The Pentonville 5: dockers in action - Our History No.7 (New series)

The Pentonville 5: dockers in action

solidarity and the anti-union laws

by Graham Stevenson, Foreword by Mick Costello

HISTORY Pamphlet No. 7 New Series £1.50

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Published by the Communist Party July 2012

ISBN 978-1-908315-19-9

Britain’s

Road to Socialism

The new edition of Britain’s Road to

Socialism, the Communist Party’s

programme, adopted in July 2011; presents and analysis of capitalism and

imperialism in its current form;

answers the questions of how a

revolutionary transformation might be

bought about in 21st Century Britain;

and what a socialist and communist

society in Britain might look like.

The BRS was first published in 1951

after nearly six years of discussion and

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movement and working class. Over its

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million copies in Britain and helped to

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working class for more than half a

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the BRS have been published in 1952,

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Cover Image On being released from prison with no

stain on his character, Vic Turner, leading port shop

steward and Communist, is carried high on the

shoulders of supporters outside Pentonville jail,

against the backcloth of probably the most famous

banner of the 1970s

Our History No. 7 1

Pentonville 5: Dockers in action, solidarity and the anti-union laws

CONTENTS

page

Foreword by Mick Costello 2

The Pentonville 5: Dockers in action,

solidarity, and the anti-union laws

Graham Stevenson

Introduction 7

Preface 5

The 1970 national docks dispute 10

Containerisation and the NIRC 15

Communist Party www.communist-party.org.uk

HISTORY Pamphlet No. 7 New Series £1.50

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A quick release 26

The 1972 docks strike 20

In the short and the long run 31

Sources 32

Biographical note 32

2 Communist Party History Group


Foreword

This, the latest in the Communist Party’s “Our History “series serves to restore

knowledge of another major class conflict, one that pitched Britain’s Dockers against

the ruling class use of the laws and courts to cut the value of wages and reduce the

labour force in order to increase its profits.

A major lesson from the experience of conflict under capitalism is that whatever battle

is won by organised workers has to be fought again, and again, and again to retain

gains made. A major weapon in the class enemy’s armoury is to steal the history of

class struggle from working people, to deny them the knowledge of their own history,

as one can see in most history books, school and university syllabuses and the mass

media of Press, TV and radio as well as the web, including Wikipedia.

See what you get if you call up Labour’s anti-union Bill “In Place of Strife” or the

Tories’ sequence, the “Industrial Relations Act” and note the virtually total omission

of descriptions of the pressure of the mass movements, including widespread strikes

that underlay the defeats of those programmes for hobbling workers in the form that

they were originally put forward. Similarly, with the Dockers’ fight for pay, jobs and de

-casualisation in the 1960s and 1970s… And, just as then, the Morning Star remains

the only daily newspaper that described the struggles to help the Dockers retain

confidence in their ability to win victories though struggle.

This pamphlet sets much of the record straight, honestly describing what happened

from the ground level upwards, in the docks, the law courts and government

commissions, and in the labour movement’s fight back. It brings out the part played by

Communists as trusted openly-elected workers’ representatives as shop stewards who

provided leadership. They were elected by their co-workers - not through backroom

conspiracies. None of the information that the secret police got from its informers, as

the pamphlet describes, could be of much use against the trade unions’ open

democracy.

The pamphlet has relevance to what is happening today, as again Right-wing Labour

and the Tories argue about the ways in which living standards must be brought down

‘in the common interest’ to protect the bosses’ profits during the current political and

economic crisis capitalism faces.

Today, just as in the years of the Dockers’ struggles that are described in the pamphlet,

Our History No. 7 3


the ruling class’ fundamental strategy is to pass and enforce laws to hold down wages,

sack workers by describing them as “redundant” (!) and deny workers the right to

organise for action, yet leaving untouched the bosses’ profits, their ownership and

control of extractive, manufacturing and distribution industries, the land and,

increasingly, the social services and the industries and labour that supply these. They

do this under any name or catchword they can dream up: “social contract”, “incomes

policy”, “wage restraint” and the fantasy that “we’re all in this together” and so on.

But none of this can stop organised workers taking action because the class struggle

cannot be legislated away. That is one lesson of the dockers’ battles and of all other

workers’ struggles. The reminder about the dockers can help to see them together with

miners, hospital, local government, education, health, construction and all other

workers in struggle. Awareness that victories can be won is essential for the working

class and democratic movement to mobilise against attacks from the bosses and their

government today. This pamphlet helps towards this by telling the dockers’ story.



Mick Costello - a

biographical note

When a student at Manchester University,

Mick Costello became an activist in

Communist student work and won a election

to the President of the Student Union by

beating Anna Ford, later to become a well-

known TV journalist.

He was connected with the practical and

theoretical study of Soviet economics before

becoming the Communist Party’s National

Industrial Organiser in succession to Bert

Ramelson. This was arguably the high point

of Communist influence in the trade union

movement which had been built up over the

years, with a reputed one quarter of delegates

to the TUC being members or close supporters

of the Party. At one point the Sun called

Costello "the most dangerous man in

Britain".

Costello was the Industrial Editor of the

Morning Star for periods in the 1970s and in

the early 1980s, playing a vital role during the

miners’ strike, not just by making the

Morning Star virtually the only that

authoritatively covered the dispute.

He also worked closely with a number of that special breed of journalist, the now largely

defunct industrial correspondent, to promote awareness of how the Left worked within the

unions and a proper understanding of the subtleties of events and personalities.

Recognition of this was shown in his repeated election to chairmanship of the Labour and

Industrial Correspondents Group of journalists.

Mick Costello became much involved with promoting economic and trade union contact

with the Soviet Union and Russia during the 1990s. In more recent years, he has returned to

academic work. He is currently the Kent secretary of the Communist Party.

Mick Costello in the 1970s

Our History No. 7 5


Preface The force of the response of, especially, London Dockers in the 1960s and 1970s against

attacks on their organisation, job protection and living standards cannot be

understood without an appreciation of the context of the decades that led up to it.

Towards the end of the term of office of the first post-war Labour Government, it

faced an unofficial wages strike by Dockers in a number of ports but mainly London.

In response, government ministers sought to use war-time regulations to smash the

strike.

Dockers’ rank-and-file leaders were charged with conspiracy to incite in contravention

of national arbitration order number 1305 (introduced in July 1941). This prohibited

strikes unless the Minister of Labour had not referred the dispute for settlement within

twenty-one days. Seven `ringleaders’ were identified – most of them Communist Party

members. From London, there was Joe Cowley, Ted Dickens, Harry Constable and

Albert Timothy; from Liverpool: Bob Crosby and J "Nudger" Harrison; and from

Birkenhead, Bill Johnson.

1951 Dockers’ rank-and-file

leaders, Albert Timothy, Ted

Dickens, Harry Constable

On 9th February 1951 police

raided the White Hart public

house Ratcliffe Highway, Stepney where a meeting of the unofficial Port Workers

Committee was taking place: "suddenly the doors of the committee room burst open and in

stepped five hefty six-footers, up spoke the chairman "I don't know what sector you're from,

but I've never seen you on the committee, who are you?

"We are the Law" said one of them "and it's a pinch."

"A pinch?" said Wally Jones the Chairman. "What on earth are you talking about? We are

a strike committee!"

"That's it”, said the police spokesman. "We are arresting seven of your members under

Order 1305, strikes and lockouts are illegal and you have contravened the Law"

In response 7,000 dockers stopped work in London and 11,000 on Merseyside and, on

their first day in court the same number of dock workers struck again …and again!

