A company spokesperson in Britain claimed that ACL had stopped using Liverpool because of threats to its ships in US ports and claimed the company has had "no problem in Liverpool at all".
Neither part of this claim holds much water. The two immediate problems that undoubtedly made ACL make the final decision to leave Liverpool was the action by Swedish dockers, who announced they were going to delay every ACL ship by 12 hours in support of the Liverpool men and the decision of Liverpool tug boat men not to cross a regular Saturday picket mounted by Mersey Dockers and the wives' and partners' support group, Women of the Waterfront. This meant ships, including ACL's, were having to dock without tug boat assistance. It is believed this was causing problems with insurance. One company stopped trying to move ships in this way after one of its ships nearly run aground on a sandbank.
The refusal of US longshoremen to cross a picket of Liverpool dockers in Newark, New Jersey against an ACL ship, at the end of last year, was not called for by the ILA. It was an act of "individual conscience" by the longshoremen concerned.
Earlier the company tried to sue the Mersey Shop Stewards and Jimmy Nolan its chairperson through the US courts, but dropped the case after being advised that a British company trying to sue its own workforce via the US courts didn't have much chance of winning. At this time, the MD&HC did not make any allegations against the ILA and an agent for the US National Labour Board confirmed at the time that there was "no claim in the charges that an American union was in any way aligned with the Mersey Port Shop Stewards or aided them in their activities in the US." or that "the ILA entities who work on the docks" were involved.
This whole action looks like an act of desperation by a company that is being brought to its knees by the international solidarity action of dockers in support of the Liverpool men.
The Mersey dockers slogan has been "the world is our picket line". Is MD&HC going to sue the world?
