Brian McWilliams, President ILWU
ILWU Local 10
ILWU Local 34
Liverpool Dockers Victory Defense Committee
Robert Irminger

Dear comrades and friends,
18 November 1997

Two years ago we faced a picket line of young dockworkers, many of them our own sons, who had been unjustly sacked in an overtime dispute engineered by Mersey Docks and Harbour Company.

At that moment, each Liverpool dockworker had to decide for himself whether or not to cross the line. We knew the risks involved. Almost all of us made the decision to stand up for the principles handed down to us and renewed throughout our own working lives. Two years later, after everything the company, the police, and our own union have thrown at us, we remain solid.

If we began with nothing but our own solidarity, we are now part of a world-wide movement against the casualisation and deregulation of our industry. Without this international movement, we cannot survive. But the same is true for every dockworker in every country. There are no safe havens for any of us.

That is why we feel such pride when others stand up for the same industrial principles we fight for: the right to defend working conditions and to take solidarity action in the face of attack, even if the victims of that attack are halfway around the world.

By picketting the "Neptune Jade", Liverpool supporters put the spotlight on Hapag-Lloyd, one of the key shipping lines keeping the scab Port of Liverpool in business, and on Thamesport, where Mersey Docks acts as Port Authority through its subsidiary Medway Ports. They also exercised their precious right to have an opinion and to express it. The decision by ILWU members to respect that picket line upheld the industrial principles we share.

It is Mersey Docks and Harbour Company who deserve to be indicted and held responsible for the damage they have caused by wantonly sacking their workforce. Even at this late hour, we call on the judicial authorities to come to their senses and drop the charges against Robert Irminger and any others scapegoated by the shipping industry.

We stand side by side with all of you, and call on dockworkers throughout the world to join in your defense just as they have acted in ours.

Yours in Solidarity,

Jim Nolan
Chairman, Merseyside Port Shop Stewards