London dockers came out seven times on 24 hour protest strikes under the slogan "If

they're in the Dock, we're out of the Dock !". Dockers turned up to support the men

throughout the trial and Vic Marney, Secretary of the Unofficial Liaison Committee

was arrested for obstruction. Finally, 8,000 men turned up to support the men on the



day the verdict was to be announced,

singing Land of Hope and Glory, Rule

Britannia, Sons of the Sea, and a moving

rendition of Kevin Barry by those of

Irish descent. The seven were duly

acquitted on all counts and were carried

shoulder high through police lines,

leading to the hostile police organising a

mounted “Cossack” style assault on the

dockers.

Some of the men involved in this massive

protest were still trying to get work on the

docks as the `rationalisations’ of the 60s and 70s hit. But perhaps more significant was

that dockers’ sons did not ask what their fathers did in the war. They knew that well;

since it was a reserved occupation most of the men of 1951 had to carry on working.

They had to have nerves of steel, tested by their need to sit night after night under the

storm of raining bombs that sought to obliterate their workplaces. But most dockers

did ask what their fathers had done in the 1951 strike! Many of the dockers active in

1972 were the sons of the men of 1951, brought up on tales of derring-do in the teeth

of the opposition of the State to

London dockers, who stood

united, to a man. These were not

men brought up to tremble at

the knees at a little law-breaking!

During a period most obviously

best paralleled to the Great

Unrest of 1910-14, the London

and Liverpool dockers in

particular showed themselves

possessed of a brand of

militancy so stalwart that

everyone else had to race to

catch them up.

A contemporary depiction of the dockers’ leaders being

burst upon by police

Ted Dickens (left) and Joe Cowley (right) the Communist leaders of

London dockers triumphantly carried on shoulders of dockers after

being released.

Our History No. 7 7


Introduction

The 1970 and 1972 docks’ strike and the build-up to a Pentonville general strike were

just part of a phase of stunningly effective militancy during the 1970-4 Tory

government, including two miners’ strikes, the latter of which culminated in the Tories'

electoral defeat. Unquestionably, the source of the conflict lay in two facets of Tory

strategy and its de-facto alignment with Right-wing Labour policy of collaboration

with the employers, one of which was to seek to diminish the value of working class

incomes and the other was to shackle the ability of their unions to defend these.

The grand plan enshrined in the Tory 1971 Industrial Relations Act was a significant

challenge to the freedom and independence of British trade union. Whilst the TUC

dithered, most trade unions were not prepared to let it come in without a darned good

fight. The Liasion Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions (LCDTU) (of which

more later) led the way with a call to mass industrial action, backed by five unions, and

several mass strikes took place. Almost certainly the largest demonstration ever, up to

that time, took place when the TUC called a campaign against the draft legislation

that led to the Act after hundreds of thousands of workers took part in unofficial days

of action. But the TUC’s official slogan òut with the bill’ contrasted sharply with the

more radical `kill the Bill’ that formed the most popular badge worn that day. More

significantly, real and serious political strikes took place – including massive unofficial

ones. One source suggested over 100,000 workers walked out on strike in one London

protest alone. Some industrial relations history authorities now concede that as many

as 1.5 or even 2 million people stopped work across the country in several mass protests

and the numbers on demonstrations in many cities have certainly rarely, if ever, been

exceeded since.

But the Act was steam-rollered in, even if – in daily practice - it was doomed to hardly

see the light of day. After the rail workers made fools of the authorities, the dockers

trashed the legislation practically for good. The law’s main thrust was to restrict the

power of workers and their unions by establishing a special court to handle relevant

cases, the National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC). This political high chamber

was doomed to fail and the story of Pentonville is largely that story.

Aiming also to fundamentally alter the balance of power between workers and

employers, with the state fielding for the latter, the Tory Industrial Relations Act

failed abysmally in its purpose. Section 5 of the Act gave workers the right not to

belong to a union but this had little effect on most closed shop agreements. It took the

Tebbit-inspired legislation of the early 1980s to finally bring about a change on this



aspect. Applications to Industrial Tribunals to resolve conflicts at work about

discipline were introduced but this system did not take off until a returned Labour

government softened some of the draconic provisions of the Act in the mid-1970s and

the Con-Dems are now poised to turn the clock back in practice. Rights to obtain

formal recognition were provided but this needed the unions to collaborate with the

whole approach and, given that we had won a TUC policy that prevented affiliated

unions from using the procedures of the Act on pain of expulsion, this measure was

also ineffectual.

Although some non-affiliated organisations attempted to make use of it, such as the

National Association of Licensed House Managers, the Telecommunications Staff

Association, the Union of Kodak Workers and, notably, UKAPE, the so-called

“professional engineers”. The term “professional” being used a lot in those days to

mean “scab”! Interestingly, in historic terms, every single one of these anti-strike and

pro-management bodies, one way or another, was eventually simply absorbed by Unite

– the union.

Only in the year 2000, rather belatedly, were legal rights to recognition granted by the

Blair government; although an initial flurry faded as employers showed they still prefer

to leave matters to voluntary arrangements and will only ever collaborate with

recognition when forced by union power.

So-called "emergency powers" of the Industrial Relations Act to order “cooling-off

periods” and compulsory ballots were used in a rail dispute in 1972, and these caused

some difficulties for the relevant union at the time but had not affected the eventual

outcome of the dispute. An enforced ballot simply saw workers vote even more

enthusiastically for a strike!

This issue of balloting would return but, in a way, for all the sound and fury that

followed the Tebbit laws of the early 1980s, some three decades of balloting systems

for strikes have simply seen the results now become a leverage stage in bargaining.

Whilst bureaucratic restrictions remain, some hard factors have been dulled over the

years and workers in some industries have begun to resort to unofficial action once

again.

But it was the decision of NIRC to find both the Transport & General Workers Union

and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers in contempt of court, fining each

substantially. Ultimately, the AUEW’s fine was paid anonymously. Despite the huge

sums, rather more seriously, these fines underlined the fact that unions were liable

under the Act in respect of any actions carried out by their shop stewards acting

Our History No. 7 9


within the scope of the stewards' authority.

In the short-term, little came of this, except perhaps a feeling amongst union leaders

that shop stewards needed training. Also, the right-wing in the AUEW would make

much of the issue in their campaign, being massively supported by the press on this

and subsequent matters, to lever themselves into a dominant position in the union.

This would result in shifting the union so far to the right that it would take a

generation to even begin to recover and then in a new formation. In the longer term, it

resulted in the Tories learning the lesson that hitting unions in their bank accounts

could work – but the labour movement had to go through the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike to

experience the sharpest of that pain.

The Act's provisions as regards the concept of unfair industrial practices in theory

placed serious legal limits on industrial action. But, on the whole, employers did not

invoke legal procedures as this would cause the situation to deteriorate rather than

assist in promoting a settlement. This tendency to leave well alone was arguably

massively reinforced by the events of 1972. Not only had

there been a massively successful national miners’ strike

– the first since 1926 but the occupation of the UCS ship

yards had begun. Postal workers were on strike for six

weeks. The national building workers strike had started

and council tenants all over the country were involved in

rent strikes.

Unquestionably, however, the 1971 Act met its biggest

test on what was its main intent – the inhibition of

popular militancy as a result of the case of Pentonville 5.

In the words of Bert Ramelson, National Industrial

Organiser of the Communist Party, after Pentonville, the

Industrial Relations Act became simply “inoperable”.

NIRC would then be abolished by the Trade Union and

Labour Relations Act 1974, soon after the Labour Party

formed a government.

The story of how that happened is so important to tell,

even if it is only so that we can learn the more difficult lessons that tested our

movement in the years that followed, about unity, connecting theory and practice,

sharpening our weapons, and leaders maintaining the closest good links with the rank

and file.

