The men make you feel welcome, "good morning girl", and I hope they're not saying behind our backs "these bloody women here".
I don't want the men to feel that I'm like a robot. I'm a whole woman, you know what I mean. I'm not down there because my husband doesn't totally respect me. He does. I'm supporting him and I think he would support me if it was the other way around.
I suppose that nowadays women's support groups do support the men. And in saying that, I don't know of any other women's issue where there's been a man's support group! Do you know of any?
We've been married 28 years and we've had strikes before. I've never felt I've needed to be so much involved, solely because there's always been thousands of men. But now there's so few they do need the help. They might not admit it to the women. I hope I'm not in the way of these men, because my sole reason to be there is to support them.
Dockers Charter: Do you think they feel ashamed or embarrassed?
C: The men do feel this as they're dignified men. If they had no
dignity, they'd be on the other side of that gate.
DC: The way the dock company has been treating men, how has that
affected the families?
C: I didn't know one of these women before this issue. And now, I
think us women should have confronted the Dock Board 12 months
ago. We could have nipped it in the bud when we saw what it was
doing to the men, the stress.
There's men in their 50's who never worked nights in their life. Suddenly they get told to work 12 hour shift nights. The body cannot take it. But rather than admitting that they were having stress problems, they'd probably go off with a bad back. These are tough men, how can they admit they can't cope? It's a stigma that they didn't want. But if they had all come out and told the truth I think maybe we could have worked on that.
A lot of us women are the wind beneath the wings of these men! But it's just a person's own inner strength isn't it, and maybe as you get a bit older you can take more because the more knocks you get in life, the more you can bounce back.
DC: Do you think other women could get involved? What is holding
them back?
C: Yeah. Well you're always going to get that element of women,
or men, in any situation, who leave it up to the little few who
go and do all the fighting for them. You get girls saying "well I
work and I can't go". Well I work, but I go.
You know there's probably women sitting in the background thinking "well let all them women carry on with it, they've got nothing better to do." Well I do have a lot better things to do than stand on a picket line every day in support of my husband. But at this moment, there is nothing more important in my life than to help my husband get his job back. For his dignity, for his welfare.
DC: What if we lose?
C: Well the consequences will be dreadful. You're not only
talking about 500 men without a job. You're then talking about
500 wages. It's going to have most effect on younger families
with higher mortgages, they've got the children that they've yet
to rear.
I think the worst thing will then be casual labour in that dock. You can't get a mortgage or a bank loan. You're a nobody with a casual job. But in saying this, it's happening in a lot of industries now, casual labour's creeping in.
DC: As the wife of someone who refused to cross the picket line,
was he right?
C: I think my husband done the right thing, yes, I've no doubt
about it. My husband can walk around with his head in the air,
now, in support of other men, that's what trade unionism is all
about. If more people was to support each other in this world
instead of fighting against each other we wouldn't be in this
position.
And even though there's half of these men walking around now without a penny in their pockets, but they can hold their head up high and I think that is more important than having a big bank book. You know, your respect in life, you earn it, you can't buy it.
And it's a material world now, people starting with "oh me mortgage I've got to pay the mortgage" and all this, unfortunately, that is the way life is.
But I admire him for what he done because I think it took guts and courage not to go in them gates. That's how I feel anyway.
