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Thread: Liverpool Dockers

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    Creator & Administrator Kev's Avatar
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    Default Liverpool Dockers

    They handled cargoes from the greatest empire the world had ever known. Now an exhibition is being planned to celebrate 200 years of Mersey dockers. David Charters reports

    THE BRANCHES of trees in distant lands hung heavy with fruit, ready for the picking, and in sheds along the waterfronts merchants in brilliant clothes sprinkled pungent spices into drums.

    Fabrics, exotic perfumes and molasses came in. Tools, heavy machines and sweat went out. Cranes groaned. Ropes strained. Cigarettes were rolled. Mugs of tea were drained. Brows were mopped on shirt sleeves.

    Fathers and sons humped sacks along the quays.

    And the segs on the fingers of the passing generations united Liverpool to Asia, America, Europe, Africa and Australasia.

    So, in any history of the city, the dockers should be celebrated. Their ale-houses and their tall stories, the nicknames and the humour, their politics, a sense of street justice, strong family bonds, natural cunning and a refusal to bow to authority placed them at the heart of the port.

    It was obvious the loading and unloading of ships would make other people prosperous, but the dockers also came to define the working-class culture of Liverpool, crystallising the spirit of a time and place.

    Now an audio-visual exhibition is being planned to chart 200 years of dockers on the Mersey, the crucial period in which Liverpool grew from a town of moderate prosperity and much promise to the second city of the British Empire.

    "They gave so much to Liverpool," says Peter Fisher, whose family have been dock workers since his great grandfather came to Liverpool early in the 19th century. "The exhibition will tell the essential story of the port and the people who made it great."

    It is to be held in the 14-storey Tobacco Warehouse in Vauxhall, the world's largest brick building. "I will help with this exhibition in any way I can," says Frank Tough, sight supervisor at the warehouse.

    Already a website (www. scottiepress.org) has been set up, so former dockers and their families can contribute memories, ideas and photographs and films to the exhibition which is planned to run through 2007, the 800th anniversary of King John g ranting Liverpool its Royal Charter, and the following Capital of Culture year.

    Ron Formby, of the Vauxhall Neighbourhood Council, is one of the organisers. He believes the exhibition will be part of the Tourism in Vauxhall projects. "It is important this area's history should be fully recognised as part of Liverpool's culture." he says.

    But the tradition of handling cargoes on the Mersey goes back far more than 200 years.

    Cast your mind back to a chilly morning long before the first Liver Bird had hatched. A troop of friars, with cowls raised over their heads to protect their ears from the wind's keen cut, watch a rowing boat glide into view through the mist on the river.

    And then the sandalled feet of the leader slap the mud on his approach to the lapping water.

    But then one of the oarsmen tosses a rope at his hands. The friar catches it and hauls the boat ashore. "Pass 'em up," he calls down to the oarsmen. Soon his friends form a line and they begin lifting hams, cheeses and ale from the boat on to the dry bank.

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    The Benedictines at Birkenhead Priory became the first dockers on the Mersey, handling the merchandise traded between the small settlements on either side of the river.

    They began ferrying merchants and their increasingly large cargoes, including livestock, across the Mersey, after Hamon de Massey, Baron of Dunham, Cheshire, established the priory in 1150.

    Liverpool's early trading was mostly with Ireland. Small boats rested on the mud when the tide went out. They would be unloaded before it came in again. But larger ships could be damaged when they ran aground. Instead, they anchored in the river and fleets of smaller craft carried the cargoes to and from them.

    However, by the 1660s, ships were travelling to North America to trade in sugar, tobacco, cloth, pottery and other goods.

    The need was for them to come into port.

    The solution was docks, walled-in areas where the level of water could be maintained.

    The world's first commercial enclosed wet basin was built in 1715 by Thomas Steers in what is now Canning Place. In 1826 it was filled in and it is now the site of the Custom House. (This is the one being exposed for The Paradise Street Develop)

    Docks would soon proliferate on both sides of the river. Among these were Canning (1737-1972), Salthouse (1773-1952), Georges (1771-1899) and Dukes (1773-1972), Kings (1785-1972) and Coburg (1796-1972).

    But the Liverpool which became world famous was Victorian, not becoming a city until 1880. The great docks of that era include the Albert, Alexandra, Brocklebank, Brunswick, Canada, Clarence, Herculaneum, Hornby, Huskisson, Langton, Princes, Sandon, Stanley, Trafalgar, Victoria, Wapping, Waterloo, as well as the Morpeth, Egerton, Wallasey, Alfred, Great Float, Vittoria and Bidston docks on the opposite bank.



    Most dockers were Catholics whose ancestors had fled to Liverpool during the Irish potato famine and settled around Scotland Road. But people of many nations and backgrounds formed the community.

