Solidarity, gender and Liverpool’s dock community

The shared emotions of solidarity within the 1995–8 dock dispute were rooted in generations of history in the Port of Liverpool, particularly in relation to experiences of casualism which operated in the port until 1967. Dock work was traditionally the preserve of Irish-Catholic immigrants in the city, and both men and women shared memories of dock workers being ‘treated like animals’ in the hiring pens. Men would scramble over one another to catch the eye of the foreman to secure low-paid work in poor conditions.¹⁴ Kevin Bilsborrow summarized the harm caused by this system to Hunter when he stated that ‘there’s only one type of employer and that’s a bad employer, because he’s after you and if you’re not strong he’ll get you’.¹⁵ Although a gendered division of labour ensured male breadwinners dominated the industrial sphere, both men and women remembered the importance of their fathers getting ‘lucky’ in the pen.¹⁶ Carol, whose husband and father had worked on the docks, explained to me in 2017 that anything that happened in her husband’s job had a ‘knock-on’ effect in family life: ‘it affects everybody’.¹⁷ Sons often followed their fathers on to the docks and, until the housing programmes of the 1950s and 1960s were introduced, families lived in tight-knit communities close to the port. As families were surrounded by others experiencing the hardships of casualism, these shared negative experiences nurtured a strong support system.¹⁸ Gang work also helped to embed the value of co-operation, as opposed to competition, on the docks, as men had a high degree of autonomy over their work and received their pay based upon productivity.¹⁹ In other words, working together produced the most favourable outcome for everyone. As a result, the collective goals of men and women in the dock community centred on ensuring dock work was a secure job with fair pay for all, including future generations.

Historically, heteronormative understandings of men and women led to gendered roles in securing these goals.²⁰ Since the formation of the National Union of Dock Labourers in 1889, a date referenced by shop stewards during the 1995 to 1998 dispute over 100 years later, the method of achieving these goals had been male, collective action.²¹ Each victory gained through the trade union movement fostered a reciprocal sense of pride among men that reinforced the bonds between them by confirming their sense of morality.²² This established method of acting upon solidarity explains why dock workers themselves used the term mostly in relation to the union but contextualized it through male relationships at work.²³ Ted Woods described the nature of these relationships to Hunter as a ‘macho comradeship’ expressed as though men were ‘going to murder each other’.²⁴ Dangerous and physically exhausting work on the docks led to the development of a tough attitude that relied upon the use of humour to avoid the expression of negative emotions. This toughness helped men to keep one another going and served to demonstrate to employers that they could overcome the environment they had to work in.²⁵ The strength of male relationships at work was evident in 2017 when Kevin used ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ consistently while discussing the fight for better conditions throughout his working life. Kevin also explained to me explicitly that the ‘love’ he had for his colleagues depended upon whether a man would ‘put themselves out big time for the union or the other men’.²⁶ Evidently, masculinity centred not just upon a man’s responsibility as the breadwinner but also his willingness to ensure this role could be fulfilled under fair conditions.

Women were not subject to the same work environment and were therefore expected to act upon solidarity differently to men. Carol referred to her own experience of the docks in the late twentieth century to explain that women were expected to leave work to bring up children and then get ‘pin-money’ jobs once their children had grown up.²⁷ Femininity centred upon alleviating the perils of the casual system at home which ensured that male power over the family economy did not always translate into an abuse of this power. The nature of bonds between husbands and wives was often characterized by mutual respect and appreciation. Kevin expressed this respect when he said that ‘men can talk the talk, but women can walk the walk when it comes to … coping mechanisms, dealing with the kids, dealing with the bills, dealing with the household chores, dealing with the school’.²⁸ Madeline Kerr’s sociological study of families living on Ship Street, a name given to a collection of inner-city streets in Liverpool, in the 1950s demonstrated that women knew the value of their role within the family as they demanded their fair share of their partner’s wages. This study also highlighted that bonds between women centred upon female relatives living nearby rather than friendships forming specifically between the wives and partners of dock workers.²⁹ These strong bonds continued as many families moved outside of the city centre in the 1950s and 1960s.³⁰ Therefore, feminine experiences of solidarity within the dock community had an imagined component outside the family unit or local friendship group as they rested upon the assumption that other women connected to dock work would share similar experiences.³¹ While solidarity itself was rooted in the shared condemnation of employer power, the emotional experiences of it were shaped by the relationships between men and women.

