her speech by correcting the “gross misrepresentation” made earlier from the conference platform by the Transport and General Workers Union’s Margaret Prosser that 600 dockers were actually working in Liverpool.

However, her most intense anger was aimed at the role played in this dispute by the union’s general secretary, Bill Morris. Morris’s behaviour, particularly his connivance with the management’s recent “final offer” and the secret ballot he organised, seems to be the actions more of a ‘boss’ than a workers’ leader.

She described how over the years dockworkers had fought via the unions against casual labour and for improved conditions, and how that was now being taken away. In closing her speech, she called for the anti-trade union laws to be challenged. She pledged that the Liverpool dockers would be the spearhead for the fightback and declared that “without a shadow of doubt our struggle is a class struggle”.

Bob Ritchie, a sacked docker and shop steward, gave the background to the “final offer”. The fact that 70% of the 329 balloted rejected the offer was a “smack in the face for Morris ... we don’t want the money: we want our jobs back.” After two years of hard struggle this shows the commitment and determination of these men and their families in their fight for a principle.

Turning to the laissez-faire attitude of the Blair government, Bob pointed out that while the Labour government has very publicly declared it will not get involved in industrial disputes, “Blair picked up the phone to speak to the French government to interfere in the recent truck drivers dispute over there.” He shocked many at the meeting by describing how the TGWU bureaucrats were actually trying to recruit scabs in Liverpool.

It is clear that these misleaders will not lift a finger to help the dockers. Only workers’ own action, both here and internationally, will deliver solidarity. But crucially the struggle must be raised to a higher, political, plane.

Nick Clarke