Marching against the Industrial

Relations Act during its bill stages



The 1970 National Dispute

Today, 90% of Britain’s `visible’ goods enter the country through a port; back in the

1960s and 1970s how much value in exports that the country had going out, compared

to imports coming in, was seen as vital to the health of the economy. Then, 90% of

Britain’s manufactures were exported through a port. Thus, docks strikes in those days

often prompted fears of major damage to industry and even food shortages, leading to

suggestions of the armed forces taking over the docks in a declared State of

Emergency.

Dock workers were a militant bunch, often at loggerheads with their own union – the

main one being the Transport & General Workers Union - especially when its leadership

veered sharply to the right as it did during the period 1948-1955. In the main, in the

latter half of the 20th century, dockers’ pay and conditions were settled by a national

agreement in the context of state regulation of labour and much public ownership,

making the bargaining that went on in ports a major political issue. There had been

problems aplenty in the immediate years before the story of the Pentonville 5 unfolds

but a general election held on 18th June 1970 would shift the gear heavily upwards.

The election resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader

Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party then led by Prime Minister Harold

Wilson. Heath inherited the provisions of legislation from his predecessor that meant

state regulation of wages through a prices and incomes policy that held down wages

and a board to enforce this. Despite this, on 15th July 1970, nearly fifty thousand

dockers went on official national strike for £11 a week rise, well beyond what the

legislation implied was acceptable but certainly justified in terms of what dockers

contributed to the economy and needed as a rise just to maintain the value of wages.

The TGWU’s Docks Delegate Conference voted 48 to 32 in favour of national strike

action – the first of its kind since 1926.

In response, the government declared a state of emergency and put troops on standby.

Two weeks of action followed until, as a means of settlement, a court of inquiry was

convened under Lord Pearson’s chairmanship, which laid down a 7% pay increase on

27th July. As it happens, involvement of the military in the dispute was avoided by

the dockers agreeing to handle perishable goods.

Initially the dockers rejected the terms saying they made little real difference to their

basic wage. Finally, the TGWU Docks Delegate Conference, meeting on Thursday 30th

Our History No. 7 11


July, reluctantly accepted Pearson's findings by a vote of 51 to 31, meaning a return to

work on the following Monday 3rd August.

A measure of how sensitive were docks strikes is shown by the revelations that came

when cabinet papers covering 1970 were released under the 30-year rule at the start of

2001. It seems that, throughout the dispute, Prime Minister Heath had been getting

regular reports from MI5, based on information from agents, phone tapping and

bugging. It included accounts of private meetings between leading Communist Party

officials and dockers' shop stewards and even internal discussions about the editorial

line of the Morning Star. It emerged that a leading London docker, one Brian Nicolson,

had been an informant for MI5 at least as early as this dispute,

providing information to the state on the tactical plans of the

dockers and the union.

Big chunks of the publicly released documentation were blacked

out, including phrases around the name of Brian Nicholson.

Although he was just one of a number of rank and file leaders –

and not an especially significant one, in industrial terms, his

opinions are quoted in detail. His information, especially his

judgement on the role of Communists clearly informed the

British State’s tactics and strategy when it came to dock strikes.

As far as the 1970 dispute went, the judgement of the state’s spies, fed to the cabinet,

was that introducing the 34,000 troops needed to break the strike would be feasible

since the Communist Party had not had time to build an extensive support and

solidarity network that might make this a political step too far. The view expressed to

MI5 from a high level within the TGWU was that the absence of Jack Dash from the

scene had led to the Communist Party being “caught by surprise". Dash was the

legendary leader of London dockers, who was involved in every London dock strike

from 1945 to his retirement in 1969. Vilified by the reactionary media, Jack was a

working class poet, who said in his autobiography that the only epitaph he sought for

his tombstone would be:

“Here lies Jack Dash

All he wanted was

To separate them from their cash”

It has never been clear if Nicolson was on his own as an MI5 informant, although he

was not likely to be. But TGWU sources to the security services specifically blamed

Bernie Steer for the conflict, another Communist who was now the Secretary of the

non-official National Port Shop Stewards Committee, which united activists in most

ports around the country. Important though this role was, matters were more

Legendary Dockers’

leader, Jack Dash



complicated than blaming one man would

suggest.

Arguably, it was the interplay between the

National Amalgamated Stevedores and

Dockers’ Society (NASD) and the TGWU

that was ultimately critical in delivering a

mass of solidly united and militant

dockers at this juncture, particularly as far

as the latter union’s ban on Communists

holding office was concerned. The NASD

had not joined the 1922 amalgamation

that created the TGWU and was largely

fixed on the London docks. It had the nickname of the "blue" union (arising from the

colour of its membership card) but the abiding difference since 1948 (until 1968) was

that the NASD did not ban Communists from holding office, unlike the TGWU.

The founding in 1967 of the unofficial National Port Shop Stewards movement, which

united NASD and T&G dockers, was a critical moment for changing the dynamic

associated with the foregoing. When, in January 1968, London dockers assembled for

mass meetings to elect a joint shop stewards committee for each firm, these were joint

meetings of the NASD and the TGWU. The dockers demanded that no political bars

be adopted, for the NASD had no such ban. Eight representatives were elected by

1,950 men at the meeting and the top two successful candidates were Jack Dash and

Vic Turner, both members of the Communist Party.

The T&G official machinery refused to accept the accreditation of Dash and Turner,

whereupon all of the TGWU non-communist stewards refused to sign the renunciary

document, the Declaration of Non-Membership of the Communist Party that all

elected and appointed officials were obliged to complete before taking office. The result

was that the TGWU had no credentialed shop stewards, but the NASD did have, a

completely unsupportable state of affairs. Despite this, the T&G’s Regional Officer

and National Docks Officer met the technically elected shop stewards to argue the need

to adhere to the union’s constitution. Naturally, this was to no avail; whilst parts of

the TGWU had been failing to apply the ban on Communists holding office, at least as

far as lower levels of responsibility were concerned, in some cases as far back as 1955,

and in most for about six or seven years, the complete removal of the bans at the

forthcoming Rules Conference was the prize for the Communists. For this would then

permit the appointment of full-time officers and the election of Executive members

who were Communists. Sensing a massive shift burgeoning within the union, and

Pentonville 5 Communist, Bernie Steer



fearing backsliding by the sometimes awkward Jack Jones, who was about to become

General Secretary, London dockers anticipated the final removal of the ban by some

six months by simply acting as if it was already in the bag.

Although Nicolson subsequently belittled the significance of his name being cited in

MI5 files as an informer, trying to suggest some mutual self-abuse between himself and

MI5’s agents, the revealed precise mechanism for his handling as an informer follows a

clear pattern whereby the agency offers to help union leaders who are having

difficulties in their relationship with Communists in return for their feeding

information about them back. (Nicolson told the Guardian: "They used to play games

with me and I used to play games with them. What I told them was not significant,

unless to tell them things to let the other side know.") Aside from the thought that an

entire branch of the state machinery might well feel able to easily outwit a single

docker, how might MI5 have helped Nicolson? It appears that Nicolson so distrusted

the Communists that he traded secrets with MI5, who fed him tit bits about the Party

that he might use to undermine them, all the better to preserve his power base. Since

this was almost solely based on his membership of the TGWU Executive, he needed to

have any ammunition that prevented others from offering themselves as more

attractive candidates for the Inner-London seat on the TGWU General Executive

Council.

