It is now over two years since 500 Liverpool Dockers were dismissed by MDHC for daring to defend minimum conditions of work and the collective principle of not crossing a picket line. In the ensuing period the sacked dockers, their families and support groups, have mounted a national and international campaign for the reinstatement of the dockers and a fight against the global tide of work casualisation imposed by the ruling classes. The campaign has been unique in the way it has combined 'old' and 'new' collectivities, such as rank and file trade unionism, women and unemployed support groups, environmentalists, socialists and Anarchists, to produce the embryo of new forms of class struggle, which hold out the possibility of transcending the traditional boundaries between 'public/private', 'industrial'/'political' and national/international.

A profound disenchantment with established politics and a deep seated resentment towards official trade unionism has been a marked feature of this 25 month old struggle. The most commonly held perception amongst the dockers and WOW is that New Labour can no longer hold on to the pretence of representing workers and that official trade unionist's are agents of business not labour. It is this awareness, more than anything else, that has provoked the dockers to adopt innovative actions such as their international campaign, which has culminated in the establishment of a new institution of International Dock Workers. And it is also why they now stand side by side in the struggle against capitalism with WOW, Environmentalist, Reclaim The Street activists and others. Effectively, the dockers have been at the centre of a network of social groups who have drawn together against a common enemy to create new forms of class struggle because older forms have revealed themselves to be part of the problem not the solution. The politicising effects of this are clearly discernible in the interviews with the shop stewards.

PK: Can I begin by asking you to explain the current two stage industrial action you have adopted.

Terry: Yeh, the success of the two stage action, which was derived at the International Dock Workers Conference in Montreal last May, is crucial to us right now. The first strand of it was to organise a day of solidarity actions around the worlds dockyards and ports. This was not just to promote the Liverpool struggle but for dock workers the world over who are themselves struggling against casualisation and de recognition of union rights. In Montreal there were worker representatives from roughly 16-17 countries, who in turn were representative of more than 50 ports around the world. What became clear at Montreal was that the 'globalisation' of changes to working practices such as casualisation and deregulation had hit nearly all the major ports. So that was the first stage, to organise this global day of action. Liverpool was the focal point, but it was all about international solidarity with other workers too, for example, the Brazilian dock workers and the dock workers in Amsterdam, who are currently involved in their own struggle with employers, and also about the Australian dockers currently under attack from their own Conservative Governments anti-trade union laws.

The second stage of the struggle came about because many of the comrades at Montreal believed they had, in the International Dock Workers organisation, the beginnings of a rank and file international workers movement, which could co-ordinate continuous action to achieve victory for the Liverpool dockers as a basis for a generalised workers fight back. Thus the belief was in the necessity for a continuous rolling boycott of ships and ports harbouring scab cargo from and to MDHC. Of course we have had an international forum for a long time - the International Transport Federation, ITF - but this is a bureaucracy which has, sadly, gone the way of our own unions, who are more concerned with maintaining what they term 'the fabric of their own organisation' and the laws of the land, rather than aiding ordinary members who may be in struggle with their bosses. In response to this and, I would say, one of the most important achievements of the Liverpool dockers, was the setting up in February 1996 of an alternative international rank and file organisation.

PK: How effective has the two stage strategy been so far?

Terry: The day of action which occurred Sept 8th was a magnificent show of international rank and file solidarity, with strikes and stoppages occurring on every continent, across many ports and involving many thousands of workers, from Brazil to Japan and India. We tried to be as honest as possible in the eventual report we put together on the extent of support received and which you can find on the Labournet. For example, we made it clear that the support in Europe was not as strong as elsewhere.

PK: Although you have certainly had support from rank and file dock workers in Europe it has not been to the same extent as other workers. How do you explain this?