    Life was tough. There were strikes and lock-outs, which bonded the men. In 1947, the National Dock Labour Scheme introduced a register which began "decasualisation", but everything was to change after the successful strike in 1967, which guaranteed the working hours of dockers.

    After that there was a considerable improvement in their working conditions. Until then the men had been attached to the National Dock Board under a scheme, which meant accepting work when it was there, a system that was open to abuse. Work was usually issued on a daily or weekly basis, daily obviously being "more casual". In London during the 1940s almost half the dockers were dailies while in Liverpool it was 75%.

    The "welt" was another controversial practice. Gangs would divide a job between themselves. Some worked while others rested, using the Unemployment Insurance Act in which three idle days in six qualified a man for benefit.

    The Mersey's rapid rise and fall meant that overtime would be paid to complete a job quickly, so the outgoing ship could catch the tide. With such chopping and changing, dockers did not develop a sense of loyalty to their employers. Even the unions found it harder to organise on the Mersey than elsewhere. But the dockers were loyal to each other.

    Their culture was ended by the strike of 1995 which broke out at the Seaforth Container Basin when 325 dockers were sacked for not crossing the picket line of striking workers from a stevedoring company. The men from the Transport and General Workers Union held out for 850 days, winning support from socialists here and overseas.

    The men demanded they should be reinstated while the offers of redundancy pay rose steadily. In the end most men accepted pay-outs of up to £28,000.

    At its height in the 1950s, about 25,000 dockers, worked on the Mersey. There are now 400, with 5,000 people in other jobs in the Port of Liverpool and an estimated 30,000 in occupations dependent on it. Of the 400, 150 work in the Seaforth container terminal. Last year the port handled a record 32.8 million tonnes of cargo, as opposed to some nine million in 1984.

    The old days will never return, but the men who lined the quaysides to make this the second city of the British Empire have their place in our history, forever.

    davidcharters@dailypost.co.uk

    Dockers set a great example

    THROUGH research, Peter Fisher has been able to trace his paternal line back to Joseph (1812-1878), Peter (1852-1895), Joseph (1878- 1951) and John (1918-2001), who had five children with his wife, Catherine Dougherty, of whom Peter was the youngest.

    He was brought up in Great Homer Street, Liverpool, and educated at St Anthony's School in Vauxhall and then St Kevin's, Kirkby.

    Peter worked on the docks from the early 1970s to 1990, by which time he had a BSc in Social Sciences and economics from the Open University.

    In 1989, Margaret Thatcher's government abolished the National Dock Labour Board. The chill wind of a new era blew in.

    The late Eddie Loyden, when MP for Garston, said the docks and their surrounding areas provided a working class way of life that could only be understood by those who were part of it.

    Now Peter, 55, a former Knowsley councillor, lives in Kirkby. He is a management consultant and Liverpool magistrate.

    "The docks provided me with a good wage, variety of work and a camaraderie that I will never experience again," says the married father of two grown-up children.

    "The dockers' loyalty and solidarity for other workers also helped to uplift pay right across all work sectors.

    "When I was young, Great Homer Street was awash with fresh food from the markets. I remember walking up the street and smelling things being cooked.

    "It's a distant way of life now, but if only we could have carry it through to today, the Chancellor would not have to give millions to Sure Start and citizenship because the core of society was already there. My dad never swore. He taught me manners. He was always well dressed. He never owed a penny in his life to anybody. He was a gentleman. My dad and all the dockers set a great example."
    Last edited by Kev; 04-19-2006 at 09:48 AM.
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    Creator & Administrator Kev's Avatar
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    Default LIVERPOOL'S old sailors and dockers

    LIVERPOOL'S old sailors and dockers are to be auditioned for possible starring roles in a new film to be made by acclaimed New York-based artist Mathew Buckingham.

    It will be an adaptation of Daniel Orme, reputedly the last short story ever written by Herman Melville, author of Moby ****.

    "Liverpool was the first port Melville saw as a sailor on his first voyage from New York and he wrote vivid descriptions of the docks and the city which were later worked into several of his stories," said Iowa-born Mr Buckingham, whose films and photography focus on the role social memory plays in modern life.

    "Daniel Orme is primarily a description of an old sailor living ashore in a port city. I'd like to adapt this brief, strange tale set at the end of the 19th century and bring it into 21st century Liverpool."

    Mr Buckingham, whose film is a Liverpool Biennial commission for International 06 in collaboration with and showing at FACT in Wood Street from September 16 to November 30, is currently carrying out research and interviews in the city.

    Although professional actors are to be considered for the title role he maintained that the job may be awarded to someone with no stage or film experience whatsoever.