He had first been elected to this in the internal union elections at the end of 1968, a

moment when, for the first time since 1950, Communists were able to take their seats at

the executive table.. Indeed, something like nine or ten Communists came on to the

GEC at this point all in a flurry, so eagerly was the

lifting of the ban awaited. A major priority for the

Party in this had been to ensure the election of its

leading figure in the TGWU, now a London taxi

driver, Sid Easton. As the man entrusted during

the Cold War with literally physically protecting

and privately driving the Party’s long term leader,

Harry Pollitt, to meetings across the country,

Easton had since been working virtually full time

for most of the 1960s on creating a movement to

end the bans on Communists holding office in

Britain’s mass movements. Sid knew where all the bodies were buried as far as the

union’s increasingly left-leaning bureaucracy was concerned! His core base was only a

few thousand taxi drivers but his elevation to the GEC as representative for the

hundreds of thousands of all London T&GWU members was a remarkable testament

to how highly he was regarded.

Sid Easton in a characteristic stance at

Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park



Given that a leading comrade such as Eric Rechnitz, the rank and file leader of

London’s lorry drivers, was able to win the national seat on the GEC representing all

truckers, it did not seem out of court to allow the second geographical seat for London

to go to Nicolson, who presented himself as a left-Labour figure. After all, dockers

were then the core bloc of key members in the London and South Eastern region of

the TGWU and should take the seat over other groups of workers and it would soften

any lingering worry about a taxi driver being the key figure. Given the trade group

nature of the union, London dockers felt that their regional trade group was more

important to them than yet another Communist on a chair in the GEC. Moreover, the

Party’s Industrial Organiser, Bert Ramelson, was very firm about the need to allow

left figures of other persuasions to be in leading roles. Yet, even back then, the decision

by the extremely powerful Communist bloc within this region to stand aside was a

worry to some. Nicolson was ostensibly in support of left policies but his modus

operandi was that of an independent agent in the union and, for a long time, he was

simply tolerated with no awareness of his links with MI5 being at all evident.

Indeed, Nicolson was so ìndependent’ of any

part of the Left that in the mid-1980s, he

openly and all too easily broke with it. He then

led a right-wing revolt against the left-wing

T&G General Secretary, Ron Todd, which for

two years blighted the long reputation for left-

leaning leadership at the top of the T&G that

otherwise lasted unbroken from 1955 to 2007,

when the merger with Amicus began in order to

form Unite began. During 1986-7, Nicolson was

even the chair of the union’s GEC, blasting his

way through left policies and appointing a swath

of relatively young regional secretaries with

loyalty to the right that would blight the union’s

progress for years to come.

On more wider matters, after the 1970 docks

dispute, Heath abolished the pay and prices

policy he had inherited from Labour, its

overseeing by a Prices and Incomes Board being

replaced by market competition. Needless to say, this was not done to favour ordinary

people in the least and unions began to flex their muscles to regain lost ground and

defend their members’ conditions.

Eric Rechnitz in the late 1980s receiving his

union’s prestigious gold badge of merit from

general secretary, Ron Todd. Rechnitz is

photographed in the act of a symbolic joke,

showing his regard for the need for rank and

file vigilance by pretending to test the quality of

the gold before shaking hands!

Even so, Rechnitz strongly supported Todd’s

election. It was Rechnitz whom Kevin Halpin

credits for stopping container drivers in support

of the Pentonville 5.



Containerisation & NIRC

Shipping containers, or large reusable steel boxes designed to be moved from one mode

of transport to another without unloading and reloading, were not widely used for

intermodal freight shipments intensively until the war pursued by the USA on

Vietnam. From early 1965, the US government began a rapid build-up of military

forces in Vietnam but work to supply this was much hampered by the small size of the

single deep water port of Saigon, a problem only the box could overcome. On the US

west coast, where supplies came from, the port of Oakland was virtually given over to

military traffic to Saigon and all of this was carried in boxes, as dockers called them.

The intensity of a war that killed two million Vietnamese civilians would have been

London dockers’ policy on containerisation was anything but the negative, self-serving ambition portrayed by the

bosses bulletin newspapers. A thoughtfull approach to sharing the gains of modernisation and mechanisation

with the community and people of docklands was at the core of dockers’ thinking. Instead, their jobs were

destroyed, their communities lost, and the bankers’ paradise of Canary Wharf was the ultimate gainer.



impossible without the 1,200 containers a month that were shipped across the Pacific

Ocean.

It did not take long for port and shipping employers to see the logistics box revolution

as the next big thing and during the last years of the 1960s and early years of the

1970s, trades unionists had struggled hard to keep the loading and unloading of

containers going out and coming in ports as a task reserved for dockers. Docks work

had always been hazardous, arduous and poorly paid; adding insult to injury, it was

also typically casual. Since ships with cargo would call in to port at a time to suit

themselves, when the master or owner wanted it to be unloaded so they could move off

as quickly as possible, port employers simply did not want to pay dockers whilst they

were waiting for a ship to arrive.

During the Second World War, it had proved possible to even out working and waiting

time by using a registration scheme for dockworkers. This precedent was followed by

the creation of a National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS) in 1947 by a Labour

government, which passed the Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Act 1946

enabling this. The NDLS opened a Labour Register in order to 'de-casualise' the way

work was parcelled out. Thus, the allocation, payment, training, medical care, safety,

and pensions of all UK dockworkers was tightly regulated and labour supply

companies were also registered as part of the scheme. A National Dock Labour Board

was also set up consisting of union and employer representatives, which gave unions

considerable control over hiring and firing.

Disputes continued, however, all the way through the next decades, with the main

union, the Transport & General Workers Union and its full time officials often being

seen by the men (there were never any women dockers until after the NDLB was

dissolved) as in league with the employers within the NDLB structure. After major

disputes affecting the industry in the mid-1960s the NDLB recommended the

allocation of all registered dock workers to permanent employers, and a new and

revised scheme was introduced in 1967, which finally ended casual work.

But, by the mid-20th century, global pressure to develop containerisation of cargo

handling was also reaching a frenzy. Whilst the onset of the ubiquitous `box’ of today

has also led to the negativities of roads choked with lorries, a huge shift to road

construction at the expense of rail, the uncontrolled illicit drug importation and

immigration (no-one really knows what is in a box), its main benefit to the employers

was a massive economy of scale and the destruction of the system under which dock

work was to be sourced by unionised labour. It was especially this aspect that made

containerisation attractive to the political right and to representatives of organised



capital.

It was not simply a case of technological change putting dockers out of work.

Although it took only 15 men to handle a container ship compared with the 150

required by a conventional ship. The first step taken to ease in this shift was to seek a

diminution in the number of dockers. A serious number of jobs were lost; for example,

in 1960 there were over 23,000 registered dockers in London but after a severance

scheme was introduced, a decade later, at the time of these events, there were only

16,500 registered dockers left. It was easy to see that job numbers could further drop

drastically in a decade or two.

Dockers began to campaign for a designated ten or twenty-mile zone around registered

docks, where container-handling would to be done by registered workers. But, when a

proposal along these lines was put forward by the Bristow Committee of Enquiry

(1969-70), which was seeking to find a consensus on the definition of dock work as it

affected the Port of London, it was violently opposed by the Road Haulage

Association, then the main trucking employers’ association, which would only agree to

a five-mile boundary. Given the nature of most of the many estuaries around Britain

cutting into the mainland, this was tantamount to there being virtually no space

between the sea and where warehouse stripping would take place; hence, the decision

taken to begin identifying offending firms in London, to bring them into line, which

would directly lead to the case of the Pentonville 5.

