The international day of action dawned in Liverpool as a group of 16sacked dockers and their supporters passed through port security andoccupied 3 cranes at the grain terminal, halting unloading of the"Lake Erie" grain carrier.
At one point a few scabs entered the crane to confiscate property,but their invasion fizzled out and as of Monday night the dockersintended to stay up for 24 hours.
Down on the ground a mass picket of dockers and Women of theWaterfront gathered at 6am, cheering the occupation and chanting atthe scabs. No container vessels were in port. The picket included adelegations from the victorious occupation of Scottish engineeringfactory Glacier RPB, where 103 workers had been sacked in Novemberand won reinstatement earlier this month, and the Darlington kitchenequipment firm Magnet, where TGWU workers remain sacked afterbeginning an official pay strike last year.
During the morning faxes arriving at the stewards office weredelivered to the picket line. A torrent of solidarity messages,letters to Mersey Docks or British Embassies and Consulates, andpress reports had flooded in. Now dockers crowded round to hear thenews.
At the Danish port of Arhus, a mass meeting on Monday morning voted53-21 in a secret ballot for a 24 hour sympathy strike plus a £500donation to Liverpool.
Lloyd's List New York correspondent quoted a statement by members ofthe International Longshoremen's Association in New Jersey,Baltimore, and Hampton Roads who "intend to honour the request for aboycott" of vessels still calling in Liverpool, describing theaction as "a fitting tribute to Martin Luther King" whose birthdayis celebrated on 20 January. ILA official spokesman Jim McNamaratold Lloyd's List he believed the boycott would be observed at allILA ports on the east and Gulf coasts.
The Canadian port of St. John, New Brunswick, shut down from 8am to7pm Monday and will send $5,000 to Liverpool.
Longshoremen, checkers and railway workers in the Port of Montrealheld their first ever joint meeting on Sunday 19/1, bringingtogether SCFP Local 375 and ILA Local 1675 along with the Syndicatdes Debardeurs. Liverpool steward Mike Carden addressed the meetingin French by telephone.
Belgian dockers, fresh from last week's boycott of the "AtlanticCompass", were heading off to demonstrate at the British Embassy inBrussels and preparing further industrial action later this week.They were overwhelmed by the scale of international support.
In Sweden, with the Hamnarbetarforbundet due to hit all ACL and CASTcontainer traffic on Tuesday, the syndicalist SAC union in Malmodemonstrated at the ACL offices in Stockholm on Monday.
The "Swiss Revolutionary Reconstruction" occupied the headquartersof the Rhine Shipping Company in solidarity with the dockers andWomen of the Waterfront, in Basel on Monday. Other messages ofsupport and protest letters to Mersey Docks or the BritishGovernment turned up from
As yet, we await confirmation of other industrial actions expectedto take place Monday. But CNN in San Francisco has just phonedLabournet seeking Liverpool video footage for tonight's coverage ofthe ILWU longshoremen's solidarity stoppage, which took place asplanned.
LabourNet Report by Greg Dropkin
