As we go to press, the dock strike has just been sold out. By a 51-31 vote, today's Lay Delegates Conference voted to accept the Pearson Inquiry's non-offer. It isn't clear whether the dockers in the more militant ports—Royal Group, Liverpool—will give up the struggle or will carry on unofficially. It isn't yet clear what will happen at the mass meetings over the next two days (except in Southampton where the dockers almost unanimously rejected talk of an unofficial strike) to which the delegates must report back. But it is clear, all too clear, that the dockers have been out for two weeks, have lost three weeks' pay, for nothing.
Dockers from ports all over the country massed today outside the T&G's offices in Transport House to try to do something to make the delegates (selected, not elected, as dockers explain) respond to the feelings of the mass of dockers in the main ports. The men in Smith Square mostly knew, or had a strong suspicion, which way the delegates would vote: perhaps the actual figures were worse than most expected. With Liverpool and Southampton's votes, 14 and 29 respectively, against the Report's offer, with Tyneside delegates mandated to vote against too, angry militants were totting up the figures, wondering how such a heavy blow had been dealt. They were sickened and disgusted, talking of leaving the Whites and joining the Blues, shouting "You've sold us out," and "We want Jones."* Jones was wise enough to be unavailable, apparently at a press conference (who does that man really represent?), and most of the delegates crept out of the side door, the back door, the tradesmen's entrance, perhaps even the lavatory windows, rather than face the men they were supposed to represent—but in fact sold out—in the street.
The only real explanation for the delegates voting the way they did was that they, and especially the T&G leadership, never wanted the strike in the first place. Rank and file dockers forced it on them. At the first straw offered to them by the government and employers' official report, they wavered and collapsed. It was a miserable straw, too: £20 fall back and holiday pay, as offered by Tonge, and a slight improvement in overtime rates, while dockers can still get overtime. This is only temporary, pending the introduction of Devlin Phase Two.
AND NOTHING AT ALL ON THE BASIC
The unfree press had performed its usual role in the service of capitalism by putting forward the rumour that Pearson was going to recommend something on the basic, lulling some dockers almost into complacency and putting them in a state of mind in which acceptance of Pearson seemed almost inevitable. "Nasty rumours" were circulating among dockers that they were "only going to get £2 on the basic"—which would have put it up to a derisory £13.1.8. And finally nothing. But by then the will of the T&G leadership to fight had been lost beyond recovery.
The T&G leaders' support for the strike was in any case highly equivocal. They had already accepted Devlin Phase Two, propaganded for it among their members, and threatened a strike if it was not brought in. The demand for the £20 basic, however much some shop-stewards and delegates might argue that it was a justified demand which had nothing to do with Phase Two except as a kind of insurance against the employers reneging, certainly brought the whole of Phase Two into question. At least the employers would have had to do better on the rates offered in their package deal; otherwise dockers would have taken their new basic wage and told the employers to stuff the rest: redundancies, shift work, "labour mobility", "labour flexibility", reduced manning scales and all. But the employers were determined to get their "modernisation" and the union leadership lulled by committee room talk of the "national interest", tea and sympathy with the bosses and, for some of them, a regular £100 a week basic, was not prepared to take them on.
When the strike was official the dockers were in fact in a strong position. The strike was solid in all the ports. Continental ports were blacking cargoes diverted to them from Britain. The troops were actually a paper tiger: apart from "left" Labour M.P.s anxious about "industrial unrest", and a few people who didn't like the idea of the number of soldiers likely to be killed and injured (7 soldiers were killed in accidents the last time the army was sent into the docks), nobody was particularly bothered at the prospect of troops in the docks. London market porters had already undertaken to black any goods unloaded by the troops; lorry drivers were to be called out by the T&G. The dockers could have fought the Tories and won a great victory for the working class.
So a position of strength has been lost. But the fight should not be given up. The argument is being used: "We are in a difficult position. Only some ports might come out unofficially, and we don't want a repeat of the 1967 disaster" (when uncoordinated strikes in Liverpool and London against Devlin Phase One were defeated completely in London and partially in Liverpool). But this is quite wrong. The key problem confronting dockers is Devlin Phase Two, and on the clear evidence of the present strike, it will not be successfully fought by the T&G.
So it is necessary to try and build an effecti[ve] rank-and-file movement, taking in also those militant dockers who belong to the NAS&D or who are excluded by the trade-union bureaucracy from being in any union. And t[o] build such an effective, unofficial or shop-stewards movement will involve a struggle ag[ainst] the official T&G machine.
But the next few months will show whet[her] the government and the employers can get a[way] with complacently and blatantly ignoring th[e] dockers' demands; whether the union offici[als] can get away with, yet again, reneging on th[eir] support for their members, or whether they have, the lot of them, misjudged the mood [of] dockers. The big struggles are yet to come.
Teresa Hayter
Tony Whelan
* One docker said that all he could thi[nk of] doing was going home and committing [...]
Box: The RED MOLE produced a special broadsheet on the dock strike which came out the day after the official s[trike] began and which we have been sellin[g in] large numbers on the docks and else[where]. It has articles on the background an[d] political implications of the strike w[ritten] by people who have been involved i[n] militant struggles in the docks, and a[n] interview with Ernie Rice, one of th[e] delegates for the Royal Group of Do[cks]. It is still available in limited number[s]. Write to the centre for copies.