A-Infos (en) Lessons of Liverpool dockers strike

[Platformist Anarchism <platform@geocities.com>]

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Article in the "The Guardian" Feb 2
Yellow Pages, yellow wages - in our union
by Mark Steel

I am just old enough to remember the days when 
union leaders appeared on television with their 
waistcoat buttons done up wrong and gravy down 
their tie. "With regardness to the offer we can 
only reconfirm that we are appalled at the 
level-ness of unfairment contained within this 
offer," they would say.

The modern union leader is well dressed, an 
expert in camera technique, writes grammatically 
perfect letters to the broadsheets, and makes 
even less sense than before.

After the defeat of the Liverpool dockers' 
strike, a debate has been taking place in this 
paper's letters page between Bill Morris and 
John Pilger. Pilger blamed the defeat on the 
TGWU's "craven silence", and Morris replied with 
"why does Mr Pilger always reserve his venom for 
workers' own organisations?". But Pilger's most 
famous campaign was to expose the atrocities of 
Pol Pot. Perhaps Morris has got Pol Pot mixed up 
with someone else, and thinks that instead of 
being leader of the Khmer Rouge he was North-
east regional secretary of the GMBU.

Morris also writes that Pilger wanted an excuse 
to "renew his vendetta against the Transport and 
General Worker's Union". In which case Pilger, 
who has spent over two years campaigning for 
sacked TGWU dockers, is pretty useless at 
vendettas. He would be no good in the Mafia, 
with Sonny Corleone forever taking him to one 
side and asking: "John, why are you raising 
money for the Tatallia family's Christmas 
automatic handgun appeal?" With Pilger replying; 
"Purely business Sonny. It's part of my vendetta 
against them."

Morris then blames "John Pilger and others like 
him" for giving the dockers "false hope" by 
claiming they could win.

So to lead a successful campaign you must always 
tell people they haven't a prayer. if Bill 
Morris had been at Agincourt his stirring speech 
would have been, "I wouldn't bother going unto 
that breach boys, have you seen the size of some 
of them French? Anyway its against the law to 
flare your nostrils."

It would be marvellous if Bill spread this 
message of despair to everyone else he met. 
Because on a 70,000 salary, recently installed 
on the board of the Bank of England, and nicely 
placed at the Queen and Prince Philip's golden 
wedding banquet between Lieutenant Commander J 
Beavis and Sir Paul Condon, in a matter of weeks 
he could have had Britain's rulers deciding 
there is no point in getting up in the morning, 
and handing over power to a vegetarian co-op in 
Hackney.

With almost any strike being against the law, 
backing the dockers, it is argued, would have 
been playing into the employers' hands. This is 
the "Don't fight back, that's what they want you 
to do" theory of history. For example, during 
the German occupation of France, when some went 
off to organise the French resistance, and 
others said: "Don't ambush them, blow up their 
tanks and shoot the Kommandant. That's exactly 
what they want you to do."

Union leaders ponder how to stop the decline in 
union membership, and produce insurance schemes 
and credit cards to attract members. The trouble 
is you can get these things anyway with the help 
of Yellow Pages, but if your union cannot defend 
you against a ruthless employer there is no 
point in ringing Direct Line instead. As far as 
I know there is no part of their recorded 
message that goes; "if you'd like to set up a 
picket line press six."

So the greatest example of union recruitment in 
recent times is the 11 million Poles who joined 
Solidarnosc in three months in 1981. Bill Morris 
probably thinks: "Lech Walesa must have been 
offering a bloody good deal on holiday 
insurance."

Unions depend on the principle of standing up 
for one another in-stead of just for yourself. 
Five hundred ex-dockers, many of whom were 
nearing retirement and could have opted for an 
easy life, sacrificed a tremendous amount for 
that principle, and will be remembered with 
great affection by the many people they touched. 
Just as everyone knows about the slave who said, 
"I am Spartacus"; but no one ever remembered the 
one who said, "It's him, this one here, fourth 
from the left. After all we can't break the law. 
But tell the Senate I'm willing to reach a 
negotiated settlement."

Early on in the dispute, Morris made a speech to 
the dockers which won him a standing ovation, in 
which he told of how he'd be proud to tell his 
grandchildren of his role in the dispute. Well 
that's going to lead to some pretty confused 
grandchildren. "Mummy," they'll say "this 
afternoon Grandad put us on his knee and said, 
'Are you sit-ting comfortably? Well let me tell 
you about my proudest battle. Two and a half 
years it went on, and in all that time not once 
did I spread an ounce of false hope'." 

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