Val: A woman broke down in here, and Irene brought her upstairs.
Irene: She was really upset. There's times when people just feel as though they want to have a cry. They can't cry at home because you're upsetting your fella. So you lock yourself in the lavatory. But you know what men are, they blame you for the strike.
LabourNet: So is it telling on people now, is it dragging people down?
Irene: Now that it's getting near Christmas I think it's getting a bit harder for them. Obviously people are feeling the pinch now, aren't they.
Val: They'd probably like to go to bed and wake up New Years' Day.
Irene: A lot of the kids seem to have grown up though haven't they, they understand.
Cathy: Well you know you hear stories about kids, a boy who's willing to sell his bike to pay the electricity bill for the mum, you do realise that the kids do understand.
Women saying that they're going for the groceries and putting a few less in the basket so they can put an odd little toy in for the kid in the stocking. It's heartbreaking. The problem with these dockers is everyone's so proud, and they will not let people know how badly off they are.
Irene: I've never been one for seeing how much things were. Some people go walking 20 minutes to a shop because the bread's cheaper, well I haven't, but now you find yourself doing it.
Cathy: One time a tin of corned beef would be for a meal, now they're stretching it for two meals.
Irene: You get a chicken, you're having a roast dinner, a curry and a soup out of the one chicken. I've heard there's 500 chickens on the way, I don't know if they're walking or what! People are very good but we're used to giving people, instead of receiving.
Rose: A chicken farm, we could start up. We've gone back, we done this years ago with our own kids when they were little and now we've got to go back and do it again.
Cathy: But in spite of all of the hardship and trauma that everyone's going through, I think everyone still feels they've done the right thing and they will continue to do the right thing, because all right what if your pockets are full this Christmas and there's no job, next Christmas they wouldn't be full and that's what's got to be considered.
Val: I would say we're stronger now than we were last Christmas.
Irene: This JSA [Job Seeker's Allowance] that's come in, and the way the men are getting treated on the dole now. They've been used to earning £200 + maybe whatever it is, but if they put that type of wage down now it just gets kicked in the teeth and the people tell them "you can't have that, we'll put you down for £120 or something".
Mary: They've always said if it was £25,000 severance it would have to do them 4 years because they work on £6,000, that's subsistence level and that's all they'd get, they'd have to make it last for 4 years.
Irene: I'll tell you what, if our men were offered 25 thousand now I don't think they should take it, I think they should get 50 thousand and besides that, when the men do get their jobs back and they're reinstated I then think all the wives and partners should be suing the Dock Board for the stress that we've been under and the problems what it's caused us.
Mary: You know the money that you get out of the DHSS or the dole, you get it fortnightly. And the people are paying their bills one fortnight, with all of the money that they get that fortnight, and the next fortnight money's got to do them for food for a month. And these people you've got to remember have never ever been in debt in their lives. We've always paid every debt that's come through the door. And now they're trying to make do for a month on what we used to get a week, or part of what we used to get a week. Because people still don't want to be in debt, they're too proud to be in debt.
LabourNet: Looking at all the problems and how hard it actually is, why are you still willing to fight?
Rose: Because we're right, the men are right, it's as simple as that.
Irene: Plus the fact we've got nowhere else to go, we've gone this far and we're not going to give in now. At the end of the day it's the women that's the economists, because we have to put the food on the table, we have to make sure the kids are happy, you know we can't complain in front of the men because they've got enough pressure on them, they're worried about whether they're only going to go back to work or whether they're going to get picked up on the picket line or the police is going to knock on the door or when there's someone following the car, which is happening. People's cars are getting pulled in and searched. What are they searching for?
LabourNet: When you go round speaking to meetings nowadays, what kind of response are you getting?
Val: Absolutely brilliant. They keep saying "Stick in there, you know. Keep going." We're getting standing ovations from places. We've got people supporting us that haven't got a bloody carrot. They can't afford a bar of soap. But they're out there supporting us, they're on our marches. When we go anywhere and people put us up, it's always the people who have got nothing and yet they'll share a piece of bread with you.
Irene: I think people are looking forward to the dockers to win this dispute, because there's such a lot of people going to be in the same boat.
Cathy: I think it's got to be won now, for the whole of the working class in this country. There's so many people are willing us to win this because they've got problems themselves. A lot of them haven't got the bottle that our men have got, they haven't got the courage to do what our men did.
LabourNet: But you think they could, you think they should?
Cathy: Oh yeah they should, most certainly they should.
Mary: There is disputes going on all over the country, big disputes.
Cathy: People are supporting us, but they're afraid to be seen to be supporting us, because if their employers see them they could be next on the line. Because employers are frightened of the waves coming, that we're rocking the boat now through industries, aren't we? Well the men are.
LabourNet: If people are letting you know they are afraid, what do you say to them?
Cathy: Stand up and be counted. Don't be afraid of the employer. We took them on.
Irene: There's more of us than there are of them.
Val: We're the power. We're the power, not them. We could stop this country couldn't we? Because all the workers have the power.
LabourNet: What's holding them back?
Mary: Mortgages. People are frightened of losing their homes. There's more people on the streets now than ever before. Kids are being chucked out because they can't get the money to keep them.
