Seafarers' strike: a lost opportunity to strike from the outset, saying that it was unwinnable, and that he was "not prepared to be another Arthur Scargill". He tried repeatedly to obtain a vote to call it off, but was rejected each time at mass meetings.
Although they are isolated, the Dover strikers are clearly fighting the battle for the whole industry. If P&O, by far the largest challenge anti-union operator, were to be successful, other employers would follow suit. They are also fighting for the NUS, since winning the
Dover strike is the only way it could remain laws
THE P&O strikers at Dover have been betrayed by the right-wing leadership of the National Union of Seamen (NUS), a traditionally moderate union.
On Thursday, May 12, the NUS national executive committee, on the recommendation of general secretary Sam
McCluskie, ordered all those striking in solidarity with the
Dover crews to cease all action and return to normal working the following day. As a result of this, the Dover strikers, who have voted to continue their strike, are now dangerously isolated in the course of a major struggle with the biggest shipping employer in Britain.
ALAN THORNETT
HE DOVER strike began early in
T
February in response to draconian working conditions imposed by management, which would have made 500 seafarers redundant out of a workforce of 2,300. P&O demanded seven days on and seven days off working — 24 hours a day, seven days in a row. This represents a huge increase in working hours for less pay. The crews would work 16 hours in each 24 hour period, with the other eight hours unpaid but during which they would be required to remain on board and on call. The strikers argued that this would damage the life and the health of the crews and seriously endanger safety.
It is a measure of the determination and ruthlessness of the employers' offensive in
Britain today that the management responsible for the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster can impose such conditions so soon afterwards. The new conditions are linked both to inter-company competition within the ferry industry in anticipation of the
Channel tunnel, and the generalized employers' offensive orchestrated by the Tory goverment.
The Dover strike arose directly out of this. In January, crews working for the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company occupied the ships in opposition to new working practices. When the NUS balloted all its members who worked for ferry companies for strike action in their support, it was defined as "secondary action" by the High
6 Court and declared illegal under the Tory
International Viewpoint #142 • May 30, 1988 trade union laws.
The law has become a massive factor in the trade-union movement in Britain today. Strikes are only legal if aimed solely at the direct employer and have been agreed by secret ballot. Once a strike has been declared illegal, the courts are empowered to close the union down by seizing its assets. They can also impose unlimited fines and unlimited damages for loss of trade.
McCluskie at first said that the national strike should continue, and that he was prepared to defy the law and go to prison if necessary. He then called off the strike and complied with the law. His decision was a disaster for the NUS and rendered it virtually ineffective, since its only real strength is in its ability to call national action involving the whole of the industry. Strikes against individual employers can be quickly isolated and defeated. This is now the situation faced by the P&O strikers.
Only one vote against strike action
After the general return to work, P&O crews at Dover stayed out on their own account. Dover is not a traditionally militant port, yet in a secret ballot of the 2,300 seafarers only one voted against strike action. That level of solidarity remained for the first two months of the strike.
McCluskie was opposed to the Dover a viable union. The NUS has already suffered because of the huge reduction in the British Merchant Fleet in recent years, which has reduced the NUS to a total membership of 20,000.
The strike has been maintained by the self-organization of the rank and file and financial support from the labour movement. Food kitchens in Dover and four other nearby towns provide a cooked meal every day for over 1,000 families. The most important rank and file leadership is in Deal (five miles from Dover) where the Kent National Union of Mineworkers gave their offices to the strikers. They have been strongly supported by Terry French and other victimized miners travelling the country to generate support from early in the dispute.
Later, a women's support group was formed, comprising both wives of striking men and women strikers themselves. They have played an increasingly important role as the strike has progressed. This development in such a male-dominated idustry is a direct result of the role played by Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC) during the miners' strike. Kent WAPC activists have been working with them.
P&O announce sacking of Dover strikers
In mid-April, direct pressure from the Dover strikers forced the NUS national executive to hold a ballot of all NUS members for a national strike in their support. P&O went to the High Court and obtained an injunction ordering the ballot to be stopped and the ballot papers impounded! McCluskie promptly complied, and Dover re-
At the end of April, however, there was a dramatic development. P&O announced the sacking of all those on strike and the employment of scab crews to replace them, the ending of all collective agreements and the de-recognition of the NUS.
The rank and file responded immediately, and the strike spread to Dover Sealink crews who refused to cross the picket line. McCluskie spread it further, with a surprise declaration that no British ferry should sail from any British port. Within 24 hours, action spread to 19 other ports.
The P&0 move split the strikers for the first time. Management claimed that a majority had responded to their call and signed the new contracts — a figure grossly exaggerated and hotly contested by the NUS.