Never cross a picket line

Traditions of masculine pride, particularly in relation to the principle of refusing to cross a picket line, are crucial to understanding why solidarity and solidarity action persisted into the 1990s. On 25 September 1995, twenty-two men employed by Torside were ordered to carry out overtime on short notice without the usual rates of pay. Torside had been voted on to the docks by ex-registered MDHC dock workers in 1991 and its employees worked on lower rates of pay with the expectation these rates could be improved later.³² The five men who left the ship to discuss the situation with their shop stewards were dismissed alongside the remaining men who refused to work on these terms. The sacked men then mounted a picket line at Nelson and Seaforth to persuade the MDHC employees to support their case for reinstatement. The result was that in just four days, approximately 500 men were sacked from companies on the docks.³³ In Hunter’s interviews, ‘pride and admiration’ dominated the accounts of these events, particularly in relation to the redundancy payments and pensions that the MDHC men were willing to give up when they breached their contracts to take secondary action.³⁴ By not crossing the picket line, they were supporting Torside men who were employed by a different company, though the two worked closely together. This action had been made illegal by the Employment Act of 1982.³⁵ Financial risk had always been a fundamental feature of going on strike but this had been the loss of wages that were offset by the potential success of achieving a long-term benefit.

In this dispute, the context was different. Dock workers no longer had the protection of the NDLS which was administered by employers and representatives from the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU).³⁶ Following the Devlin Report’s two-phased modernization programme for the scheme, a stamp system had ensured regular work and most port employers recognized the powerful shop stewards committee in Liverpool.³⁷ Alongside decasualization, modernization also included a reduction of the workforce as the number of labour hours needed to move 11,000 tonnes of cargo fell from 10,584 to just 546 in 1970 thanks to the introduction of containers.³⁸ The situation in Liverpool was worsened by its geographical position as shipping firms closed because of increased British trade with European ports.³⁹ Nevertheless, the values of collectivism held political currency in Britain at this time, which meant that dock workers were in a strong position to achieve their goals. The nationwide strike in 1972 that freed the five London-based dock workers who had been imprisoned in Pentonville for illegally picketing container depots was just one example of this strength.⁴⁰ The subsequent Aldington-Jones agreement ensured that there were no compulsory redundancies for dock workers registered under the NDLS and established voluntary severance schemes as the method for reducing the number of workers.⁴¹ From 1979, the Conservative government restructured the relationship between the state, economy and trade unions which meant that the National Association of Port Employers was successful in their attempts to remove the NDLS in 1989 by arguing that worker control had become detrimental to profit.⁴² Dock workers were choosing to fight in the industrial climate of the 1990s in which employers had the upper hand.

Long traditions of pride in fighting injustice on the docks meant men expressed any uncertainty carefully. Terry Southers, a shop steward, acknowledged to Hunter that by 1995 some men had become ‘despondent’. If men had expressed this emotion towards the prospect of the dispute directly, they would have undermined the value placed upon supporting one another against the actions of employers and, in the process, contravened expectations of tough behaviour. To avoid negating their entitlement to the pride that solidarity depended upon, men questioned whether the Torside employees were worth fighting for. The notion that Torside had only been working on the docks for ‘five minutes’ tapped into the significance of pride as the suggestion was that these men had not earned the respect of others by demonstrating their commitment to fighting for them.⁴³ Before the dispute had ended, Bob Ritchie, a shop steward at the time, described to Hunter that he had watched the sacked Torside employees grow up to become men as they gained a ‘hatred for the establishment and for what’s happened’.⁴⁴ Kevin, who had also been a shop steward, articulated this process in 2017 in the way he explained that ‘they’, the ‘young Torside kids’, had ‘savvy’ ideas such as the ‘DoCKers’ T-shirt that incorporated the popular Calvin Klein logo before stating that ‘it come from us’.⁴⁵ Men drew upon longstanding notions of pride to express concern, yet ultimately this sense of pride reaffirmed the solidarity amongst those willing to fight.

