Why the dockers ended their strike

WHY DID London's 8,000 dockers one 1o call off their week-old strike men were publicly divided. Some their hands to go back. Others sto their hands in their pockets.

What happened at that historic of heated discussions at home, in out dockland.

But the insistence by union officials that the fight only involved London and that it was not in any sense political has spread confusion and led to a situation in which for the time being everybody is blaming everybody else.

One docker told me yesterday: 'The trouble was that the riverside men would not support us.' Another added: "They didn't want to come out at Tilbury. They are on f80 a week down there and they were afraid of losing money.' 'The Royals have always been the most militant,' said another, 'but they have been run down and down until everyone thinks they are finished.' This mood of mutual recrimination and self-denigration flows directly from the failure of union leaders and the 18-man shop stewards' committee to unite dock workers with a common perspective.

Without it the different attitudes which go with the pay differentials existing between container berth crews and conventional cargo handlers have been allowed to develop.

Yet changes in the upper enclosed docks with the phasing out of conventional berths are one aspect of a modernization and efficiency process which will ultimately affect all London's dockers.

That the port employers and the PLA set a stony face against any attempt by dockers to boycott Clause 12 of the 'Green Book' covering labour flexibility is a sign of the times.

Heavily in debt and in danger of being priced out of the market, ports in the National Dock Labour Scheme have no choice under capitalism but to forge Phase Two 'bonus' for those who worked DOCKERS who broke last week's strike in London's enclosed docks are to receive not only their full pay from the employers-but the £2.60 pay increase which other men will only draw this week.

This emerged at a meeting between union officials and the port employers on Tuesday and ahead ruthlessly with the modernization and efficiency formula set out by Lord Devlin in his middle1960s report.

Not only will the labour rundown at conventional berths continue, but it cannot be long before an all-out attack is mounted on the size of container gangs kept high until now by union pressure.

The London dockers' leaders climbed down on a pay fight with the Tory government by accepting the PLA's offer of £2.60 plus 4 per ential payments Phase Two.

Then they led a hopeless fight the very core o ployers' plans 1 turns.

Many dockers extent trated in the deal which ended last summer s dock strike against these proposals.

But lack of leadership has driven them temporarily back on themselves and, as one docker from the Royals put it: 'We've got resigned to what's happening?

All the dockers we spoke to agreed that the responsibility for disunity between groups of port workers and between the ports themselves rested with local and national leadership.

"There should have been a national campaign on pay', said one. 'Instead of that we've got one rate, Liverpool accepted another and Hull, I think, is different again.' The crucial thing missing from all their comments was why transport union secretary Jack Jones, the national shop stewards or the 18-man committee appears to have without a trace of by the union men.

Proposals for a new pay structure in London's enclosed docks, based on the consolidation of bonuses for skilled men ard extra payments for experience, are to be discussed by employers vote by two-toon April 7? The esignedly raised od sullenly with meeting remains the subject quayside sheds and throughcent on differin line with their men on Clause 12— f the port emto increase renow realize the betrayal perpeJones-Aldington been let pass embarrassment TELEVISTON adopted the policies they did.

Many dockers know they were wrong and a number told me that nothing short of joint action by all the ports could lead to higher pay or a halt to Devlin.

The question they cannot, as yet, answer is how to get it.

They agreed, too, that without nationalization of all ports, private docks, like Felixstowe, would be used directly against them to intimidate militants.

Because of the policies of the leadership, only a few see that questions of pay, modernization and manning can only be resolved by a fight to mobilize the whole working class to force the Tories to resign and elect a Labour government pledged to socialist policies including the nationalization of all ports.

As a docker from the Royals said: 'What can we do? We're on our own. Look what's happening to the hospital workers. It's up to the union leaders. They've got to act.' and unions early next month.

The proposals first tabled by the employers last September, were revived just before the enclosed docks strike by Joe Payne of the ocean trades employers. and trotted out again during the strike by John Lunch, of the Port of London Authority.

BBC GRADING CHEAP LABOUR I BBC maintenance engineers mounted pickets outside the Television Centre at Ealing and at Lime Grove, London, yesterday during a 48-hour protest strike.

About 200 engineers, members of the Association of Broadcasting Staffs, are striking over regrading scheme which has GET YOUR BOOKS, PERIODICALS AND SRACNF paperbacks night ordidm Pickets at TV centre in pay protest BBC GRADING SYSTEM = REAP LABOUR been in dispute for than two years.

While they co-operated with a new flexibility of labour scheme, management refused to upgrade them as promised and have now broken off talks.

Pickets told Workers Press the strike had been supported 100 per cent.

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