But it is firstly important to assess the impact of an allied development in the port of

Liverpool, which would propel the conflict forward even further. In 1970, a joint

committee of TGWU dock workers and lorry drivers was formed across the

Merseyside. Over the previous ten years, the number of local dockers employed had

massively shrunk from 18,000 to 10,000 as a result of the spread of containerisation. It

seemed an insult added to injury to have to accept losing their jobs due to new working

methods as well as giving what little work remained to outside labour. To fight this,

the joint liaison committee decided that from March 20th 1972 work on containers

would be done by registered dock workers and that wage rates must be up to the

minimum scale. All transport firms would be asked to conclude agreements to that

effect and most caved in. Indeed, 35 transport firms operating at Liverpool Docks

signed agreements on the lines laid down by the committee, with only a handful of

maverick operators refusing to sign.

Only one, Heaton’s Transport of St Helen’s, set its face against the resolve of the

dockers and there was a strong financial reason for it to do so. Heaton's was moving

containers to inland depots to "stuff and strip" them, in effect doing the work dockers



would normally do but in remote warehouses far from the docks and at half the cost.

Thus, Heaton’s went to NIRC for support, which pounced and granted the company

an injunction to keep its own terminal on the Mersey free of picketing and blacking.

The NIRC proclaimed that the TGWU was responsible for their stewards' actions and

were in breach of the law. The union’s policy was to refuse to recognise NIRC, so it

failed to attend the court hearing and was fined £5,000 for contempt. (The relative

value of that sum may be judged from it then being roughly the price of an average

house in the north of England). Then, with the blacking still in place, an additional

fine of £50,000 (or ten houses!) was imposed with the threat of total sequestration of

the union's assets, or the seizing of all its possessions for the benefit of the state, if the

union failed to comply with the order to lift the boycott.

The judgement, given on June 13th 1972, based on the Industrial Relations Act (1971)

[(c.72) ss. 96(1), 101,167(1) (9)] noted that unpaid shop stewards, elected by fellow

members with the union’s authority to negotiate at local level with dock employers,

had initiated a campaign of blacking container lorries. The view of NIRC was that

this knowingly induced breaches of contract and was an “unfair industrial practice”,

according to statute, that is to say, the IR Act (1972). The Court’s order to the TGWU

to stop the specified blacking had been followed by the union but its advice to shop

stewards to obey the court order was rejected.

The union was in contempt, the argument went, since shop stewards were agents,

albeit not servants of the union. There was evidence of implied authority from union

to its agents to engage in blacking. Under the Industrial Relations Act, shop stewards

were specifically given the same status as full-time officers, all were "officials". Thus, if

a union is not answerable if a shop steward urges defiance of a court order, by the same

logic neither should it be answerable if a full-time official does the same.

After a six-hour meeting of the TGWU GEC, it accepted by a single vote the TUC's

advice that it should pay the £55,000 fine imposed by the National Industrial Relations

Court over the "blacking" by Liverpool dockers. But this was only in the setting that

the union felt that the TUC - and other affiliates who had not adopted as strong a

position as it had on the anti-union laws - should accept blame for placing the union in

an impossible position. “It is agreed under strong protest to accept the advice of the

TUC, subject to financial responsibility being accepted by the TUC in relation to the

problems now faced. Failing this, the TUC will be expected to waive the TGWU's

affiliation fees for an agreed period.” The implication was that if NIRC pressed the

union to take disciplinary measures against its activists in the Liverpool docks this

would lead to open defiance of the law by the TGWU.



The Heath government was lucky that confrontation did not immediately ensue but

the mood hardened for a national docks strike unless the Government showed

preparedness to take up the union's offer on talks to settle the containerisation

problem. It was only because of this likelihood that the GEC had agreed to the TUC's

suggestion that the fine should be paid. The union’s leadership had thought that had

they not followed the course they did, sequestration of the union's funds would have

followed. This would have left the dockers without the support of the whole union once

the national stoppage occurred. Presumably, MI5 was this time clear that everyone was

ready and alert!

Thus the TGWU now backed down and went to the NIRC to apologise for its

behaviour, paying the £55,000 fine. But to truly legally purge itself of contempt of

court it should have disowned the men who were responsible for the embargoing of

lorries by taking away their shop stewards' credentials. The union did not do this, nor

did dockers’ shop stewards feel any cause to retreat after the smarting that the TGWU

felt from the virtual betrayal it had got from the TUC and the arrogance from NIRC.

The stage was set for what might have been the greatest industrial conflict of all time

but was certainly the most successful secondary action ever.



The 1972 Docks Strike

Coupled with NIRC’s earlier actions, it would now flip what was basically a dispute

over jobs and wages into a combined national dock strike and putative political

general strike. During July 1972, a dispute involving the dock workers union led to five

shop stewards being imprisoned in Pentonville Prison for criminal contempt of court.

[Midland Cold Storage Limited v.

Turner et al]

The stewards had refused to obey an

order of NIRC to discontinue picketing

of the premises of a cold store in

London which employed non-dockers to

load and unload containers. Arguably,

the close relationship between the

government and the judiciary, in the

shape of the Tory President of NIRC,

Sir John Donaldson, not only led to the

initial prosecution but also the

subsequent back door climb down.

A similar approach to that experienced

in Merseyside, of off-port employment

of untrained, unsafe, cheap and

sometimes non-unionised labour had

been evident for some time around the

Thames. In 1970, one Tom Wallis a

London dockland employer was invited

to join a consortium being set up to

expand a small and ramshackle

container depot in Stratford, east

London, less than two miles from the London docks. The now defunct “London

International Freight Terminal” was next to a former Freightliner depot, Temple Mills,

which is now roughly on the site of the Olympic games development. Wallis was

already an employer of Registered Dockers in the Port of London and, his financial

backing in the consortium was linked to major transnational corporations. Once the

Port of London Authority gave it permission to handle imported cargo, Chobham

Farm was transformed virtually overnight into the largest container building in

Picket sign outside

Chobham Farm

(TUC)



Europe and one of its biggest industrial relations problems, since Chobham Farm did

not employ Registered Dockers.

Complaints were made about the picketing of Chobham to NIRC. Bernie Steer, Vic

Turner and Alan Williams were summonsed on June 14th, prompting 30,000 dockers to

walk out and legal complication saw the action fizzle out. Talks between London (East)

ICD Ltd, Wallis’ company, the dockers' stewards, and union officials resulted in an

agreement that dockers should take over all the dock work, with other work being

found for the 60 men already employed at the depot. Bernie Steer, secretary of the

National Ports Shop Stewards Committee, commented “This should give the answer to

the lie that we dockers are interested only in ourselves. We have never claimed

anything that is not rightfully ours.” Encouraged by the Chobham Farm development,

dockers began looking to picket other inland depots where they unregistered labour

was being used. One firm agreed to talks within minutes of pickets arriving at the

gates.

Even while there were ever more ambitious expansion plans for Chobham Farm, Wallis

announced the laying off of some two hundred of his own registered dockers. Beyond

that, hundreds more London dockers were finding their way on to the temporarily

unattached register (TUR), that is, they were being made redundant. Chobham Farm

was doing the very work that the dockers were being deprived of.

Wallis claimed he would accept any "reasonable" solution that the union could come up

with, after having created an almost impossible situation. His promise to employ

Registered Dockers began to seem hollow and the rank and file dockers committee

became sure he was dragging his feet. A picket was, therefore, placed at Chobham

Farm as an initial low-key measure, more a signal of pressure to hurry things along.