The close relationship between masculine pride and negative emotions demonstrated how the two were dependent upon one another. Throughout the dispute, fear, as a judgement of something bad occurring, was referred to by men as predominantly located elsewhere in others.⁴⁶ Nevertheless, The Flickering Flame documentary explained that ‘everyone has a fear of going back to the bad old days’ before 1967 when there were no regular hours or income.⁴⁷ Between 1989 and 1992, approximately 80 per cent of dock workers left the industry nationwide, opting for redundancy pay over working under tougher managerial control.⁴⁸ Kevin Robinson explained to Hunter that men had felt as though ‘their heart had been somewhat ripped out of them temporarily’ when it ended.⁴⁹ Similarly, Ted Woods identified 1989 as a ‘time of fear’ and told Hunter that the men who had left the industry then had been ‘scared of the future’.⁵⁰ Liverpool’s dock workers maintained the recognition of their shop stewards system, but this did not prevent the forced introduction of new contracts in 1994 for ex-registered men. These contracts introduced a three-week hourly work schedule which meant that daily hours could vary on short notice depending on management requirements.⁵¹ The prevalence of fear in accounts of the dispute insinuated that it was a driving force behind action, especially as the accompanying pride taken in fighting relied upon preventing many fears from being realized. This point is particularly relevant to reflections of the origins of Torside. In our interview, Carol remembered warning her husband that allowing a new company on to the docks to employ workers on lower rates of pay would undermine his job and that, when he voted for the company’s creation, he explained to her that he had allowed his ‘heart’ to rule his ‘head’. The distinction between hearts, as the desire to continue the tradition of sons following their fathers on to the docks, and heads, as preventing the port from returning insecure working conditions, reiterated that separating the internal values of the dock community from the ongoing power struggle with the port employers was detrimental to achieving long-term security.⁵²

The initial concession made by MDHC employees with the creation of Torside defined the dispute emotionally for men. Kevin, for example, stated in our interview that the dispute had been about ‘bringing people [in] on decent wages’ and that his job was not his to sell.⁵³ This motivation was why men rejected offers made by the MDHC in October 1995, January 1996, November 1996 and then again in October 1997. The latter offer was rejected in an imposed ballot on a reformulated offer from June earlier that year which had included a potential labour supply company.⁵⁴ The reinstatement of Torside employees was a main point of contention as the MDHC claimed they were unable to do anything regarding this issue, despite the overlapping remit between the two companies. Frank Lannigan, who had been a shop steward since 1981, told Hunter that men had believed they would be able to help fight for better conditions for Torside employees at a later date. Yet this did not happen because, in Lannigan’s words, ‘the employers started taking us on at the same time’. Therefore, the fight over Torside did not ‘worry’ Frank because the men had no other option for negotiations after being ‘fettered’ by the managing directors of the MDHC.⁵⁵ The negative shared emotions surrounding the prospect of making further concessions towards returning to pre-1967 conditions worked to reinforce the reciprocal pride men took in trying to prevent this from happening.⁵⁶

Ultimately, the mobilizing effect of pride and fear in September 1995 determined who was included and excluded within solidarity. The film Dockers was written by the dock community with the support of Jimmy McGovern, and its accompanying documentary, Writing the Wrongs, shows how the script was created. In this documentary, men and women described the mindset of crossing a picket line as ‘alien’ and they were reluctant to give this action any coverage in the film. McGovern then insisted on probing the emotions surrounding this issue further, which resulted in a sacked dock worker writing the most fruitful scene between the protagonist, Tommy, and his best friend who returned to work, Macca.⁵⁷ In this scene, the script referred to the 180 new contracts that the MDHC issued immediately after the sackings. Macca had taken one of these contracts and explained to Tommy that ‘it’s fucking easy to be brave when you’re wanted’.⁵⁸ The two men were divided by their definitions of bravery. Tommy’s reason for not taking the contract he was issued was because others, like Macca, had not received one, whereas Macca had allowed his belief that the dispute was ‘doomed’ because of the lack of men involved, lack of union support and the political climate it took place in to override his commitment to others. Tommy was scripted to challenge Macca’s claims that crossing the picket line took ‘bottle’ by arguing that sneaking into work did not show ‘courage’ and that the right way to handle fear was to stand up to those causing it.⁵⁹ The script for Dockers then focused on the pride Macca had lost by showing that he no longer held the esteem of his male friends, which caused arguments between him and his family when they were ostracized. These sentiments were echoed in Hunter’s interviews during the dispute when Andy Dwyer stated that ‘scabs’ had ‘got no history on the dock’ because they were ‘today people’.⁶⁰ The immediate disassociation of ‘history’ from those who crossed the picket line showed that they prioritized immediate personal gains and removed them from the historical pride solidarity depended upon.

