Q: Did you see the dispute coming?
Colette: In 1991 when they forced the men to sign new contracts and also interviewed 1,800 unemployed young men, advertised the jobs in the Liverpool Echo, it was a ploy to force the men to sign these contracts. Otherwise they were on a 90-day notice.Q: You said the wives got together after a few weeks. What was that first meeting like? What did you decide?
That's when men were moved from different ports in the dock industry to others. It wasn't for any kind of financial reasons, it was just purely and simply to make some kinds of splits in the work force. And men were moved from a very profitable part of the dock to other parts of the dock somehow to learn new trades from scratch because they were getting moved into the container base that maybe they'd never worked before.
There was a lot of ill feeling because men weren't happy with the way they were being treated. But when the engineered dispute happened with the younger dock workers and the older dock workers did not cross their picket line, I think that was a sign of not only solidarity with the younger dockers, but also a fightback against the management, because of the treatment they'd given the men. They'd taken too much physically, mentally. They might have earned decent wages, but that was really hard work they had to do to earn that money.Sue: I used to hear different women on the local radio stations ringing up about Mersey Dock and Harbour Co. and saying how since 1989 when it was deregularized that they could see the company starting to use dirty tactics to upset the men, to split the men. And I used to feel, "I wonder who she is?" because I'm like that. My family is affected, my children are affected. How can I get in touch? But I must admit I didn't ever make any moves. It used to be just a voice on the radio. I never dreamed I'd be ringing radio stations but I found myself in the end ringing radio stations, agreeing with what the women were saying, because it had taken over our whole life. There was no time for family life any more, the hours they worked. Some days it was like 12 hours, some days 14 hours, some days on their day off they were made to come in. Some men refused point-blank but some people were scared to refuse work because they knew the management would take some action against them. So every one was living under fear of losing their job. It unsettled the men and the families.
My husband would work long hours and then as soon as they were to pay him overtime they would send him away for a week. They took him when they wanted him and used him and used him, and when they didn't want to pay him any extra they sent him away for a week and they went down the list and looked for somebody else that hadn't done enough hours and then used him. This is what happened all the time.
Colette: It was quite a tense meeting, really, because there were lots of older dockers wives whose husbands had been in the industry 42 years, and there were others like me whose husband had only been there for five years. Because my husband had set the picket line up, they'd been unfairly sacked. We felt there may be some tension between the women because they may be laying the blame to someone.Q: Do you expect much help from [newly-elected Prime Minister] Tony Blair?
But it was unbelievable because everybody seemed to embrace each other. Everybody had been suffering exactly the same things and everybody was so united. I personally felt humble being amongst the women because there was no blame towards anybody. Everybody knew it had been coming up for a long time. Everybody seemed to stick together. We organized ourselves and said, "You know, we're going to have to fight back." We got this group together, we named ourselves Women of the Waterfront. There was a lady the re from the miners dispute [in 1989] and she organized the miners' wives, advised them how to start. She just told us we needed to choose a committee and put the names forward. That's what we done, we got a committee of about 10 members and we've gone from strength to strength.
We involved our children, our children are being educated beyond belief throughout this. Not only are they so proud of their dads, but it's unbelievable how people have pulled together, families and children. We never believed this would go on the amount of time it has.
But it makes you more determined, you know, 20 months. We're not walking away from 20 months. We'd never be able to drive past those docks again if we knew those scabs were in there, no trade unions in there. My grandfather was on the docks for 43 years and it's all gone. You'd end up going in there and causing murder because you couldn't allow it, especially on your own doorstep. You just couldn't go past the place without feeling so much hatred. And that's why when we come here to San Francisco, it's nice to look in docks again and see men working. It's nice to look over without feeling the hatred we feel when we're looking in our own docks in our own city...and to see the men that are supporting us, we're really grateful.
Sue: You just can't walk away: If you walk away you've lost your job, you've lost your pension, you've lost all your rights. And there's no work in Britain for older men.