When Wallis’ London (East) ICD Ltd, anticipating a complete settlement with the

TGWU, signalled to NIRC it no longer needed the injunction earlier granted, the mood

and confidence of the dockers and the pickets massively grew and word spread. At the

beginning of July, Midland Cold Storage of Hackney, emulating the earlier legal

approach of Wallis but not his readiness to negotiate, sought an injunction to remove

the picket now on their premises. MCS received immediate support from NIRC,

perhaps associated with the fact that it was owned by Lord Vestey, head of a massive

meat shipping company. It was said that he and his family did not just lavishly live off

the interest on their invested capital but on the interest on the interest! (Recently, the

government of Venezuela forcibly nationalised Vestey’s interests in that country.)

Since the dockers refused to back down, the National Industrial Relations Court

(NIRC) readily issued Midland Cold Storage an injunction barring further picketing. A



private detective agency, Euro-Tec, was

recruited by the Special Branch to spy on

the dockers so as to establish the names of

the rank-and-file leaders. (One Euro-Tec

agent later revealed that in the early 1970s

thousands of shop stewards and union

officials, their families and friends were

regularly monitored by them for SB on

behalf of MI5.)

The five shop stewards named by these

private investigators for MCS’s application

for an injunction were Conny Clancy, Tony

Merrick, Bernie Steer, Vic Turner and

Derek Watkins. (Steer and Turner were

prominent Communists.) Warrants were

issued by the court for their arrest for

contempt of court, and they were arrested

and imprisoned on Friday July 21st 1972.

The next day, Saturday 22nd July, was a

critical moment. Kevin Halpin, a veteran

Communist rank-and-file trade union

leader, was Chair of the Liaison Committee

for the Defence of Trade Unions. This had

been founded by Halpin, with Bert

Ramelson’s support as a project to bring

shop stewards and officials together in the fight against legislative attacks on the

unions from both Labour and Tory governments.

Now a coincidence that arose from another struggle would that weekend propel the

Pentonville 5 into greater prominence. Faced with one minute’s notice of liquidation,

130 workers at Briant Colour Printing on Old Kent Road in south London had the

preceding week determined to prevent their plant from closing. The workers would

occupy their plant, staying for over a year and finally winning. Whilst under workers'

control, the occupation would become the unofficial print shop for the Pentonville

Five but also for every struggle at the time. All over London, in particular, the Briant

workers’ propaganda would mobilise for Pentonville. But first, the Briant work-in

would provoke support right across the capital on that first weekend. A march to

promote their struggle began from the Old Kent Road and went to Clerkenwell Green.

From there, it morphed into a massive and growing march to Pentonville, via Fleet

Private investigators for NIRC caught for

the camera as they enter court to testify

against the dockers



Street.

As Kevin Halpin writes in a recollection for this

pamphlet, “As it happens, Briant Colour, a print

workplace in struggle led by Communist Bill Freeman, had

called a meeting in Clerkenwell Green on their sit in. I got

agreement from Bill to speak there and called for people at the

meeting to march to Pentonville to join the dockers who were

gathered outside the prison. (Although when I had met the dockers on the Friday they had

told me that they didn't need any support and could manage on their own very well, thank

you!) After consulting with comrades and fellow stewards we agreed to go back down to

Fleet Street to get the print workers to stop the Sunday papers which would create a national

awareness of the issue. The first lot out were the electricians. Not many papers were able to

run and print unions’ pickets were out everywhere.”

Since London’s key Communist trades unionists had lost no time in contacting

comrades in Fleet Street, it proved possible to walk up and down the various

newspaper head offices with the 'Five Trade Unionists Are Inside-Why Aren't You

Out?' leaflet (see pic of poster version) stimulating spontaneous and planned

stoppages. Most of Britain’s national press simply stopped until the dockers were

clearly out of prison and this act signalled to the whole working class that something

serious was taking place, thus spreading the gushing spontaneous strike wave that

poured across the country. The first obvious sign of this was when the Sunday Mirror

stopped work early on Saturday, then nearly all the others followed, leaving just one

or two Sunday newspapers appearing and they were slated for

stoppage had the men stayed imprisoned another whole week. By

Monday almost all newspapers both in London and in some big cities

were simply stopped for the week. This simple achievement would be

critical in massively spreading solidarity action across the country

A huge march was also now planned to wend its way through London

for Pentonville with the intention of creating a ‘Bastille’ effect of

surrounding the entire prison. Halpin agrees that “the weekend had

been vital but the key was Monday. T&G Executive member and

Communist leader of truckers in London and the South East, Eric

Rechnitz, asked for a loan of my loudspeaker gear so he could address a

mass meeting of container drivers at the Royal Connaught pitch. The press

had been playing it as dockers versus container drivers but this changed

everything. I needed a roof rack to mount the loudspeaker gear on and NUR (part of the

later RMT) member Bill Edon with great trepidation let me use his new car. The meeting

Pic: Kevin

Halpin in the

early 1970s



started with all the drivers in uniform; a bad sign as it showed they were planning to go to

work. I got the speaker working and Eric took me by surprise as I never usually spoke

without notes when he gave me the mike and said 'it's your turn'. I was working in ship

repair at the time so was not in awe of the dockers and made the point that their action

wasn't about the dockers but defending people put in jail for exercising their right to strike.

To my surprise I got an overwhelming vote for support.”

Halpin, and his then closest comrades in the Liaison Committee for Defence of Trade

Unions, were effectively the actual directors of a nation-wide plan to create a virtual

general strike. (It should be noted that Kevin Halpin does not accord continuity or

credence to a current formation of the same name.) Picketing

was critical to the spread of the strike but it was by no means

a spontaneous movement.

In advance of the now rapidly moving events, Communist

Party trade union (ìndustrial’) organiser, Bert Ramelson,

had convened a couple of hundred Party trade union

activists and all knew what was needed to be done. Many

from outside of London were thus briefed but, mainly, the

activists came from within the capital. Indeed, if one single

political force can be credited (or blamed if looking at from

the point of view of the state) with launching what was now

looking like a virtual general strike, it is the London District

of the Communist Party. This was then especially well-tuned

to these events, for CP activists across the capital inter-

married, knew each other well, met often in particular pubs,

or lived cheek by jowl. Word spread rapidly.

But there was also a highly organised element to all this,

involving the Party and the LCDTU, especially across the country. Little

documentary archive remains of these events beyond a pamphlet produced in 1982

but oral testimony makes clear that in Scotland activists promised a virtual

nationwide closure, especially in the TGWU, after Regional Secretary, Ray

MacDonald, issued instructions to all his officials to spread the call. In the English

Midlands, fresh from his triumph at Saltley Gate, Party District Secretary Frank

Watters immediately corralled a posse of convenors of key car factories in

Birmingham and Coventry. The Executive of the AUEW called out all of its

members and demanded a general strike from the TUC.

Certainly, around 250,000 workers would take strike action in a mix of spontaneous

Dockers’ picket—all it

took then was a sign

and some patience (A

world to win)



and partially pre-planned militancy before the dockers were released on the following

Wednesday. In all, LCDTU members in rail, mining, engineering, public transport,

and aircraft manufacturing came out and honoured their pledges made over months

of campaigning against anti-union laws that if anyone went inside, they'd be out. As

members stopped work the Morning Star was informed and the rising crescendo of its

daily reports first on the Saturday, then on Monday and Tuesday were highly effective

in building up support.

Even ports employing non-registered dockers struck, coalmines in South Wales came

out, much public transport was affected and there was “little movement” at any dock.

In addition to this there was an almost total stoppage of newspapers and public

transport. Customs and Excise and Immigration services were severely curtailed, as

were social security offices. Milk distribution, mainly a TGWU organised sector, was

badly hit. Unused milk to the value of about £1 million in 1972 prices had to be

destroyed.