Women of the Waterfront

While industrial action on the docks had traditionally been carried out by men, women shared the conception of pride associated with collective action as it protected working conditions and therefore families. As women evaluated this action in the context of the 1990s, their anger carved out space for the gender roles underpinning solidarity to evolve and shift. During an interview in 2017, Carol remembered being ‘furious’ that the MDHC would call her husband constantly to come to work or to alter his hours.⁶¹ Increased employer control had collapsed the separation between work and home, which brought female members of the dock community directly into the arena of struggle. Just as masculine pride depended upon an expression of indignation, Carol’s expression of anger demonstrated her sense of wrongdoing and served to defend the dignity of being able to provide and care for a family.⁶² During the dispute, Sue Mitchell, whose husband was a sacked dock worker, discussed the effect that long consecutive shifts were having on family life and said, ‘I was absolutely choking, thinking this can’t go on.’ She explained that the 1995 to 1998 dispute was different to those that had preceded it because women could ‘see what the management had done’.⁶³ Both Carol and Sue remembered women calling into local radio stations to express their anger at the situation and women reaching out to others they had not known previously. Carol recalled feeling a ‘perverse relief’ when her husband was sacked because she had wanted a reason to fight the dock company after the ‘misery’ they had caused. This understanding was formulated not only by the intrusion of employers into homes but also by the knowledge that the fight was ‘bigger than just the men’ and that it entailed a broader struggle to maintain established ways of life. She understood 1995 as the final stand following the fight of the miners and Women Against Pit Closures in the 1980s and explained that it changed how the working class had to fight.⁶⁴ Women’s desire for action culminated in the creation of an official support group for the dock workers, with support from the shop stewards, within a few weeks of the original sackings. WOW picketed the houses of the managing directors of the MDHC, raised funds and promoted the case of the sacked men on delegations.⁶⁵

WOW’s integration into the industrial dispute centred on an emotional ‘give and take’ between men and women that was rooted in concepts of respect and dignity.⁶⁶ The Dockers Charter, published in December 1995 by those involved in the dispute, included an article about WOW. Cathy Dwyer’s interview for this article was also published on the dockers’ website. She stated that she had been ‘embarrassed’ when she first attended a picket line. Cathy had not wanted the men to think she was there because her husband did not ‘totally respect’ her.⁶⁷ Cathy is also quoted as saying that men felt ‘embarrassed’ to admit needing help because they were ‘dignified’, ‘tough men’. Cathy’s emotions demonstrated how WOW constituted a departure from traditional masculine and feminine roles by suggesting that men could no longer protect and provide for families on their own. Nevertheless, Cathy focused upon explaining that she ‘admired’ her husband for not crossing the picket line because he was protecting the industry, and their grandchildren, from the return of casualism. By explaining that respect had to be earned and could not be ‘bought’, Cathy located and reinforced male dignity in fighting injustice as opposed to simply earning money.⁶⁸ This reinforcement helped women to earn respect for their new role. During our interview in 2017, Kevin explained that he had been involved in the creation of WOW because he recognized that the dispute would not be as successful if men were under pressure to earn money. The ‘dignity’ that he used to describe WOW’s actions stemmed from them demonstrating that they knew the men were right and their fathers had been right before them. Any concerns that men had about protecting women were alleviated by separate meetings for WOW and, particularly in the early days of the dispute, male-escorted delegations for its members.⁶⁹ WOW were able to fully embrace their new responsibilities after gaining the support of men like Kevin.

The readjustment of gender roles rested upon the reinforcement of existing notions of pride and respect. Therefore, the emotions that men and women expressed about the pressures of the dispute remained gendered.⁷⁰ Kevin explained his appreciation for WOW by outlining how women would be more likely to let him, or other shop stewards, know when more support was needed to ensure a family could continue to fight. He also appreciated WOW’s ability to communicate the dispute emotionally by focusing on the hardship of families at rallies or on delegations at a time when public discourse emphasized the anachronism of industrial action. Kevin recalled instances when members of WOW had cried during their speeches. He would stand up afterwards to say, ‘and you wonder why we get angry’.⁷¹ In this memory, crying presented a simultaneous gendered portrayal of strength and weakness. The strength of masculinity depended upon avoiding expressions of the negative emotions that crying was associated with, but there remained an appreciation of the powerful reasons for these feminine tears.⁷² In footage of WOW’s discussions in The Flickering Flame, Sue is shown fighting off tears while she explained the ‘social injustice’ of families losing their homes and savings. She talked about how visible the ‘strain’ and ‘stress’ of everyone involved was to her and then contextualized this in the trends towards flexible, casual jobs with little security and low pay.⁷³ Even twenty years later, Carol remembered the ‘stress, stress, stress’ that women encountered as they juggled daily life, including paid work, with supporting the men.⁷⁴ Men were more likely to express the injustices they were experiencing by focusing on the inner workings of the dispute rather than the household. For example, Micky Tighe described the treatment of men who had dedicated forty years of their life to the MDHC as ‘criminal’ in The Dockers Charter. The sacked dock workers referenced an inability to understand how a company that boosted their profits from almost £8.5 million in 1989 to just over £33.5 million in 1994 could sack its entire workforce in favour of casualism.⁷⁵ This return to casualism was proven by the Merseyside Port Shop Stewards Committee (MPSSC) when they presented a case successfully to the Education and Employment Committee at the House of Commons in 1996.⁷⁶ Collectively, these negative emotions continued to cement the value of looking after one another.

