By James Vassilopoulos
On January 26, Jimmy Nolan, the chairperson of the Merseyside Port Shop Stewards Committee, notified supporters that the Liverpool dockers had decided to end their two-and-a-half-year dispute.
After a herculean and heroic effort, they ended their lockout by agreeing to the last deal management had offered them. This meant that the dockers' demands were not achieved.
The dispute began in August 1995 after 20 dockers were sacked and replaced by casual workers. The picket line which was then set up was not crossed by other dockers, which led to 500 dockers being locked out by the Mersey Dock and Harbour Company (MDHC) and scabs being employed to do their work.
The dockers had demanded that they be reinstated under the old conditions, that they have the choice to retire with dignity and that all the scabs be forced to leave the port.
In the end they got a £28,000 redundancy package and continuity of pensions. About 80 young dockers employed with the company Torside, where the dispute had originally begun, are not covered by the terms of the agreement.
There is no guarantee for job reinstatement for the 500 dockers, although about 50 may get jobs as auxiliary workers on the wharves.
Although they were defeated in achieving their demands, Bob Richie, a Liverpool docker and shop steward, interviewed in the Socialist, said, "We're not looking at it as a defeat, instead it has raised the consciousness of all those involved".
The dockers, in their January 28 letter to supporters, quoted James Larkin, the great Irish trade unionist: "Who is it speaks for defeat? I tell you a cause like ours is greater than defeat can know. It is the power of powers."
Now there is not one union port in Britain with a collective agreement in place. "Such is the legacy of 20 years of Tory and now 'New Labour' government's service to capital", a statement by the Liverpool Dockers Victory Defence Committee in Oakland, California, pointed out.
In explaining why the dockers took the hard decision to end their dispute, Richie said, "We did it firstly because of the lack of support from the Transport and General Workers Union [their own union], particularly at the December meeting of the General Executive Council".
The leadership of the TGWU had also colluded with the International Transport Workers Federation to stop dockers from getting international support of other dockers and seafarers.
Throughout the dispute, the general secretary of the TGWU, Bill Morris, refused to make the picket line official, for fear of braking the secondary picket laws of the UK. He repeatedly stated that he did not want the "fabric of the union" destroyed. The most the union did was provide financial support, which was not nearly enough to win the fight.
With the union providing no leadership, the dockers were left isolated. The essence of unionism is that when one group of workers are under attack, other groups come to their support. Plans could have been developed with the aid of other unions to support the dockers industrially, lease assets, rename bank accounts and wage a political campaign against the anti-union laws.
Secondly, the dockers lost because of the role played by the Labour Party. "New" Labour was elected in May 1997, but did almost nothing to find a just resolution for 500 suffering working-class families.
The government had a 14% share in the MDHC, maintained that ownership and was therefore explicitly involved as an opponent of the dockers. It never used its shares to assist the dockers.
As Richie explained, "We tried to meet up with the Mersey MPs, but only two or three turned up".
Thirdly, other unions did not provide the necessary support to stop the dockers from being isolated and defeated. Richie said, "It's all very well and good throwing money into a bucket, but what we needed was solidarity action. The union leaders just hide behind the anti-union laws which makes it hard to get around them to reach the rank-and-file."
Dave Cotterill, secretary of the Merseyside Socialist Party and a solidarity activist with the dockers, wrote that from day one the dockers had meetings with shop stewards and union officials, but none of the meetings produced any real successes.
"Calls for a one-day general strike on Merseyside were not successful", wrote Cotterill in the January 30 issue of the Socialist. The reasons for the defeat ran deeper than the conservative role almost all union leaders played. Key was the consciousness of the working class, its combativity and the strength of the delegate structures. After 18 years of Tory successes, few workers have a "dare to struggle, dare to win" approach.
Cotterill explains, "Without any major national industrial struggles in the last ten years, the active participation at rank and file level has declined. Many of the old organisational channels have gone and with them confidence in carrying out previous forms of solidarity action."
Here the signs are ominous for Australia and the Coalition-National Farmers Federation-big business war against the Maritime Union of Australia. The ALP's Prices and Incomes Accord, which reduced industrial disputes to the lowest level for 40 years, severely weakened delegate structures and union militancy.
The fight of the Liverpool dockers had not ended even though the dispute has. A meeting of the dockers agreed to support the next social justice rally in London, to form a network of organisations in struggles and to convene a conference of militants in the TGWU.
In Oakland, California, on February 26, there will be a rally in front of the headquarters of the Pacific Maritime Association, the coastwide bosses' association. The rally will protest against the lawsuits the PMA has taken out against the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's picket of the Neptune Jade — a ship which was loaded in the port of Liverpool.