Terry: Well can I first say that in the meetings we have had with German and Dutch dock workers, the support and enthusiasm for what we are trying to do has been great. But what's happening is that their enthusiasm is being stifled by the bureaucratic leaders of their own unions. This makes a big impact on workers ability to act. The effect of a bureaucracy can be shown clearly by looking at the actions of a more democratic union like, for example, the ILWU. On the west coast of the US you have the Longshoreman's union the ILWU which is a real rank and file union with every officer having to stand for re-election every two years, an arrangement which encourages decision making at grassroots level. The result has been that the ILWU have shown magnificent solidarity with us during this dispute. Sadly, on the other hand, the German union the OTV and the Dutch union the FMB have decisions imposed from above by unrepresentative leaders who have greater links with their Government and its financial policies than their own workers. Sadly, these type of organisations have tended to forget about the people who set them up in the first place.

PK: has there been any commitment to maintaining the rank and file international links beyond this particular dispute?

Terry: This is what we hope. You know when we first established the International Dock Workers movement at the conference held in Liverpool Town Hall, which Mike [Carden] had a leading role in, it was an historic event because many of the big union bureaucracies never wanted us to meet. In fact the ITF actually instructed people not to attend. And we've always said that whatever happens here, then at least we will have left a movement which can grow and grow, so when other workers are in struggle they will have something there to build on. Certainly workers need to organise globally and we believe what we have initiated is a first big step toward this aim. What we have established, particularly with the workers on the west coast of America, is something that will last beyond this dispute.

PK: I'd like your response to some of the criticisms of your strategy during the course of the dispute. Some supporters have been critical of your choice of strategy, often for a variety of competing reasons. For example, they say that you have either;

- placed too much emphasis on the international campaign

- failed to seriously challenge the T&Gs campaign to limit the struggle,

- backed off from building real alliances with workers in Britain.

PK: How would you respond to this?

Mike: Taking the issue of the failure to build alliances with workers in this country. We met with workers in this country,we met with Vauxhall workers and we met with Ford workers and with council workers in this city, etc. Now, we didn't have to be told this, but it was clear that their own working conditions were under attack too. As Jimmy Nolan puts it [Chair of Merseyside shop stewards committee], people are gripped by 'economic fear'. People have put forward fancy analysis about whether we should have done this or done that in Britain. Now, no doubt we have made mistakes in a dispute which has run for over two years, but to assume somehow that there is a kind of tap to be turned on and from which will flow this localised workers action, at first in Liverpool and then nationally, is simplistic. I'm not being critical of local workers by saying this. The reality is that we have met workers locally and asked them for solidarity action beyond the financial support, in exactly the same way as dockers have done historically for others. For example, in the 1970s dockers boycotted cargo destined for plants in Britain and anywhere else where workers were in struggle against their bosses. Yer know, we've boycotted cars, coal, etc, and to my recollection we were the only group of workers to go on strike in support of the miners in the 80s. I don't accept the argument that we have not tried sufficiently to win support here, we have tried but have not been successful so far in winning the active support we seek.

PK: What do you say to those who argue that the dockers are in a position to call on workers to challenge the anti-trade union laws and the very real tendency of their own unions to use these laws as a smoke screen for inaction and outright compliance with the bosses, by setting pickets up at other ports and in other industries?

Mike: Well we are looking at ideas like that, but it is difficult to put a picket line up on say Fords, or any other factory/office block, etc. Physically it's not difficult, but it's the dealing with all the individual politics of the shop stewards structures. For example, some stewards are tied into the union bureaucracy, others are more, or, less militant, we'd have to be aware of this. The complications would be enormous and again it assumes that there is this latent worker power just waiting to be released. I'm not saying there is no latent support there, but it is not quite so simple as that.

Terry: Can I just add that we wouldn't accept that we have actually neglected trying to build support within this country. Look at the network of support groups we've set up. They have been set up by campaigning amongst unemployed and employed people, men and women, right across the country. In particular every major city now has a Liverpool dockers support group similar to what the miners had. Again, as with the international movement, if we were to win our dispute those support groups would stay in place, as something to build on for the future. Yer know, the London and Glasgow support groups have been magnificent. In addition to this, only this week we are getting news that Belfast and Cardiff dock workers are building to take industrial action.