I wanted to go on the picket line from day one, but my husband assured me there were no women there. I found out there were four women there and I made it my business, and I've been on that picket line every morning since then, except when we do delegations. About a month after, they asked us to go on local delegation and speak. We're ordinary working class women. We come from our homes with our children to say this is not the way, this is not right, not just for dock workers. You can see it happening all over: to teachers, doctors, college lecturers, other workers. And you have to say enough is enough: human beings can only take so much of this pressure. So the women just got organized. And we never ever thought we'd be getting asked for as Women of the Waterfront, because we always thought we were there to support our men-but it just seemed to take off from such a small thing. And I'll go anywhere to talk to people because it isn't just about me, or Colette, it's about working people. You see the homeless on the street and you think if we lose there's going to be thousands more on the street and this is what it's about too. It's about fighting for people who've got less, even though we've lost a lot. Through all the years your husband's working, and you're just looking at now living on state benefits, and it just destroys you to think it was forced by the company overnight, on families that should never have been treated this way. But because of the capitalist system, this has been what's on the agenda. The hidden agenda is let's get rid of full-time workers and get casual workers in and just use the human beings to make money. Sue: You go round England and you go round the world. I've listened to people from 73 countries all speaking about things that were going on in their countries, some things worse than we actually faced. You've got countries where children are being treated like slave labor. And when the resolution was passed-we have a committee in Paris to support the Liverpool Dockers, I know Doreen MacNally and I went over to France and we were just overwhelmed to think that all these countries had signed an agreement supporting the Liverpool dockers. But then I realized it wasn't just about the Liverpool dockers. This fight is a fight for workers everywhere, no matter what color, what country, what language. It's all about the bosses putting the boot on the workers and destroying unions, family lives and just wanting to make money on the backs of workers, with casual labor and low pay. It didn't matter how long we'd been on the docks. This was a fight to stop the bosses' destroying the lives of our families and taking the heritage of these men and their fathers and their sons for a hundred years. And we've mobilized and organized. It didn't take us long, because when you're fighting for survival, there's an instinct in a woman to fight to protect her family. And that's what I feel I've been doing. It's also inspired me to see there are so many people out there facing the same thing. It's sad for me to think about what this is going to mean, if this is going to mean young people working for low pay, and you're going to see more and more crime and more and more of the homeless people on the street. And I am not going to stand by as a person and see that happen. That's why I became involved with women we'd never met before, even though our husbands had worked together for 30 or 40 years. And we organized and went so far, further than any of us thought we'd go-we always say from the washing line to the picket line to the world platform. We feel lucky to be speaking here, seeing the people who're supporting us. Without the people, without the longshoremen, all the working people supporting us, we would not be able to stay in the fight against the Mersey Docks and Harbour Co.
Colette: Tony Blair doesn't know what side of the fence he's sitting on, whether he's Tory or whether he's Labour. So we challenged Tony Blair, one of his shadow ministers, only a couple weeks ago, asked them what they were going to do for the Liverpool d ockers. What they said was, "This is a problem between a company and their employees, it's got nothing to do with us," even though they [the British government] are major shareholders. They could turn this dispute around tomorrow. The true cause is they're trying to get the middle vote. They're going round to Conservative constituencies trying to get them on board, so they're not interested in the working class or the unions, or fighting to defend the unions. It's just, you know, w hat we say is the Tory party is the same as the Labour Party now. We're just going to put so much pressure on Tony Blair when he gets in. We're just going to follow him around and hound him.
Sue: You can imagine there's lots of stress and strain. Some of us can be very open when we've got problems, but some women hide and keep it to themselves. Then they say "I've got to go back to the women' s meeting, because it's the only place I can let m yself go and be with you all, because I feel like you're all my sisters."
Now we're just like a big family, the company's frightened of us, because we've become a big community. We do go on delegations, but also we're support for one another, because some days are days when you don't cope, and somebody will say "Come on," and pull you out of it. Same with the men. They may have worked together, they might not have ever been close but now they've become friendly, we know each other personally. Before we never had time to socialize because the power of the bosses was pressing on us.
I'm amazed to think about me. After 21 years of being just a wife at home, I could never ever go back to being like that. And it's inspired a lot of women to get involved-instead of sitting at home and thinking, "God, isn't that awful," to get out and s upport other people. People are looking at the Liverpool dockers. There was 1,800 people the 20th of January actually carrying them across the sand. You've got the world on your shoulders willing you to win. You couldn't just go home and say "Oh God, I've got to go back to b eing a nice little wife and mum."
That's why we go on fighting, because there's so much injustice now on people, working people, homeless people. It really saddens me to see-after a walk today to see the splendor of San Francisco and see so many begging on the streets.
People can get together, like the dockers have organized. I think anyone can organize, you don't need to be in a trade union. You can just as people, as human beings, get together and fight back for the future, for the children. If you have children think "what are we going to leave them if we don't fight back?" It's going to be a hell-hole for our children.
