Tony Benn MP and Jimmy Nolan at the Docks Community Rally in December

International key to our success

We, the 500 sacked Liverpool dockers, most of us with 25-30 years' service, are fighting for our jobs. We were sacked by the Mersey Docks & Harbour Company on 28 September. This was victimization for refusing to cross a picket line mounted by 80 workmates who themselves had been sacked in a earlier dispute. The issues are clear, and concern all workers. We want:

• The right to permanent work for a living wage, social hours, proper conditions and a retirement pension.

• The right to a trade union, with democratically elected on-the-job representation.

The Mersey Docks & Harbour Company wants:

• A greatly reduced workforce with no trade union rights, hired on individual contracts with long, unsocial hours, plus flexible shifts and work-sites.

• A back-up pool of casual agency labour, with no rights, to be hired and fired as required.

These issues clearly define the two sides in this battle. And thousands of people from all walks of life recognize our moral right and support us.

However, the matter cannot be left at the level of rights and wrongs. We have to look at our strengths and weaknesses and those of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company too.

On the Company's side are the international shipping, banking, insurance and agency-labour companies, backed up by the state's anti-trade-union laws. The port employer has received millions in government cash hand-outs and so-called development grants.

The directors had plenty of time in their boardroom meetings and on social occasions to prepare their fight.

To fire the first shot of the battle to introduce casual labour they used Torside Ltd. That company proposed to make 20 young dockers redundant and to take on part-time casual labour.

It was the provocation we were expecting

For six years, since the defeat of our 1989 strike, the company has been trying to put Liverpool on the same footing as every other port in Britain.

In that year closed-shop trade union ports, employing dockers on a permanent and protected basis under the National Dock Labour scheme, were turned into places of fear and stress in a matter of months. They were left with no trade union organisation and a vastly reduced workforce.

Liverpool was the only port where trade union organisation was maintained.

In industrial tribunals, the employers were found to have wrongly dismissed dockers from Tilbury. Nobody was reinstated.

But the bosses' apparent strength is also their weakness. They are in cut-throat competition with each other and with other European ports.

The Forth Company, which has ports in Scotland, now owns Tilbury. Mersey Docks & Harbour Company has bought the Medway ports.

There is a battle to capture shipping-line contracts between Europe and the US, Canada and Australia. Everything depends on low costs and speed.

Privatisation of British Railways is an integral part of their plans for cargo links with Europe. The employers want the port of Liverpool worked by cheap and flexible labour, linked to privatised freight lines also employing cheap labour.

The Channel tunnel would enable containers to be in continental destinations within 48 hours of the cargo ships arrival in Liverpool.

That is why the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company is prepared to gamble millions in this battle for cheap casual labour and a union-free port.

At astronomical cost:

• They have hired Drake International to hire and fire scabs who are brought into the port by sea.

• They have installed portakbins inside the dock fitted with TVs and washing machines so that the scabs do not have to pass the picket line.

• They have brought container ships into the port free of charge in an effort to prove that they have an up-and-running port.

In 1989 the port employers received thousands from the Tory government to defeat the strike. But how far can they expect the state to financially support them today?

That state has a huge deficit. It faces a potentially enormous revolt against cuts in benefits, like the recent upsurge in France.

We knew the company's weaknesses before the strike started. We also knew that unfortunately, because of the 1989 defeat, we could not rely on solidarity actions from dockers in other British ports. Therefore we acted on three main fronts:

• We established a firm financial and organisational basis for the strike, taking the fight out into the whole community in Merseyside. We explained in leaflets that casual labour and trade union rights are not merely issues for us, but for every worker, employed and unemployed. We organised six community rallies, published this strike newspaper and won a huge response throughout the country.

• We won the support of Merseyside church leaders, Euro MPs and Labour MPs who are waging the fight in the Labour Party and in parliament.

• We sent delegations and letters to dockers internationally, calling on them to take solidarity action in support of our fight. Crucially, dockers in Australia, Canada and the US have refused to touch container vessels loaded by scab labour.

What now of the Mersey Docks & Harbour Company's plans to crush us? What now of their friends - the international banks, shipping companies and strike-breaking employment agencies? What now of the anti-trade-union laws?

If the state took action against any one of us for breaking those laws, we feel sure that the whole of Merseyside would erupt in solidarity and this would have repercussions everywhere.

The refusal of our union, the Transport & General Workers' Union, to break the anti-trade-union laws in 1989 might have saved its funds from sequestration, but it weakened the union morally and physically.

Today that weakness is shown by dockers who have turned into scabs to undermine our strike.

We believe that support from millions of people in this country and the international solidarity action of our brothers and sisters throughout the world can change the situation.

• We call on dockers in every other port in Britain to take heart. Realise your strength, reinstate the union in the ports. Build support for our strike and for international solidarity.

• We demand that the Tory government carries out its 1989 promise that casual labour would not be introduced into the ports.

• We demand a public inquiry into the affairs of the Mersey Docks & Harbour Company.

• We will campaign for one port authority, for a shorter working week, proper wages, holidays and sick benefit and we will advance our fight over pension contributions and benefits.

• We call for the return of a Labour government at the next election and demand that it repeals the anti-union laws as a first priority.

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