    "In the past I have been working with both actors and non-actors," said the 42-year-old artist who is also investigating site locations.

    "In this case I'm especially interested in the language because, even though there won't be an awful lot of dialogue involved, the dialect used here is important to me and I really want a representation of the city through that."

    In the story, Orme's lifespan of 70 to 80 years would have matched Melville's own and he would have witnessed the enormous amount of change in the shipping trade that would have happened throughout the 19th century.

    "Similarly, a sailor retiring today would have seen the enormous transformation in the shipping trade and world economy that has taken place since 1945," explained Mr Buckingham.

    "One of the aspects of the city that I found so striking was the conspicuousness of the old docks and shipyards and relative invisibility of the modern docks, which form what is still a significant port for England," said Mr Buckingham, who will be in the city throughout the summer and which he believes in many ways is very similar to that other great port New York.


    before!" "There are many similarities in that it's quite easy for almost anyone to strike up a conversation in public. I have only been here a day and half and I've already had at least four or five complex conversations with people I've never met

    * ALL INTERESTED parties, actors or not, should contact Paul Luckraft at FACT on 0151 707 4418 or email luckraft@fact.co.uk before Friday, June 16.
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    Member tezmac's Avatar
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    I allways love the nicknames the dockers have for each other like Batman..........never goes anywere without Robin
    In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king

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    Default Watchers

    A Liverpool docker foreman told me this story. He had a gang of men working on the dockside some were on the ship and some were on the quayside. The MD&HB wanted to do some cost cutting so they called the foreman in and asked him to account for his workforce. The foreman explained that he had two gangs one on board and one on the quayside. He also informed the managers that he had two men watching. The managers in their wisdom thought that men watching was not in line with the dockyard work ethic. They told the foreman that men watcing was in fact out of order and reduced his gang to working Dockers only. A few weeks later the foreman was called back in and asked if he could reinstate the watchers as the holds of the ship were empty.
    Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
    Time held me green and dying
    Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

    Dylan Thomas

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    Senior Member brian daley's Avatar
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    Both my mother and fathers families worked on the docks ,since time immemorial there have been kinfolk working the length of that long dock road. The stories I heard from my grandfathers ,uncles and cousins could keep a comedian in gainful employ for years. They told stories against themselves. They were known worldwide as the 40 thousand thieves, a remark that nowadays bring approbrium upon the head of the person making it. My dock working relations would scorn any person who attacked the person making that remark. They were hard working and liked a laugh and a joke, they often came home with things that had fallen into their pockets, and when I was working aboard ships in the Alex,Huski or Gladstone ,I would not be offended if a docker offered me a little something from the hold.
    They were a race apart and Liverpool was none the worse for that. The last members of my extended family finished working on the Docks in the 80's, retirement ,illness and redundancy put paid to my families link to that great port. My uncle and his son were among the last to leave. They were known as "The Pope" and "The Bishop" because they worked every Sunday ( the Golden Nugget day)
    BrianD
    Last edited by brian daley; 12-26-2008 at 11:44 PM.

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    paddy Paddy's Avatar
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    Default Heres those men again.

    I doubt the mentality will ever leave Liverpool and the spirit will reappear. Its called standing up for yourself.
    Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
    Time held me green and dying
    Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

    Dylan Thomas

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    Senior Member Ernie's Avatar
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    A lot of my family were on the dock, box 6, 3 and 1. Saturday was the golden nugget, especially the night, sunday if you were out was overtime or double pay with your tonnage if loading.Ernie.

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    Senior Member 18stanley's Avatar
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    Default Dockers

    Quote Originally Posted by Paddy View Post
    I doubt the mentality will ever leave Liverpool and the spirit will reappear. Its called standing up for yourself.
    Another interesting thread Kev. But you didn't mention the Gladstone, the
    most imposing of them all in the 30's! The docks gradually extended north
    and south from the first small ones in the centre, the northern ones getting
    bigger and bigger until they got to the Gladstone which has in turn been
    subsumed into the huge Seaforth complex.
    The dockers were drawn from a wider area than Scottie Road. I vividly
    remember lying in bed as a youngster before the war being woken up by
    the busloads of them going down Rumney Road to work. And having to
    stop our football for them coming back in the evening.
    I had a friend whose Dad was employed as a watchman at Canada Dock
    and it was a great treat to go down there on Sundays with some sustenance
    for him and he used take us around the ships.This was a great privilege
    as the dock gates were guarded by policemen and there was no way we'd
    have been allowed in normally. I can still remember the funnels and their
    colours to this day and in particular the City boats of the Ellerman Line. I
    often wonder how many of them survived in the years that followed.
    Look forward to future news. As you say, the docks and the dockers are
    an integral part of the history of Liverpool. Stan H