Mike: Yer know, we had a meeting in this room [the T&G conference room, regional headquarters of the T&G in Liverpool] to discuss developments and local strategy. We invited the representatives of a whole range of industrial, governmental and council workers, but very few turned up! This is a symptom of the reality we are facing; we've tried to build physical support locally on a number of different occasions and so far it has failed! If anyone has got a magic formula then let us know immediately!

PK: Some, while in full support of your international campaign, would argue that it is a pre-condition both to the success of this struggle and to the overturning of anti-trade union laws and so the grip of the trade union bureaucracy in general, that you tap into worker solidarity in this country. In other words some argue that it is essential to your overall strategy that you make a decisive push to establish picket line presence in the UK, particularly at other ports. Linked to this is something that has been uppermost on the minds of the port shop stewards themselves; namely, that all workers are under the same threat of casualisation, flexibility and rationalisation that you have experienced and that, therefore, they have a common interest in supporting you. Lastly, it has also been said that the Liverpool dockers would have the moral authority and leadership necessary to win the active support of other workers in Britain.

Mike: Yes I agree about the need for active support and nobody has got any excuses. Yes there is a fundamental issue at stake in all this concerning worker solidarity. Now, while I don't see the dockers as some sort of vanguard, after all other workers have been in disputes more difficult than we could ever contemplate, nevertheless, at this moment in time, it is true that we have managed to capture the imagination of those workers willing to fight. But this fight has rarely gone beyond financial support, which is desperately needed of course. Personally, I can't understand why workers in whatever industry and why any shop stewards worth their salt, are not sitting in their workplace and saying 'well apart from financial support how else can we directly support these dockers, because financial support is not enough'?

PK: But for many years now workers have been subjected to anti-trade union laws and, perhaps more importantly, an ideological attack, not just from business and the state, but from their own trade unions, telling them direct action is useless and that they cannot buck the market, but must flow with the logic of markets and globalisation and accept 'flexploitation'! Against this reality aren't workers going to need active leadership, given the fact that confidence about the ability to change things runs so deep? I'm thinking in particular of the kind of active leadership you revealed internationally, by establishing the International Dock Workers organisation and setting up picket lines, in this case giving the phrase 'flying picket' a whole new meaning!

Mike: In my opinion, given the realities we have to deal with, it would be wrong for us to set up picket lines at other plants in Britain. Supposing we did set up a picket line, there's a real possibility that workers will just walk straight past it and you know what the headline in The Echo would be 'Dockers make appeal to other workers to support their struggle for reinstatement and those workers have rejected them'!

PK: But more than for publicity reasons, wouldn't it serve to raise the political stakes? Also are you so sure that workers would walk past your picket?

Mike: When we went to America it wasn't a question of just standing randomly on a gate and asking dockers we didn't know not to cross our picket. It was well organised. Prior to this the nod had been given to us by shop stewards and senior union officials sympathetic to us. We were told when to picket, eg, what day and which shift of workers would be most favourable in supporting us, etc. Picketing requires a lot of complex administration. Now, I don't rule out the possibility of picketing workers locally or nationally. It's just that the planning, organisation and effort that has to go in to it is immense. Yer know, another argument is that we have so far failed to adequately build support at branch level through the structure of the local trade union and I think this has some validity, I'm not opposed to that and possibly we should be following this avenue up. But even this is very difficult, because our own union, even at local level is so controlled by the iron fist of the right wing.

Terry: As you know of course, we actually believe in picket lines, it's one of the reasons we're considered to be so called 'dinosaurs' of the labour movement right now! They do serve an essential purpose and one of them is, as you say, to raise the political stakes. But to the vast majority of workers, the picket line was seen as defeated under Thatcher. Thatcher was able to claim that she had beaten the picket lines, because whatever the number of pickets, the state can more than match them with extra police. This mirrored our own experience in the early days of the dispute when we had mass picketing; we ended up fighting with the police, while the MDHC and the union bureaucrats got off Scott free. To me this means that picketing has got to be well planned, for example, along the lines of the recent picket at the port of Shearness, that was a success in my view. Picketing has also got to be built for politically within plants, before we or anybody else could turn up on a picket line outside.

