The Liverpool docks dispute is reaching its first anniversary. The dockers were sacked when they refused to cross picket lines put in place by contract workers. This was a clear provocation set up by their management in order to attack the only remaining British port with a strongly organised work force. This report, by Pete Firmin and Mark Harrison, is reprinted from International Viewpoint.
The dockers, and their partners' organisation Women on the Waterfront, have put up a magnificent struggle, resisting several attempts by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company to buy them out and building impressive international solidarity. Liverpool-based ships have been blacked and delayed, and MDHC's profits have been hit.
What a contrast with the minimal public support and behind-the-scenes sabotage of the leaders of the British and international trade unions which are supposed to represent the strikers.
Leaders of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) are deeply hostile
to the independent international rank and file contacts pursued by the Liverpool dockers. In September, several European dockers' unions pulled out of the (striker-sponsored) international dockers' conference in Liverpool after receiving last-minute faxes from ITF general secretary David Cockcroft.
Cockcroft was upset that direct links, international picketing and actions like the occupations of gantry cranes in Montreal were taking place without his advance knowledge. The ITF has assured union leaders abroad that officials in the strikers' union, the powerful Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) will soon end the strike.
The TGWU, despite the "left" majority on its executive, will not give official support because the dockers' action is illegal under the Tories' anti-union laws. Ironically, much of the publicity drive by dockers abroad would have been illegal here.
In clear opposition to the strategy developed and still supported by a large majority of the strikers, the TGWU is seeking a settlement short of full reinstatement. In August, the TGWU's powerful Finance and General Purposes committee refused to meet with the stewards. And in early September, the union undermined the strikers' position by calling for negotiations "without preconditions".
There are threats that the TGWU National Executive will give the dockers an ultimatum: accept the deal they have already rejected or lose all TGWU backing. Loss of TGWU support would mean exclusion from the TGWU's Liverpool office, and possibly the TGWU informing other unions and dockers' unions internationally that they have withdrawn support, making it harder to win solidarity action.
This scandalous threat is made easier because the dockers have never really challenged the TGWU's lack of support. Instead, the dockers' leaders have argued that they are stronger without official backing. This is rather strange.
In early September, TGWU general secretary Bill Morris threatened the union's delegates at the annual conference of Britain's Trade Union Congress with disciplinary action if they moved that the dockers be allowed to address congress. This would have been more difficult for him to do if the dispute were official. When they have been allowed access to trade union conferences, dockers have won generous political and financial support.
Throughout the strike, the TGWU has given only token support. Union chairman Bill Morris occasionally speaks at rallies, and supposedly collects money for the dockers. Very little of this money has been seen by the strikers.
Morris' main activity has been trying to sell the dockers out. He has brokered deals with the MDHC behind the dockers' backs and then tried to get them to accept. Fortunately, the dockers have stood firm and repeatedly rejected union-sponsored deals in which many of them would lose their jobs.
For the dockers, the forthcoming talks with the port authorities must seek the reinstatement of all men sacked in the dispute, with the reinstated men taking up their jobs as dockers rather than redeployment into ancillary areas. Those who wish to leave the industry must then be offered voluntary severance. Bill Morris says publicly that negotiations cannot go beyond the 329 men directly employed by MDHC last September, and that, in any case, re-employment does not mean a return to work as a docker, but to any ancillary job proposed by the employer. This is exactly the same framework for talks as the MDHC itself proposes!
The employers are furious that the international blockade has done enough damage to convince shipping lines around the world that Liverpool is a "strike-bound port". For years, they have been able to limit militant activity by dealing with the national union, rather than with the Liverpool stewards who directly represent waterfront workers.
Union leaders are concerned that a rank-and-file initiative could generate much support. They know that it will be very difficult to regain control over the union membership and impose a moderate "solution". Anti-union legislation brought in over a decade of Thatcherism limits the union's room for manoeuvre. As a result, the TGWU leadership has played a cautious hand, hardly publicising the lockout. "Which side are they on?", the strikers are asking.