posted on 22 Apr 2017

Dockers: The ’95 To ’98 Liverpool Lockout by Dave Sinclair with a foreword by Ken Loach

In September 1995 Liverpool dockers working for the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC) refused to cross an official picket line set up by another group of workers operating on behalf of a company called Torside. MDHC effectively dismissed those who refused to go to work and used the opportunity to rub salt into the wounds by offering a selected group of those they had sacked re-employment under a new, disadvantageous contract. This triggered what would turn out to be an historic dispute that would see the whole notion of what constitutes industrial action redefined.

The photographer, Dave Sinclair was on hand to record what happened and this collection of his work was published in 2015 with a foreword by the film director, Ken Loach and contributions from Doreen McNally, Mike Carden and Jimmy Nolan. The photographs in themselves tell the tale of extraordinary solidarity, sacrifice and the emotional roller-coaster that accompanies any extended period of industrial action.

In many ways the Liverpool dockers demonstrated what had been learned from the ‘84-5 miners’ strike in terms of the way any industrial group in dispute needed allies from across the widest spectrum of society as possible. With determination, humour, wit and imagination the dockers and their families reached out to the wider community and found help and support for their cause – something Sinclair’s photographs document for us.

Just as the miners failed to stop the wholesale destruction of their industry and the communities that depended on them, the dockers failed to get themselves reinstated on their original contracts. Breaking the workforce and the union was clearly the aim of the employers and in this aim they were successful. However one of the things I loved about this book was the way it forces you to rethink the notion of ‘defeat’ – because it’s clear from this record (and I would also argue from the miners’ strike too) that although the workers failed to get their stated goals, they most certainly weren’t ‘defeated’. What these workers earned through their sacrifice was something much bigger – a changed understanding of the way the world of politics and power really works. These people had their consciousness changed forever and in the process built a new understanding of what it means to have community and for that community to show real solidarity.

Liverpool and the working people of Liverpool are clearly something special – just look at the photographs – and I can’t say it better that Ken Loach in his foreword:

With unions in retreat, the way was clear to transform the relationship between employer and worker in favour of the employer. But no-one told the Liverpool Dockers. The writer Jim Allen, manual worker and socialist, once said to me that if there were to be a revolution in England it would start in Liverpool. The Petrograd of England he called it.

This book of photographs isn’t just a headstone for a lost industrial past, it shows us the very best of what the working class are capable of when they come together to fight for a noble cause. The time will come again when we need to rediscover the ability to stand up and say this far and no further and the actions of the Liverpool dockers will be there to shine a light on the way forward.

 

Terry Potter

April 2017