Our own physical, not to mention financial, resources are limited. For the best part of two years we've had all our work cut out just concentrating pickets on the port of Liverpool, because there's that many gates in and out of the docks. But now we believe we've succeeded; the port has stagnated, there is no new business going in there. But the likelihood is that we're not going to get anyone who hasn't already done so, to stop going in now; there's a basic stand-off now. Because of this we are now looking to move picket lines to other areas. We were thinking of going to Fords Halewood earlier on in the struggle, but it wasn't that long ago that workers there suffered 900 redundancies, which the union regarded as a compromise, but was basically a sell out. Yer know, at one point there was even a threat of Fords getting rid of 3,4000 workers there. So I understand what your saying regarding taking a lead, but it can no longer just be the case of going down to the picket line, there needs to be, as indicated above, a prior political education inside work places. To give you an idea of what I'm thinking of here; we wanted to adopt the position which we've done on an international basis, of asking stewards to organise workplace meetings, or branch meetings, get the best attendance they can and get speakers from those like ourselves in struggle, and in this way to start to generate a debate first and foremost, and on this basis build outwards.

PK: Moving on to a related topic, how would you respond to those who say that you have failed to seriously challenge the T&Gs attempt to control the dispute?

Mike: First of all our position is that this dispute is not illegal or unofficial and that therefore there are no legal constraints on the TUC or the T&G or the ITF, or anybody else, supporting us. But the problem is the policy of the lay members of the executive council of the T&G and the policy of Bill Morris and all the rest of them, is to say that the strike is illegal and that therefore any involvement would leave the union open to legal action. So that's the reality we have had to deal with. The other reality we've had to deal with early on in this dispute is the tactic of trying to work with the union, with the General Secretary Bill Morris; to force them to help out. One result was that Bill Morris came here in April 1996 and made a speech Nelson Mandela would have been proud of in support of our struggle. So at that stage we felt the tactics of incorporating ourselves with the union were for the best. It would have been gods gift to Bill Morris and the union if we'd have broken away from them, because they'd effectively broken away from us from day one, but if we would have walked away and said, yeh know, 'fuck you, then they would have been very happy with that. We decided, rightly or wrongly, that this is our union, our organisation, and we've got every right to make the union come around to our way. So when Morris did speak in April it was important, because he had to make his position clear. The other dynamic was that we had little money coming in in the early stages of the dispute and we required the union to finance us.

In reflecting on the dispute as a whole, we have gone through different phases and tried different avenues, from the international action, to attempts to mobilise rank and file workers in Britain, to working within the T&G. As Billy Hunter said at one of our support group meetings, where anyone can come along to give their views and criticise the stewards and put forward alternative strategies, etc, 'this dispute is a living thing, it's constantly changing'. So now you have the situation on the second anniversary where Jimmy Nolan is Chairman of the National Dock's and Waterways Group within the T&G; Jimmy Davies and myself on the Executive Council of the T&G, all calling for the resignation of Bill Morris because of his and the T&Gs actions during this dispute. So we've come along way in the two years and we are challenging the union bureaucracy. You'll never please everyone of course.

It is true the trade unions use the anti-trade union laws to justify their own general inaction's when it comes to challenging management. I'm convinced they haven't even read the laws properly! Take the Magnet workers, they had an official ballot, but you speak to a Magnet worker and ask them what the TUC and T&G has done for them and they will tell you: nothing! We've got more out of the T&G than the Magnet workers! Yer know we've had 18years of Thatcherism, but we've also had 18 years of the trade union bureaucracies accepting Thatcherism, which has given them the easy option of saying to workers, 'there's nothing we can do because of the anti-union laws'. There's a whole range of dark forces at work here. There is the corruption and betrayal of the trade union and labour movement which stretches back beyond this century. Time and again workers have been betrayed, from the South Wales miners in 1911 to the miners of 1984. To me it's come to such a pitch now that, just like the Reclaim The Street activists, who I've got every respect for, we should be 'reclaiming' our own unions back! The people that claim to represent us, from the bureaucrats in the trade unions to the Labour Party, do not reflect the views of the vast majority of the people, they need to be challenged.