Empathetic boundaries

The inclusion of women in the industrial sphere was only one way in which the emotional specificities of the 1995–8 dispute shaped the nature of solidarity action. The dock community’s traditional support network had been transformed by the closure of industries across Britain and the restrictions placed upon trade unions during the 1980s. Dock workers and WOW had expected the union to share the same values as them and in March 1996, Bill Morris, then general secretary of the TGWU, gave a speech which recognized the ‘pride’ dock workers could take in fighting the MDHC.⁷⁷ However, the TGWU never made the dispute official and instead facilitated negotiations while providing financial support. In 2017, Carol spoke highly of John Pilger whose article in The Guardian in November 1996 had stated that the TGWU had contained the ‘anger’ of its members to serve ‘the aims of the British establishment’.⁷⁸ Morris’s ‘One Union’ approach had centralized power within the union and favoured social partnership methods that avoided direct confrontation with employers. In part, this approach was intended to reduce a deficit of approximately £12 million at the time that had resulted from falling membership in the previous decade.⁷⁹ Consequently, Morris’s response to Pilger’s article in The Guardian and T&G Record argued that dock workers had inhibited the union’s ability to act by taking secondary action and the union had a duty to protect its 900,000 members from possible financial sanctions.⁸⁰

Accounts of the dispute consistently focused upon how the TGWU acted. The reply from the MPSSC to Morris’s letter, for example, outlined the union’s rejection of four ballot requests for industrial action between 1989 and 1995, the failure to organize a ballot after the dismissal of the Torside men and that the financial aid provided equated to £15 a week per family.⁸¹ Men and women interviewed during the dispute highlighted the moral code the union had violated by referring to their ‘bloody disgusting’ behaviour and stating that they should have been ‘ashamed’.⁸² When reflecting on the TGWU’s position more recently, both Carol and Kevin referred repeatedly to the union refusing to make the dispute official. Kevin stated that the union had been ‘frightened’ of sequestration when they should have been challenging the law and he believed that ‘the whole country would have stopped’ if the union had supported the dispute fully.⁸³ The lack of support could have translated simply into a lack of action, but past successes provided a reference point for what could have happened and these notions of shame helped to drive the dispute forward through new methods of fighting.

Hope was also necessary to continue the fight because, as Manuel Castells has argued, it is ‘fundamental’ to goal-seeking action because it projects positive outcomes into the future.⁸⁴ The dock community found ‘hope’ in their appeals for international support that were made possible by new technologies such as fax machines and the internet.⁸⁵ Picket lines, stoppages and demonstrations that took place in ports across the world aimed to disrupt the shipping companies that operated in Liverpool. Action taken on the east coast of the United States, for example, caused a 20 per cent drop in the MDHC’s share prices when Atlantic Container Line withdrew from the Port of Liverpool in June 1996.⁸⁶ Support across the globe culminated in two international days of action on 20 January 1997 and 9 September 1997.⁸⁷ An MPSSC press release in September 1997 underlined that international support in the dispute was a ‘symbol for all dockers’ determined to resist the threats of casual labour and the deregulation of the industry.⁸⁸ Earlier that year, the Dockers’ Section Steering Committee of the International Transport Workers’ Federation had outlined that docks in Taiwan, Colombia and Honduras had been threatened with privatization, and attacks on trade unionists’ rights had been made in Australia and New Zealand.⁸⁹ In the interviews I conducted, international support was discussed at length. Kevin said that this support was the ‘most pleasing’ aspect of the fight because it supplemented the support they had lost in Britain.⁹⁰ Furthermore, Carol explained to me that the events of the dispute had pushed empathy beyond the docks industry to encompass ‘human suffering’. The international delegations that Carol attended shaped her understanding that what was happening on the docks was part of a broader fight against the effects of an intensified phase of global capitalism. This understanding explained why WOW and the sacked dock workers gave their support to the women of Srebrenica as well as Turkish citizens fighting for democracy, and how the radical ecologist and anti-corporate group Reclaim the Streets came to support the dock community’s cause.⁹¹ Through new forms of action and the hope it provided, ‘imagined’ solidarity was strengthened with others in struggle beyond industrial workers in Britain.⁹²