Cathy: The better standard of living that they've acquired over the last 20 years. They were drummed down their throats weren't they "Buy your house and you're a better person..." But then they've got a big mortgage round their neck and they're afraid they'll lose their house and they'll feel as if they've let the family down.
Look at France. Why don't we take a leaf out of their books? Why don't they send some blood over and give all our men a transfusion? They need it!
Mary: It's not only the men is it, the women are apathetic as well.
Cathy: Look at them truck drivers. It was over in a couple of days.
Irene: I hope all the scab truck drivers here get stuck in France.
LabourNet: Do you actually have the hope that the dispute can be won?
Irene: I think we've got to have it. And ironically now, we heard last night on the television there's another offer, we don't know what it is.
But wasn't that ironic Bernard Cliff was killed, a young man like that. And you know, it's very sad that he's got a wife and children but we've got 500 families with children here and we've had tragedies on the picket line and Mersey Docks and Harbour Company have got no sympathy for us, none at all. But I do think now, if they've got anything to go on, I think now they will all be worried. Because he was under pressure from this job. So maybe they will come to terms with this has got to be settled, because they've stretched it out.
Cathy: It was just so ironic that it had to be with a connection to something he was doing in this dispute [Bernard Cliff was involved in a road crash while en route to a TV interview with John Pilger]. He's got a family and I don't wish that on people to lose anyone. But I do feel as though maybe this is the lesson.
You know life is so short, why can't these men just enjoy the few years that they've got left, God help them. They probably haven't got many years left when you look around the ages of them all.
Kathleen: They know your determination now.
LabourNet: What about the union then?
Cathy: What about the union!
Val: When you think of it though like, my Dad's a docker, he's paid union dues, Ronnie's Dad was a docker, his uncles were docker, Ronnie was a docker, me son was a docker. How much has they give to this bleedin union?
Cathy: I spoke to Bill Morris in Blackpool. We were trying to explain about the layout of the docks and he didn't even know what we were talking about, so I said "have you not been down?", he said "Well no", and I said "In 12 months you've never been near these men on this picket line? That's disgraceful. You can't know what these men feel in their hearts, that they've got no money and there's scabs going past and men who've already took 35 thousand driving past and waving money at our men. You should get down there and you might feel a little bit of what we know how the men are feeling." I wonder if he's on the side of the bloody employer instead of the workers.
LabourNet: Do you think that other people in the union around the country have figured out what's going on here now?
Irene: Well we've told them at fringe meetings when we've been to them, and if they don't know now, they'll never know.
Kathleen: They'll know from the Guardian.
Cathy: I would like to question, hypothetically of course, if the dockers do lose this dispute, how many union people will withdraw from unions in this country because I think people must be getting sick and tired now of seeing unions losing the fight for people, so what're they paying funds for, because you're in a union for the union to fight and win for you. But they're not doing it any more.
LabourNet: And the other side of that coin is, when you win...
Cathy: Oh well the unions will boost, everyone will want to join unions. They'll want to join our union, they'll say they're the kind of fight that you want. I think the unions have got to stand up to the Government laws more.
Val: I'll tell you what, if our men don't get their jobs back, I blame all the rest of the rank and file, that's who I blame. And I call them all a shower of bastards.
Cathy: Don't put that on the Internet!
Val: I do. I've heard people telling them "the dockers have lost their jobs blah blah, any questions?" No one stands up.
Irene: No, what they say is "but youse never had a ballot". That's their only excuse they use. I mean you've only got to look at Magnet, they're members of the T&G, they took all the right procedures, went through all the right channels, and still got sacked.
Our men have been asking for ballots for months and months. They'd been put off all the time, and who's that down to?
Val: 19 months they'd been asking for ballots.
LabourNet: What effect did it have on you going to Sweden, is it part of the fight?
Mary: It's no picnic.
Irene: I went to Gothenburg and I actually mixed in with the dockers there, and they're putting a blockade on and as you go in their union office there's billboards up, the blockade of the ACL. I mean them people are risking their own jobs to support our dockers. They're fundraising, and that's not just Gothenburg that's all over Sweden.
Mary: We went to Stockholm and it was exactly the same. People there are so generous in their giving, and so generous in the way they are trying to help us, and genuine in their offers of help, it's unbelievable.
Cathy: They're giving physical support what people in this country haven't given us.
Irene: You've got people in Spain putting blockades for us even if it's only an hour here, an hour there in Canada and all these places.
Mary: The women who come to the WoW meetings are all aware how important it is.
Irene: Everyone knows every little bit of action that takes place abroad. We might not hear about it until after it takes place or whatever, but certainly it has an effect. I mean you've only got to look at the ACL itself, it comes into Liverpool it used to come Sunday, now it's late. Plus the fact there's not as many ships, we drove through the dock gates Jimmy and I, and there's not a bloody thing there to what was a booming port, so how Mersey Docks can say that they're running at 400%.
Kathleen: Just as a supporter of the women, I'm not a dockers' wife but I always say when the Mersey Docks sacked them last September, little did they know that they were going to take on the world but what was worse they took on their wives and families.
