ONCE WASA BLACK BOX

'What we must look forward to, therefore, is what the ICHA (International Cargo Handling Association) has given the James Bond-like title of the NO PORT. The question may be asked where, if not at the port, will the port activities take place? The answer is simply, "in the areas or regions where most of the cargo is consigned or where most of the cargo originates"' —James Freight Containers', 1971-1972. In 1949 an ex-RAF transport officer called John Gordon Woollam persuaded a shipping line on the Irish run to carry a black wooden box across the sea to Dublin.

The box-l6ft by 7ft by 6ft and costing £5 secondhandmade its first epic voyage filled with cargo. It waited a while in Dublin,, eventually, picked up a consignment and made the journey back.

Woollam could not have known it, but he had begun a technical revolution that eventually led to the most serious jobs crisis in the history of dockland and one that in Britain •caused the fiercest outbreak of class struggle since the 1926 General Strike.

The innovation took years to bear fruit. The momentous sailing went largely unnoticed in the shipping world and Woollam had a hard struggle establishing himself as anything but an eccentric obsessed with a cranky idea. But containerization was accepted—years later. Now an estimated 25 per cent of British imports and even greater proportion of exports travel in containers. By 1975 the National Ports Council say half the freight entering and leaving Britain will be containerized.

But the container is only the most dramatic example of a family of innovations that have slashed manpower needs throughout the transport industry.

Unit loading, the packaging of pieces of general cargo into one manageable bulk; palletization, the storage of merChandise on wooden platforms; the roll-on, roll-off system, where giant lorries travel across the sea aboard liners; are all changes that are rapidly transforming cargohandling from a labour capital-intensive industry.

The battle for jobs on the docks has centred on the inland clearance depots (ICDs) where the containers are packed and unpacked • with cargo. The dockers say this groupage work is their own by right and tradition.

But this is only one small aspect - though most provocative — of the wholesale modernization of freighthandling which the workers in redundancy redundan a damasite nave productivity increase.

It is the classic example of the working class reaping only minimal benefits of technical progress and eventually being threatened with mass unemployment.

This is why there is no one device or 'single issue' solution docks crisis. The interests of the dockers, the drivers the warehouse workers can only safeguarded if the entire industry is restructured along socialist lines-then technical progress will not mean a cut-back in the labour force, but shorter hours and better pay.

The present suggestion the Transport and Workers' Union port shop stewards that dock workers should be employed in the ICDs will not work.

For example, one of the biggest container firms in the country, the Containerbase Federation employed about 190 men in June this year. Their six depots claim to handle 20 per cent of total groupage traffic.

Calculating on this basis there are roughly a thousand jobs going in all ICDs-not even enough to absorb the dockers in the 'temporary' unattached pool in London, let alone the 5,000 the employers say are surplus at the ports! What happens anyway to the warehousemen who the that are easy to handle.

What has been dubbed as the 'second container revolution' centres on the concept of 'through - transportation'. The container then becomes a vehicle of transportation and the ship, lorry or plane merely a carrier.

This is a profound change. " The longer the cargo can be carried unbroken inside the container, the less expense per mile are the transport costs. This is the nub of the 'through - transportation' system. Containers are packed as near source as possible and unpacked as near destination as possible.

wants to, yo ing the men would line up in the pen to be picked out like cattle.

With conventional cargo, up to 50 per cent of the total transport costs from country to country occur at the ports. Cunard, for example found this to be the case with one of its liners packed with 75,000 pieces of cargo on the transatlantic run.

This new method has changed the ports from a hive of activity to a mere staging post on the containers' Journey. A modern containerberth serves one purpose-lifting the steel box from lorry (or quayside) to ship or vice versa and the most striking feature is the lack of dockers. the emphasis has shifted inland. Containers are either packed at source with one cargo, that is at the exporting factory, or the cargo is gathered together at strategic inland depots and made into full container loads.

Reginald Carpenter in his book 'Containerships' noted one important result of this development:

'In effect,' he wrote, 'the stevedore [and the docker] has transfered his place of work [inland]. His tasks are The men recruit to staff the container bases (with full agreement with the Transport and General Workers Union) are not registered dockers. Many firms argue they offered jobs to dockers first, but on one crucial condition-they had to come off the register. This meant the dockers would have to forfeit their hard-won right under the National Dock Labour Scheme to security from the dole. (Under the scheme dockers keeper with his expertise has been forced into close collaboration with the container/ shipowner and constrained to study container depot work, both at home and overseas. 'Let us particularize the trends. The failure to adapt port facilities to new conditions coupled with unstable relations between port employer and labour has undoubtedly prompted the retreat of the wharfingers, notably. from the Port of London. With programmes At Hull, Ellerman Wilson Lines Ltd operates a container service to Scandinavia and Europe. They are also the main employers of dock labour. They bought a firm called Key • Warehousing and Transportation Co Ltd, a firm which runs a groupage warehouse a stone's throw from In other cases shipping agents have been forced into the groupage business. possible, often with, it must be said, full union agreement. These are the notorious cowboy operations that the dockers hate.

The road haulage business itself has been forced into merger after merger. One of the biggest, the Transport Development Group is a combination of 112 haulage, warehousing and associated manufacturing firms with a wage bill of £20.3m and 12,152 employees in 1971.

The transport, warehousing Ports have changed from a hive of activity to a mere staging point on the container's journey. Above: Southampton terminal contrasts old method of unloading ship's hold at London docks changes which should be of great benefit not only docker but to working people everywhere.

Should be ... but for one critical factor. It is a system developed by capitalists. Under capitalism containerization becomes a thing for