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Several hundred strikers agreed to return to work and formed the basis of P&O's scab operation. P&O flew the scab crews to Rotterdam to bring back two ferries so as to begin a skeleton service from Dover to Belgium ports. They began to bus the scab crews through the Dover picket line.
On May 3, Sealink - whose entire fleet was at a standstill because of supporting action — went to the High Court and obtained an injunction requiring a return to work on all their ships forthwith. It was again an outright confrontation between the NUS and the courts. McCluskie was on the line again!
To the profound surprise of militants inside and outside the industry, he made a public statement saying that the union should defy the law, accept the consequences, and extend the action beyond the ferries: "This decision will lead to a spread of industrial action to British ships throughout the world. Members will stay out until a just settlement is reached with
Soon afterwards, the national executive of the NUS called an all-out strike of the whole of their membership, including those on deep-sea ships. Announcing the decision, McCluskie said: "The NUS is not bricks and mortar, typewriters and desks. It is the men and women who go to sea and stand together to defend their right to work and fight for justice. If forced to choose between protecting the property of the union or standing by my members, I will always choose the latter."
Direct challenge to Tory anti-union laws
It was a momentous decision. Since the Tory anti-union laws were used against the NUM in the 1984-85 miners' strike, it has been clear that the only effective response is to defy the law, spread the action and call on the labour movement for support. This has been the problem with all the major strikes since the miners' strike. During the
1986-87 Wapping dispute, the print unions official policy was that they would not break the law. They were equally determined not to spread the action beyond the Wapping plant. It was precisely this policy which brought isolation and defeat. Now, the NUS' decision raised the possibility of a challenge to the Tory laws themselves.
McCluskie forced to act
McCluskie enlisted militant rank and file leaders from Deal to implement his call. They travelled the ports from ship to ship, calling them out. Virtually every ship came out, with the exception of several small memberships on prestige cruise liners. All ferry crews struck at all ports, along with supply ships to the North Sea oil rigs. In several ports, ships were occupied after crews were sacked for taking supporting
The High Court fined the NUS £150,000 (about $280,000) and ordered the sequestration of all its assets. This involved the seizure of its £2,800,000 ($5,200,000) funds, the closure of all its local and national offices, the freezing of wages to its staff, the suspension of its pension fund, the impounding of the union's cars and the cutting off of its telephones.
McCluskie's response to this decision was that the strike would go on and the union would continue to defy the courts. If necessary, he said, he would be prepared to "run the union from a tent on Clapham Common"! (an open space close to the NUS national headquarters in London). The executive then issued the following
"When other members of the NUS attempted to take action in support of their P&O colleagues, the law declared that the union must cease to exist. This may be the law, but it is not justice".
It was a remarkable development, with a right winger leading the most important challenge to the anti-union laws since the
On the picket line at Dover (DR) end of the miners' strike. And there was a clear dynamic to the situation. If the NUS continued to defy the courts, the penalties would, if the law was applied to the full, increase to a point where the rest of the labour movement could be drawn in.
If the course of events and the implications of what is happening to the trade-union movement can force McCluskie to action, this must be at least possible with other right-wing and left-wing leaderships, including the national union confederation, the TUC. This is an important political point, since others on the far left, such as the British Socialist Workers' Party, argue that the bureaucrats can never be forced to act and to mobilize the movement, therefore we should forget about them and simply organize among the rank and file. This misunderstands the relationship between the rank and file and the union leaderships, denies the ability of rank and file organization to force the official structures to act, concedes the movement to the
The response of the labour movement in general to the sequestration was to raise cash for the NUS from official donations to shop floor collections. Even the Labour Party Shadow Cabinet called for financial support, confronting a threat from P&O to take them to court for supporting an illegal strike. At the same time support groups, some of which still existed since the miners' strike, began to function or be set up.
The response of McCluskie was to go the TUC and from there, with TUC general secretary Norman Willis, to the conciliation service ACAS, where they began discussions with the chairman of Sealink, James Sherwood. He agreed to try and get P&O chairman Jeffrey Sterling back to the negotiating table. (McCluskie had made an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to use Sealink in this way.) Behind the scenes, Willis was telling McCluskie that the TUC could give no practical support while the strike was May 30, 1988 • #142 International Viewpoint
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P&O chairman Jeffrey Sterling is not a chance character in this strike. He is closely connected to the Tory party, and was a member of the Tory party's advisory body that drew up the anti-union legislation now being used. P&O also £100,000 to Tory party funds last year — something that is allegedly not unconnected to the government's decision not to hold an enquiry into the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster.