PK: You mentioned the need to reclaim the trade unions and the Labour Party. However some people argue that these institutions are in fact now moribund, in so far as they can represent workers aspirations and that, in the case of the unions, they have become little more than business enterprises. An example, of which is the recent TUC bid to take up part share ownership of some of the utilities recently privatised and recently the site of employment rationalisations and work intensification's. What is your response to this?

Terry: They were my thoughts at the recent demonstration in Birkenhead for Tulip workers, at which the union spoke. If I would have spoken I'd have said this to the workers there. Jimmy Nolan spoke at the meeting and he actually touched on this issue. On reflection, if it was one thing that you could have passed on to those workers who were standing there, it would be that 'you organise from your rank and file and once you've done this you take the fight out to other workers directly. Don't, in other words leave it to your leaders, whether union bureaucrats or politicians'. Some of them may be well meaning people, but, I would have to say to these people that the organisations and establishments they represent now support the policies you are fighting, yer know privatisation, deregulation and casualisation! In my view unions now support the anti-trade union laws, because they've become comfortable with them. Although saying this gets the union officials backs up, the fact is that nobody from those establishments are doing anything fundamentally to oppose the laws; this includes New Labour of course. Yer know, not once during the whole of this dispute has an officer of the T&G bothered to show up on a picket line! Nowadays it is the furthest thing from their thoughts to go down to a picket line and show solidarity.

Mike: The trade unions have adopted a role over the passed 18 years of effectively seeing themselves as the employers!

Terry: In the past most people going for a job in the union would have to have a C/V depicting evidence of their active involvement in struggles. Nowadays their a different breed. You've got to draw the conclusion that it is a modern day betrayal!

PK: but this betrayal as you call it has been a permanent feature of unions and the Labour Party, something Mike suggested earlier.

Mike: I think there is a difference between the past betrayals and the times we live in now. In the past at least they spoke the language of class struggle and provided a sense of 'us and them'. Modern unions and the Labour Party speak the language of the market; the language of the capitalist! These people now openly speak about the need for 'flexibility' in the labour market. The whole ethos of the unions have changed, they no longer see their role as representing the industrial working class. The TUC and John Monks - an organisation we wrote off from day one of our dispute - now talk with pride about representing what they term the white collar middle classes, whatever that may mean. In reality these organisations no longer represent anyone apart from themselves.

PK: But surely they must have a function, if not the capitalist system, not known to put up with 'non-productive' overheads for too long, would have let them wither away far more than they have recently. Do you not think that the current trade union function is to out manage management itself, by saying to employers 'we can secure that flexibility deal', 'we can deliver the flexible wage agreement', etc?

Terry: Yes this is what they are now doing.

Mike: It's true, for a number of years now they have been playing that role. But this role is very contradictory for them, because once they deliver the goods, bosses no longer need them! Take our own case. In 1993 the union went along with MDHC's calls for new working practices and two years later they don't need the union any more! The same can be said for the ongoing Tulip workers. Once unions negotiate these contracts there is no need for them, because from then on, if workers don't abide by the contracts they're simply sacked!

Terry: This is confirmed by the recent closure at Spillers. In this case unions came to management with a deal on how they (the union!) could save Spillers £2 million through flexibility, longer work hours and all the rest of it; they gave them the lot! And they still closed the plant! Yer know, in answer to your question about the role of trade unions, it could actually be that they have come to the end of their time and we're just seeing their death rows. To me they have just become middlemen; for the employer not the worker!

