I see 5 gantries down over ship. There's the alarm going now, there's the red light over there on the gantry, that proves it's winded off, the gantries should be anchored down now, they're breaking every safety thing in the book now. God forbid someone will get hurt but you've got 5 gantries over, there's 3 working at a very very slow rate. I am a gantry driver and I can tell you.
Dockers Charter: How many scabs are in there now?
MT: They reckon about 80 men all told. There's men who took the
£35,000 come back, some of them, I wouldn't even call them
men. But out of our lads who worked alongside me there's about 19
or 20. There's lads going in and out, and a couple of lads have
gone back in. They know in their heart and soul that they're
wrong.
Every day we appeal to them. In the Liverpool Echo you would have seen the dockers' children when they went up to Mr. Furlong's house, little girls with the candles and Christmas coming on and they're in there working. They must be a disgrace to the human race.
DC: What's the company saying?
MT: A fella called Alan Price wrote to my home about loyalty.
This man has only been in the company for 3 years. My father and
myself have got 73 years, that's without my 2 uncles. And he's
telling me about loyalty. I've contributed a great lot being a
gantry driver but I'm still no better thought of.
I don't think these people have a Father Christmas because last year they put me and most of these men on 3 days suspension for staying off for Christmas.
DC: What were the conditions in the runup to the dispute?
MT: 12 hour shifts, 4 and a half hours in bed, back to do another
12 hours in the gantry, just unbelievable, just asking too much.
All engineered bringing up for the big smack.
DC: What was their motive?
MT: For casual labour. Cheap labour. We're the last port in the
country to have a bit of organised labour left. You've got men
standing here with 40 years service. To treat a man like that on
the run in of his life it's criminal, there's more honest people
in prison than these.
DC: Do you think you can win?
MT: Oh without a doubt. We've got lads going all over the place,
doing their utmost. They're working a damn sight harder than this
Mersey Docks and Harbour crowd, which they always did do.
DC: Some people think you made a mistake, refusing to cross a
picket line.
MT: I wouldn't know how to cross a picket line. We always prided
ourselves we didn't have to put up picket lines. Now the Mersey
Docks and Harbour Company were that configured on law, when those
lads, some of them our sons by the way, they could have had that
picket line removed within an hour or two, under legislation.
They knew us better than we knew ourselves, and they knew which
way we would react. And if they put it up tomorrow we'd go back
to work and if there's a picket line we still won't cross it.
A fella got interviewed from the BBC the other day and told the reporter "Roger, you put a picket line up for the BBC, you wouldn't cross it". He said "That's true". "But you never got sacked".
