Letter to "The Guardian"
I do not wish to strain your readers' patience by responding to personal abuse from the glitterati of the Socialist Workers' Party over the Liverpool docks strike (Letters, February 3, January 31). There are, however, three points which everyone should understand.
Firstly, calls for solidarity action, defiance of the law and so on, would have been no more than rhetoric. There was no support for solidarity action whatsoever within the T&G - indeed, over 800 T&G members employed by Mersey Docks, workmates of those dismissed, continued working normally throughout the dispute, which was called without their involvement. I have as much responsibility to them as to the dismissed 320.
Secondly, the legal threats faced by the union were not abstract ones. A judgement was made in a New Jersey court which would have fined the union $1 million a day if we lent public support to the dismissed dockers. Fines of that magnitude, which could have been repeated in Britain itself, would have left the T&G incapable of functioning - a high price to pay for rhetoric.
If it was a matter of individual sacrifice, I would have been happy to make it. But I was not prepared to sacrifice the interests of every T&G member and their families and see our organisation smashed up to no avail.
Thirdly, it is ironic that those who normally shout loudest about rank-and-file democracy in trade unions should overlook the point that the course of action urged by various of your correspondents was explicitly rejected by the T&G's conference. This conference, which is exclusively composed of lorry drivers, car workers, building workers, catering workers, etc, has a better sense of the realities of both the legal dangers and the dockers' dispute itself. Not surprising since it is they, not the comfortable middle-class, who would carry the can for any misjudgement.
Bill Morris.
General Secretary,
Transport and General Workers' Union,
Transport House,
London SW1E 5JD
