A-Infos (en) Liverpool Dockers' hard decision

[Platformist Anarchism <platform@geocities.com>]

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     A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
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The Liverpool dockers ended there long
fight a couple of weeks ago.  This letter
from Jimmy Nolan explains why they took
this decision. 

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Dockers' hard decision

After two years and four months the Liverpool 
dockworkers have decided to end their dispute 
following a recommendation from shop stewards. 

Over the past four weeks the shop stewards have 
been debating what direction the dispute had been 
moving in. The conclusions that we came to were 
that in certain key areas the campaign had 
started to falter and that in order not to see 
good men and women lose everything or risk a 
collapse from within, we decided to conclude a 
collective agreement on the best possible terms 
achievable. 

We felt that following the last secret ballot in 
October 1997, in which we gained a 70% rejection 
of the employers offer, a springboard for greater 
supportive actions should have been launched. In 
terms of a political intervention from the new 
Labour government by the use of their 14% 
shareholding that they have in the company and a 
far more positive role from our own union 
leadership in calling for an increase in both the 
national support through the TGWU industrial 
branches and international support via the ITF. 
That support never materialised - in fact, both 
of these organisations decided to support the 
line of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, in 
stating that the dispute was over. 

This was also compounded by the fact that the two 
biggest container companies that use the port of 
Liverpool, ACL and CAST, had not been touched by 
industrial action for some time. We also suffered 
the sad loss of two of our stalwarts from the 
picket line who died over the Christmas/New Year 
period, making a total of four during the course 
of the dispute. 

These elements, along with the extreme hardship 
that the men and women have had to endure over 
the past 28 months, and the more hard-line 
tactics of the police on the picket lines, were 
major factors in our decision to bring the heroic 
struggle of the Liverpool dockers, their families 
and their supporters to some form of conclusion. 

The terms of the settlement were based on up to 
£28,000 redundancy payment for all ex-Merseyside 
Docks men. We have approximately 80 of our 
dockers who are excluded from this process and it 
is our intention to raise some financial package 
to ease the obvious debt burden they have 
accumulated over the last two and a half years. A 
number of jobs are on offer in the port and we 
continue to examine the practicability of this 
option. A joint approach will be made in relation 
to the pension entitlements on the majority of 
dockers. We have to recognise that work in 
Liverpool is a rare commodity and we expect that 
all our comrades will experience great difficulty 
over the next few years. 

It is with a great sadness in our hearts that we 
write to all our magnificent supporters and 
express our deepest gratitude. We have to build 
upon our internationalism, upon the experiences 
of all our struggles. Let the words of a great 
Irish trade unionist capture our thoughts: 

"Who is it to speak of defeat? I tell you a cause 
like ours is greater than defeat can know. It is 
the power of powers" 
(James Larkin). 

Jimmy Nolan 
Chairman, 
Merseyside Port Shop Stewards 


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