A mass picket packed around Chobham Farm on the day the arrests were scheduled

and over 35,000 dockers just walked out on strike. Indeed, a rolling series of strikes

began after the arrests until there was virtually an unofficial national strike. In this

massive movement the Communist Party played a crucial part, including through its

General Secretary, John Gollan, convening a national meeting of Communist Party

activists from all industries to press for

stoppages, to force the TUC to call a

general strike. Once the men were sent

to Pentonville prison that weekend saw

a massive mobilisation around the

country. with phone lines going red hot

in preparation for a total stoppage on

Monday. Every docker in the country

came out on strike and Pentonville

prison became the new centre of the

dockers' mass picketing. This rapidly

growing mass movement of organised

workers in action had inspired countless

others in struggle and matters were

moving towards a TUC-called general

strike.

Picketing out Fleet Street—a very easy task!

But in their enthusiasm, pickets even stopped

the Morning Star, which would have been a

voice of the Free Pentonville 5 movement.



A Quick Release

The British State organised the fastest climb down it had ever done and then dressed

it up to look like something entirely different. The dockers would simply be released,

thus taking the steam out of the growing movement. As they were released, Fleet

Street electricians led a jubilant march around the site of newspapers. Although

many militant workers were, in a way, disappointed that the State retreated so swiftly,

there was no denying the force of the power of a united rank-and-file. How was it

done?

The Official Solicitor was then a fairly unknown part of the state judicial system; it is

now perhaps slightly better known than it was in 1972 due to its role in international

child abduction cases. Essentially, the role is to act for those who lacked the capacity

to manage their own affairs, such as minors, the mentally incapable, deceased persons,

or trustees. There had been a political precedent,

although few recalled it even in 1972, when, in 1921 the

Official Solicitor intervened to arrange the release from

prison of a woman Labour councillor from Poplar who

had been imprisoned along with most of the members of

Poplar Borough Council, for having refused to raise the

rates.

The Official Solicitor, Norman Turner, broke a legal

stalemate between the militant dockers and broader

movement and the Trades Union Congress, and the

government. Turner, it is claimed after an hour's

examination, applied to the Appeal Court for a stay of

execution. The court accepted Turner’s argument that

statute and the circumstances of the MCS picket

demanded action against the TGWU's funds and not

against their members. Lord Denning, Master of the

Rolls, then ordered the warrants to be quashed because

they were "far short of what was required to deprive a man of his liberty".

Harold Wilson, the Opposition Leader, said that the government had been saved by a

"fairy godmother" in the shape of the Official Solicitor, and a cartoon in one

newspaper showed him as exactly that, complete with wand. He later said, in a speech

to the Institute of Legal Executives that the experience was "as painful as losing one's

The Official Solicitor,

Norman Turner



virginity".

Unofficial strike action in support of the Pentonville Five began to build so fast and

so furiously that, unasked, after a week the Official Solicitor decided to appeal against

the arrests and then the Court of Appeal ordered their release. Many dockers in

particular were on unofficial strike for a whole week after the imprisonment of the

five.

The House of Lords now met to hear appeals by the haulage companies against Lord

Denning's July 10th judgment, which had essentially let the TGWU off of

responsibility for the blacking. The judgement, announced on July 26th, assumed that

any action taken by a union òfficial’

was on its behalf. The TGWU General

Executive Council was outraged; as far

as it was concerned “only the GEC, the

F&GPC, and the general Secretary

could initiate action”.

The judgement coincided with a

meeting of the TUC General Council.

Representatives of the TUC had held an

abortive meeting with Ted Heath on

July 24th, which had urged him to take

immediate steps to secure the release of

the Five. Now faced with the House of

Lords judgement, the General Council of the TUC decided that day - 26th July - to

call a one-day general strike on the following Monday 31st July, unless the five dockers

in prison were by then released. The vote had been 18 votes for to 7 against, and 6

abstentions. The Council had agreed to review their decision in the light of the men's

release but there is no doubting the significance of this vote. This was the only time in

the TUC’s entire history that all trades unionists have been called out on a complete general

strike. Technically, the 1926 strike had been a gradual withdrawal by industry group

that did not ever get to that stage.

The Cabinet was told that Jack Jones’ call for a one-day protest general strike

appeared to be “bound up with tactics to secure the acceptance by the dockers'

Delegate Conference taking place that day of the recommendations in the Interim

Report of the Joint Special Committee on the future of the dock industry”. This was

the report on the future of the Registered Dockworker scheme developed by a special

NDLB joint committee, headed by the Chair of the Port of London Authority, Lord

A 1904 Stevedores’ union banner on the demo to Pentonville



Aldington, and General Secretary of the TGWU, Jack Jones. But it was clear that,

even if the five dockers were released, blacking of container depots would start up all

over again. The conflation of the two disputes, dockers’ grievances and outrage at the

interference with union rights had led the country to the brink of conflagration.

The Aldington/Jones Committee published their recommendations on Monday 24th

July. The emphasis was on measures to eliminate the Temporary Unattached Register

(TUR) by improved severance, mainly for unfit and older dockers, coupled with some

temporary work sharing. Government funding would provide £7.5m to pay off some

2,500 unfit or over-55-year-old dockers. Many dockers saw this as the thin end of a

wedge to cut back the workforce and, although dockers’ militancy would delay the

plan by some 15 years, eventually precisely what was feared would some to pass.

This new report would be considered by the National Delegate Conference of the

TGWU’s Docks Trade group called for Thursday 27th July. There, the TGWU’s

National Secretary for Docks, Tim O'Leary, strongly recommended to acceptance of

the plan, but delegates from the larger ports, such as Liverpool and London was

firmly opposed to the scheme. After a long wrangle, the Conference voted 38 to 28 in

favour of industrial action. There were 18 abstentions, reflecting the fact that some

newer ports were not with the NDLS (some delegates were even with British

Waterways, the canal operator.

So, now an official dock strike loomed. A massive crowd of dockers from London,

Liverpool, and Hull stood outside the Smith Square, Westminster, headquarters of

the T&G waiting on the decision. There were hundreds, perhaps even a thousand

there, with posters announcing: "We don't want money, we want jobs!” As time went

on, the Marquis of Granby pub opposite (a long-term favourite with the T&G) was

heaving. By the time the conference should have been breaking up for lunch, dockers

were slipping past police line into the labyrinthine corridor network of Transport

House. Mutterings became chanting. The conference hall was not only approached

from within the building, it had a separate double door exit into a side entry, much as

in the manner of a cinema.

Then, dramatically, a delegate threw opened these doors to the conference hall and

shouted out: "It's a national strike!" A huge cheer shook the streets and nearby

square. Bernie Steer was grabbed by the men and lifted onto their shoulders to be

paraded around to chants of "Heath Out!” Before anyone knew it, hordes of dockers

had rushed towards Parliament, only a few hundred yards away. But police diverted

them down the Victoria Embankment where mounted police blocked them in.

Dockers then marched in an orderly fashion to Tower Hill for a rally. Tony Merrick



roared out: "We are not bullies – we picketed Midland Cold Storage quite peacefully

for eight weeks! Our inspiration has been increased solidarity. Before this we were

asleep for five years while they took jobs away from us. Even now, my fellow dockers

will be mistaken if they think it is going to be an easy struggle. The victory has not

yet been won."

Thus, an official national dock strike began on 28th July 1972 involving all 42,000

registered dockers. All seaborne transport halted; only roll-on roll-off ferries passed

through railway ports like Dover and Folkestone. The International Transport

Workers Federation (ITF) immediately responded to a request by the TGWU to alert

all of its affiliates (covering virtually all ports, globally) to embargo any goods

diverted from Britain. Although the government announced a state of emergency on

4th August, little took difficulty place during the three-week action as the picket lines

were solid. Much behind the scenes talking was underway however and negotiators

found themselves with a package to deliver.