After several days of negotiations a deal was stitched up by which the NUS would exempt Sealink from strike action and they, in return, would put extra ships on P&O's action back to work. McCluskie argued that the odds were now too great and that the strike was crumbling. However, this was not the case. In fact, the strike was holding remarkably well considering that it was being given no direction by the leadership except for deals with another
Remarkably, the Dover strikers met after the rest had returned to work and voted again with only one against - to continue
But the return-to-work decision was a disaster both for the NUS and the Dover strikers, who were now back in an isolated position. McCluskie's new strategy for the as well, and had clearly put pressure on McCluskie. They told the NUS that they would get no support of any kind while the strike was illegal. As soon as the return-towork had taken place, the TUC announced a f1 million fund appeal to help the NUS! On the future of the strike, Willis had the same line as McCluskie and the Morning Star. He said: "The aim now is to hit P&O where it hurts — in the pocket. And I would urge anyone planning to cross the Channel from Dover not to sail with P&O but sail with Sealink"! He put forward the slogan: "Sail Safe and Say No to P&O"!
The Dover strikers are continuing the struggle and they must get full and unstint-
Wing support from the movement. The central strike-bound crewed by 450 of the
HIGH COURT
PiRAC sacked P&O strikers. The jobs would be temporary, ceasing to exist when the strike came to an end. Willis was so keen on this rotten deal that he even said the TUC would pay the wages of the rest of the strikers, for a period, if they would accept it!
McCluskie fought hard to make the deal stick, but it was rejected at a meeting of representatives from all the ports. It was not a firm rejection, however, since their terms were 750 jobs with Sealink.
Lorry drivers became involved in the situation when a backlog built up on each side of the Channel.
Drivers blocked the ports in an attempt to force the two sides into a settlement.
Although some of the drivers directed their criticism towards the intransigence of P&O management, the action was overall reactionary. The drivers were almost all non-unionized, and many of them anti-union owner/drivers who simply wanted the strike ended on any basis.
Within a few days of the NUS' decision to defy the law, it was clear that the strike had to develop further or reach a crisis point. The pressures of the situation were such that the action either had to spread beyond the shipping industry or face a collapse of the leadership. A crucial factor was the role of the courts. The law was deliberately not used to the full, in order to avoid pushing the situation to a new level.
For a week, no further action was taken against the NUS whilst the momentum of the strike stagnated. On May 11, the High
Court made its next move. The NUS were fined another £150,000 and warned that bigger fines would follow if their contempt of court continued. The same day, Sealink threatened to sack all of its crews that re-
These moves were the final straw for the
NUS leadership. The following dav. Ma
3 12, they ordered all those taking supporting
International Viewpoint #142 • May 30, 1988
THE NUBZ.ES15H strike was to link arms with Sealink and wage a "commercial war" against P&O! The NUS, he said, should urge the general public to use Sealink ferries instead of P&O's, on the basis of P&O's safety standards. This was a direct re-run of the diversionary "consumer boycott" policy of the print unions at Wapping.
This betrayal, however, is not just the responsibility of the right wing and the "new
It was fully supported by the Communist Party as well. The headline of their newspaper, the Morning Star, on the day following the sell-out (which did not contain a hint of criticism of the return-towork instruction) was: "Sealink Declares War on P&O"! The article began: "Shipping company P&O finds itself besieged in a commercial war of attrition this morning. After the NUS yesterday instructed its members to cease all secondary action, rival operator Sealink announced that it is to increase its Dover services at the expense of P&O...P&O now faces the danger of being squeezed in an economic vice between the Dover picket line and Sealink's increasing share of cross-Channel traffic."
The TUC were firmly behind the betrayal problem, still, is to break the isolation they are now in. The policy of the NUS must be reversed. This is difficult since the NUS conference, meeting just after the return-to-work, endorsed McCluskie's action by a majority decitackled just the same.
sponsibility as well. P&O scab ships are still being handled by T&GWU dockers at Dover. In the past few days, dockers in the French CGT union at
Calais have handled the first scab ship to go into a
French port. This is difficult to reverse if ships are being handled in Britain.
sponsibility of the labour movement. The work of the support groups has been strengthened over recent weeks, and that is important. This needs to be extended and strengthened more to generate financial support, support for the picket lines at Dover and the initiatives of the strikers, and also to discuss the progress of the strike and
A week after their betrayal of the strike, the NUS leadership has still not been allowed to purge its contempt of court and re-
The court is now saying that the picket at
Dover is illegal, because there are more than six pickets and they are intimidating those who want to go to work. The more the courts are complied with, the more strictly they interpret the law to the advantage of
The law has been strengthened by the betrayal by the NUS leadership. It is a serious blow to the Dover strikers and a disaster for trade unionism in the shipping industry, but it also represents the loss of a crucial opportunity to challenge laws which are the biggest single problem facing the trade union movement in Britain today. *
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