Mike: In this context the idea of building new organisations I think is one of the many issues that this and other struggles are highlighting right now. If an organisation no longer represents workers, that's telling us we need something else. The problem we then have is convincing others. Most stewards feel, for example, that we shouldn't move away from 'our' union, yer know. They argue along the lines of, 'it's our union and what we have to do is fight from inside like thousands of comrades have done for over a hundred years or more'. We've had discussions here about why unions no longer represent us and there is still differences between us. The discussions suddenly made me think about the issue in the reverse; the question why doesn't the union represent us, became, for me, the question, 'why are my views no longer represented in these meetings'! New organisations should be clearly on the agenda in my opinion. In the same way we should be thinking more about the principle of 'the right to work'. This by itself can be a dangerous concept to keep pressing unthinkingly, because there is plenty of work available for a pound per hour!

PK: Of course a central feature of New Labour policy is the need for flexible working on a more casualised basis and, although they would claim otherwise, this can only lead to 'the right to work' on the poor pay and conditions you mention.

Mike: I'm at the point now, and a lot of the dockers I feel think the same, where I'm questioning the whole ethos of work; in fact this is something that came to the forefront first during the miners strike. I was proud to support those workers who fought to retain dangerous jobs down mine shafts. But I was also thinking is this all the struggle is about; maintaining the right to this type of waged work! I then look at the state things have now reached today. Looking at those filthy scabs at the docks, and they are a special breed yer know, and there's thousands of them about, and I look at the kind of work we're fighting to maintain in this dispute, and I sometimes think, and its a dangerous thought I know, that well, if we lose these struggles, the dockers, Aerospace workers, Tulip workers, etc, then, sod it, leave the scabs to it!

PK: But under present arrangements workers have to work in order to gain access, through a wage, to a social life, so is it a realistic option to refuse work, or forgo organisation, or simply leave it to the scabs? There is obviously another dimension to this; namely, that the imperative to continually introduce technology ultimately reduces the need for total labour time and so continually diminishes the need for workers and alters the skill composition and physical location of workers that are still required. This second point is one of the technical reasons why New Labour are promoting so called flexible working'; the main, political, reason being that new flexible working practices enable greater control over the labour movement.

Mike: I agree the drive towards greater rationalisations, new technology and new working practices cannot be avoided, it is a reality we always face. As a shop steward you negotiate a deal with an employer for the next 10 years or so, and you think 'well that will protect the jobs and will protect the labour force and keep the employer at bay'. Well we all know that the employer is like a monster that keeps coming at you, so this idea about flexibility that Blair talks about, along with Bill Morris and all the rest of them, is another means to cover the greed of capitalism. You soon realise that whatever deal you cut in any of these factories, then as sure as night follows day, in another 6 months or so time there will be another problem, because the fundamental principles of capitalism are about cutting wages! cutting labour! and destroying labour's organisations! It is as blunt and as obvious as that and this isn't me after two years of struggle, it's always been obvious, but there have been times within capitalism whereby workers have made some gains, but now all the rules of old by which those gains were made, have now been ripped up, they've gone now; now it's just open greed! We need to call a halt to this madness, but the Labour Party nor the trade unions will do this.

PK: If we could just take another backward step away from the immediate dispute for a moment to consider the issue in broader political terms. I would argue that all the problems spoken of, building solidarity with other workers in Britain, the treacheries and transformations of trade union bureaucracies and the Labour Party, you refer to, etc, are quite clearly related to the collapse of the previous class compromise post 1945-79. As we know the compromise provided, formally at any rate, the universal provision of social welfare, a commitment to full and secure employment and the states regulation of the capitalist economy. Over the past decade the plug has been systematically pulled on all these commitments, at the same time that ideas about socialist progress have been tarnished with the collapse of the USSR and its satellites. The point I make is this: workers are now caught in a political no mans land for the moment; they are unable to go back to the old compromise, yet they continue to suffer the consequences of 'globalisation'. It is this situation, I would argue, that has a lot to do with the isolation and treachery you've experienced in Britain at least.