Suspicions were heavy and the TGWU’s Docks Delegate Conference met again on

16th August to a rowdy and almost violent scene caused by some two hundred

interlopers getting into the union’s head office in Westminster. A later report on the

incident to the union’s executive by Jack Jones suggested that some were not even

TGWU members. Despite the interruptions to its proceedings, the conference finally

voted by 53 votes to 30 to accept a settlement package, thus ending the total dispute

that had been in progress since July 28th. All normal working began on Sunday night,

the 20th August. Whatever many dockers thought, their three-week national strike

had wrested major improvements in conditions from the port employers and probably

staved off deregulation of their industry for a decade and a half. It has been a

stunning summer for dockers and organised workers.

Container bases had been in the process of coming into existence for some five years –

arguably the largest single “port” in the country at that time, in terms of the number

of containers handled, was that in the centre of Birmingham. The summer of 1972

frightened the employers into preferring the devil they could do business with. The

TGWU now faced both ways as its Road Transport (Commercial) Trade group

negotiated with the Containerbase Federation Ltd an agreement signed on September

15th 1972. This gave new rates of pay for a freight handler in any of the new out-of-

port bases, a basic working week of 37 hours 30 minutes of £37.50. Since there was a

two shift system in operations, this meant an effective wage of £42.50 a week.



Bernie Steer

addresses the crowd

outside Pentonville

jail on his release

from prison

(TUC)

Left: the new Artery banner on the march to Pentonville

Right: Vic Turner being carried on the shoulder of supporters, perhaps

in a sort of folk memory of the 1951 events

Even the night delivery vans of the Morning Star (pictured here

left in the mid-1970s) were picketed out in enthusiasm. But,

given that the paper was highly supportive of the Pentonville 5,

closing down the paper over several days probably denied further

secondary action.



In the Short and Long Run

The nation’s capitalist newspapers needed little encouragement from their MI5 sources to now

portray the source of the problems in Britain’s docks as being a conspiracy got up by the Communist

Party. This was now a signal for an increasing number of leftist critics of the Party to blame it for

not having secured further revolutionary gains from the well-demonstrated power of the working

class. The News of the World ran a major campaign against Bert Ramelson and his links with Bernie

Steer, in particular.

Like many workers, dockers fought state imposed pay restraint and Heath abandoned free market

policies in the light of the significant political power of trades unions and introduced a statutory

Prices Commission and Pay Board, both set up under the Counter-Inflation Act 1973. This, too,

would be problematic but the 1974-9 Labour government followed with a `voluntary’ pay policy

that had been agreed by the TUC’s dominant right-wing leadership. This, too, was shattered and the

Thatcher government went back to a strategy of free marketisation and legal curbs on trades unions,

which in their terms worked moderately well for them.

In February-March 1975 a five week long strike took place on this issue

in the Port of London. The strike was defeated, and a sense of

demoralisation spread all around. Many pundits claim that docks

disputes speeded up the decline of the job but the docks were not

wound down, rather their role was concentrated amidst all the new

technology. Any failure was one of lacking investment in new

infrastructure and equipment, aided by competition from foreign ports.

A growth in container ships that did not need deep water berths, such

as at Felixstowe, never a NDLS port, which is today the largest single employers of port labour was

also decisive.

In 1982, the NASD finally merged with the T&G, in anticipation of the need for maximum unity in

case of attacks from the Thatcher government. In the event, despite union opposition, which saw

an attempted national strike collapse, the National Dock Labour Scheme was abolished by Tory

legislation in 1989 and casual and cheap labour was once again introduced into Britain’s ports. It

helped weaken union strength and to promote the employers’ cause.

What remained of London’s docks was now increasingly focused on Tilbury. In 1989, during the big

fight to stop port deregulation under the Thatcher government, after eleven days on strike, on

discovering some ports had already caved in, Tilbury also went back to work. After official strike

ballots had been won, 152 dockers were sacked in the port – the most hardened trade unionists.

450 others were told to sign new individualised contracts or to lose their jobs, too. Three years in

tribunals saw the men win their case but not win their jobs back. It would be another dozen years

before official recognition was won back once again by the T&G. Today, some 300 dockers work in

Tilbury.



SOURCES: 1972 TUC Finance & General Purposes Committee report “The Industrial Relations Act: a review of

unions’ experiences”

Àrise Ye Workers’ Cinema Action documentary on Pentonville 5 (pictures from the RMT website)

Mick Costello—written comments to author

Daily Telegraph 21st Dec 2007

Guardian 28th July 1972

Industrial Law report: Heaton's Transport (St Helen's) Ltd

v Transport and General Workers' Union [1973] AC 15

Ann Field—written comments to author

Kevin Halpin—written comments to author

Labour Monthly September 1972

LCDTU (1982) Àction defeats the bill’

TGWU General Executive Council and Finance & General Purposes Committee – Minutes & Record,

various dates (1945-1990)

The Guardian 1st January 2001

The Times January 1st 2001

Tribune 5th May 1972; 7th July 1972

UK British government cabinet minutes: 30th July 1970

UK Government report on "The Communist Party and the National Dock Strike" - July 21st 1972

Graham Stevenson – a biographical note

A Communist since 1966, when he joined in his home city of Coventry, he was a branch secretary of the Young

Communist League at the age of 16 and became a member of the Draughtsmen’s and Allied Technicians Association

Divisional Council and the DATA National Youth Committee in 1968. First elected to the YCL National (Executive)

Committee in 1969, he was a member of this and its Finance Committee and Political Committee, finishing with YCL

work in 1978. In February 1972 he became Midlands YCL Secretary, just as the Saltley Gate mass picket was

assembling in Birmingham.

He became active in the building industry and partook in picketing during the national strike of 1972. As one of the

Birmingham 5, he was found not guilty of conspiracy to trespass, in a major court case immediately predating the

Shrewsbury pickets. After retraining as an engineering capstan-lathe setter/operator, he joined the Transport and

General Workers Union and held numerous posts in the West and East Midlands both as a lay official and, from 1980,

as a full-timer before becoming National Secretary of the Passenger Group, leading the 90,000 strong trade group of

the Union covering bus, coach, taxi, tram, light rail and underground workers from 1988 for the next quarter of a

century. This section of Unite has the distinction of being the only industrial division of any predecessor unions to the

present not loose significant membership in all this time.

In June 1999, he was appointed National Organiser of the T&G’s then new Transport Sector, which united 240,000

members of the T&G, covering passenger workers, road haulage, civil aviation and ports, waterways and coastal

maritime members. From September 1996, the National Secretaryship of the T&G's Docks, Waterways and Fishing

Trade Group was added to his responsibilities. Thus, for over a decade he was also the union’s most senior officer

directly covering port workers, including dockers.

First the Vice-President, then the President, of the two million strong European Transport Workers Federation (ETF),

he has also been Chair of the Joint ("Parity") Committee of Road Transport at a European level. A member of

Executive Board and Management Committee of the global union federation, the 5-million strong International

Transport Workers Federation (ITF), he was recently awarded its prestigious gold medal award of merit on his

retirement from full-time union work.

He has been an elected member of the Communist Party’s Executive Committee and its Political Committee for many

years. Graham is now Midlands CP Secretary and the convenor of the Communist Party History Group. His personal

website, containing many historical resources on Communist, trade union and working class movements, can be found

at www.grahamstevenson.me.uk/

Graham Stevenson is the author of `Defence or Defiance – a peoples’ history of Derbyshire’, Ànatomy of Decline – the

YCL 1967-86’, and other works of historical research.

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