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    Senior Member Waterways's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paddy View Post
    A Liverpool docker foreman told me this story. He had a gang of men working on the dockside some were on the ship and some were on the quayside. The MD&HB wanted to do some cost cutting so they called the foreman in and asked him to account for his workforce. The foreman explained that he had two gangs one on board and one on the quayside. He also informed the managers that he had two men watching. The managers in their wisdom thought that men watching was not in line with the dockyard work ethic. They told the foreman that men watcing was in fact out of order and reduced his gang to working Dockers only. A few weeks later the foreman was called back in and asked if he could reinstate the watchers as the holds of the ship were empty.
    I may have had too much wine - but I don't get it.
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    Senior Member brian daley's Avatar
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    Aah Waterways, the two guys watching the hold ,they were part of the "featherbedding" that went on. The unions created the jobs; weigh it up ,two hold men per ship,god knows how many ships ,but an awful lot of men were employed in this way. The lads knew better than to loot the ships ,a little larceny took place,not much, and everyone was happy. Sack the "Hold men" and the cargo was free range,fill yer boots lads!!
    It was the balance of nature, bugger it up and you paid the consequences. Containerisation buggered it all up.
    BrianD

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    paddy Paddy's Avatar
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    Default How big was it?

    When I was a lad in Bootle we would sneak in the Gladstone and pinch Cape apples they were always stacked in the first shed. One saturday afternoon a couple of lads from Marsh Lane got chased by a tarrantula. They told us it was like something of 'Doctor Who' no one went back
    Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
    Time held me green and dying
    Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

    Dylan Thomas

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    Senior Member Howie's Avatar
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    End of an era for full-time dockers
    Feb 10 2009 Barry Turnbull



    THE last remaining Liverpool dockers are to join the agency brought in to replace workers sacked in the damaging dispute of the mid-nineties.

    The agency, Drake Port Services, is currently making a round of redundancies as a downturn in shipping traffic grips the industry.

    Thirteen workers directly employed by Mersey Docks and Harbour Company ? now owned by Peel Ports ? and another 31 at their subsidiary Coastal Container Line have been told to transfer to Drake?s which is seeking to make up to 40 staff redundant and is cutting wages.

    One Port of Liverpool insider said: ?Throwing together two disillusioned workforces and all the history behind it is a recipe for trouble. The Mersey dockers are on much better terms and conditions, which is bound to fuel resentment amongst the Drake?s men.

    ?A number of Drake?s workers are losing their jobs at the expense of dockers and are actually getting their wages cut.

    ?How can one worker be asked to do a Saturday night shift as part of his normal job but a former Mersey docker would have to be paid overtime??

    Most of the 40-strong Mersey Docks group are in the T&G union, which is now part of Unite, and say industrial unrest is on the horizon if the position does not change.

    Docks managing director Gary Hodgson said: ?It makes operational and economic sense, particularly in current testing conditions to continue with the consolidation of our labour resources.

    ?All will be employed by Drake under the same terms and conditions.?

    The transfer is proposed under TUPE regulations which protects terms and conditions but can be revoked after a 90-day notice period.

    The dock workers believe the switch of employers is merely a staging-post on the road to the job centre.

    Worker Derek Roscoe said: ?This whole mess has been handled very badly.

    ?The fantastic development projects that Peel are working on such as Liverpool and Wirral Waters gives the impression that Peel are a forward thinking and ethical company.

    ?However, what this massive company are doing to their employees at the docks smacks of a company with no compassion or care for the people working for them.?

    No one from Drake?s was available for comment.

    Source: Liverpool Daily Post

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    Last Mersey dredger to be decommissioned sparking jobs fears
    Mar 7 2009



    THE last Mersey dredger is being axed.

    Twelve jobs are under threat after Mersey Docks and Harbour (MDHC) owner Peel Ports announced the Mersey Mariner is to be decommissioned in June.

    The company said the work would instead be done by a third party contractor using more modern technology.

    It comes less than a month after it emerged the last remaining Liverpool dockers are to join the agency brought in to replace workers sacked in the damaging dispute of the mid-nineties.

    More...

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    Member halewood's Avatar
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    they already sold the mersey venture suction dredger. dont see why they dont keep it in house.

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    Senior Member Samsette's Avatar
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    Default A Liverpool Docker - 1966

    "A Liverpool docker at a protest meeting against employers using only casual labour.
    Colin Jones' portrait of a man whose self-possession and general demeanour anyone
    might envy."

    The above photo and remarks are from Phaidon publications CENTURY - One Hundred
    Years of Human Progress, Regression, Suffering and Hope.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

Name:	th_LiverpoolDocker.jpg 
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