Mike: You say unable to go back to the old compromise, but do we want to go back, I don't think I do! I don't particularly want a politics centred around 'the right to work at all costs'; I don't want to see my kids struggling for crap jobs. I think we're actually going through a revolutionary period, one where we should be saying fuck you and your jobs and yer slave labour. If wage labour's slave labour, then freedom from wage labour is total freedom! The problem is of course, how do you live after that? But then that is the challenge, it's a revolutionary challenge. The dilemma for socialists is to recognise this. Now maybe I'm being a bit unfair because I don't know their full perspective, but, how many socialists within the political groups that have supported us have or would build a political strategy out of the refusal of wage work? I haven't come across any, but I know that's what the Reclaim The Street Activists consistently argue and I find that a breath of fresh air!

PK: You mention Reclaim The Street activists, apart from the international aspect, one of the defining characteristics of this dispute , has been the role of other social movements in your struggle, I'm thinking also of women's movements, environmentalists. Do you think new forms of class struggle are beginning to take shape?

Terry: I think we have surprised ourselves with our own ability to organise, especially internationally. You kept hearing for years and years about workers going international, but I began to think it was a pipe dream. I think we've made great strides towards this objective in our struggle. But things like the women's movement and support groups were products of earlier struggles like the miners dispute, so in that sense it is not new.

PK: Can I put the question another way? When you looked around at all the different groups who turned out in support of you at the recent march and rally on September 27th to mark the second anniversary of your struggle , in your mind, was this a class in movement, or just disparate groups coming together to fight your cause?

Mike: I think on reflection that there is a fundamental movement beginning to occur which goes beyond disparate groupings. This is where the docks dispute and other disputes highlight a turning point, although I wouldn't reduce it to a working class movement. Reclaim The Street activists come at social problems from a different angle, they deny they are political, but they are very well organised and politically aware. Dockers have a lot of respect for these people and during the dispute we have built up a strong relationship. I think one of the successes to come out of this dispute is the relationships we have built up, both here and internationally.

PK: You say it cannot be reduced to a class movement. Do you think that, despite differences between the groups, what unites them is the condition of being a proletariat; that is being in united opposition to capitalism?

Mike: If your saying that there is a little box we can fit people in to, then that, I feel, is a mistake. What binds us together is a sense of injustice, against scab labour, environmental damage, casualisation of labour, etc.

PK: Is there not a common source of environmental damage, scab labour, casual labour, indeed exploitation, for example, that generated by a capitalist system intent on squeezing out profits and controlling labour come what may. Perhaps this is the basis of the unity you mention?

Terry: It seems to me that it is quite unique to this dispute that other social movements have involved themselves so closely. I think this was down, on our part at least, to the fact that we had to make diverse links to keep the campaign alive. It also had a lot to do with the London support group; it is through them that we made the connection with Reclaim The Street activists, for example. In relation to your question though I tend to see the unity as based on the particular issue in question. The unity in this sense is based, as Mike says on a shared sense of social justice.

PK: What do you mean by social justice?

Mike: It's a period of fundamental transition we're living through right now, but for me social justice is the right to work!, the right not to work!, the right to a clean environment! With the clear recognition that the system we have at the moment can never sustain these things! We've got all this technological know-how, eg, factories that could operate without labour; we should be living the life of the ancient Greeks. Instead it's bizarre, we have all this technology, but with people either with no work or people working anywhere up to 80 hours a week! It is a world we should be proud to disassociate ourselves with! Yer know, when we unite with people like Reclaim The Street, we have to take on board what they are saying too, which is 'get a life, who wants to spend their days working on the production line like that famous poster of Charlie Chaplin depicting modern times'. I think that is a concept that the labour movement have got to examine and take on board. As I say, we're going through a transition, nobody is going to invent the wheel again; Fords will never again require on Merseyside, or anywhere else, 10,000 people. We need to mobilise on different ground. If we don't we as a labour movement will have to do what unions and New Labour is now doing; rationalising work amongst ourselves in the interest of the bosses!

PK: Many thanks for your time and your patience with my questions.

Peter Kennedy (email 113121.3463@compuserve.com).