MERSEYSIDE PORT SHOP STEWARDS
J.NOLAN: CHAIRMAN J.DAVIES: SECRETARY
C/O T.G.W.U.
TRANSPORT HOUSE, ISLINGTON
LIVERPOOL L3
Telephone: 0151 207 3383
Fax 0151 207 069
email: dockers@gn.apc.org
web site: http://www.labournet.org.uk
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We have circulated our final balance on the day of action. We are now sending you some important statements that were made following the action, by Jack Heyman of the ILWU. The ILWU, which organises the west coast ports in the US, has given wholehearted support on both days of action and its branches have sent a magnificent and continuous financial support during the whole of our long two years of struggle.
The response throughout the world to our last day of action showed the great international feeling among dockworkers against the evils of casualisation, catastrophic loss of jobs and attacks on union rights, which are the result of the relentless drive for profit of multi-nationals throughout the world.
What Jack Heyman raises very sharply and very clearly and simply is a great problem of our trade union organisations today throughout the world and has hit us continually during the last two years. Our unions still have power, but with leaders who are afraid to move, they are weakened further.
They are appalled by any thought of meeting the aggressive policies of modern capitalist global profit makers with aggressive forthright class policies of the kind which built the trade unions. Jack Heyman writes as he does because he expresses the strength of the ILWU which was built on such class policies.
He demands that the ITF gets off the fence in relation to the Liverpool dockers. But that applies also to the Transport and General Workers Union. The same feelings among dockworkers internationally against policies of duck-shoving, evasion and compromise were shown when the biennial conference of the TGWU swept aside the Executive position. Now, after two years of struggle, we, Liverpool dockers and their wives and families have the right to demand as Jack Heyman demands of the ITF, that the TGWU gets off the fence and does what it will take to bring this long struggle to a successful end.
We think also we have a right to tell our supporters in Britain - who have sustained us with their sympathy and valuable financial support which we continue to need - that in the critical situation of today, a greater effort is needed - more decisive action to bring us a result which can be not only a victory for dockers but for workers everywhere.
Like dockers throughout the world, we ask you to take protest action in our support of whatever length or form.
Our fight is your fight. but you cannot fight by proxy.
Solidarity with Liverpool dockers.
A win for us is a win for all.