Following the dispute, this broadened understanding of solidarity continued to operate and define the emotions of the dock community. The MPSSC wrote a letter with ‘great sadness’ to their supporters in January 1998 explaining that the hardship of families and lack of sustained action on the international front meant a settlement had to be made.⁹³ The final settlement included a register of former dock workers who wished to be considered for future vacancies, a labour supply organization which created between twenty-five and twenty-eight jobs initially, joint MDHC and TGWU pensions, a twelve-week fixed term contract with a payment of £3,000, and redundancy payments of £25,000 for those who had worked for fifteen years or more.⁹⁴ Nevertheless, the dock community did not view 1998 as the end of their fight. They founded The Initiative Factory, a charitable trust, shortly after the dispute ended, which aimed to build international communities and retrain those who had ‘suffered as a result of the changing economic circumstances of the past two decades’.⁹⁵ Dockers was written through this organization and the revenue received from it was used to create The Casa, or the Community Advice Service Association, that has since provided employment, welfare and legal advice to many people across Merseyside.⁹⁶ Despite the tension between the TGWU and Liverpool’s dock community, many dock workers and their wives remained active in trade unions because of their important role in defending workers’ rights with some even returning to Seaforth to help re-unionize the workforce in 2012.⁹⁷ The emotional malleability of solidarity during the dispute shifted value from a specific form of collective bargaining alone to a multi-pronged approach that focused on all those harmed by the capitalist system. This malleability extended to the interviews that I conducted in The Casa in 2017 as Kevin asserted that he was ‘handing the baton’ to me because ‘you can’t win every fight, but you can’t lose every fight either’.⁹⁸ The interviews provided an opportunity to share the values of the dock community, present a fight against exploitation and continue to build a shared solidarity.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have focused on the gendered emotional experiences of solidarity for men and women who fought for the reinstatement of sacked dock workers in Liverpool between 1995 and 1998. The emotional community on the docks developed from a specific period of British industrial history that had changed dramatically by the 1990s. Nevertheless, the values that underpinned this community led to new forms of pride, fear, anger, shame and hope as they were evaluated in the context of the 1990s. These shared emotions defined solidarity and by focusing on them I have demonstrated how men and women navigated changing structures of power to drive the dispute forward. While their longstanding aim to secure fair pay and conditions at work to support families and future generations remained largely unchanged, the boundaries of solidarity and the typical action associated with it evolved. Without an emotional analysis, the nuances of this evolution, and the relationships it was based upon, cannot be appreciated fully.

As solidarity had been channelled through male industrial action on the docks throughout the twentieth century, pride dominated men’s narratives of the dispute. The expression of pride related to overcoming shared negative emotions such as fear, yet solidarity itself only extended to those who expressed these emotions in line with expectations of behaviour. A politicized sense of pride regulated the boundaries of masculinity by defining who was worth fighting for. The examples I explored in this chapter showed that acknowledging fear was acceptable only when used as a reason to keep fighting. The severity of the situation in the 1990s meant that adhering to this expectation was not straightforward and explained why some MDHC men had questioned whether Torside employees were included within established notions of pride. Women had understood the value of fighting the employer but their role in this fight, and within understandings of solidarity, had centred on caring for a family. The dispute forced these gender roles to be reassessed. The encroachment of the MDHC’s managerial practices into the family home led women to express anger that created space for them to form new connections with other women. These connections led to the formation of WOW. The transgression that WOW represented had to be reconciled by emphasizing certain aspects of masculinity and femininity while de-emphasizing others. For men, dignity was located primarily in taking a stand and fighting for future generations as opposed to earning money. For women, their dignity was located in supporting this cause and being able to communicate it to others in order to gain support. Therefore, emotions remained gendered when expressing the impact of the dispute despite the ways that expectations of behaviour had evolved.

Employers had always been expected to act in ways that were antithetical to the dock community’s values, thus their increased power was insufficient to alter perceptions of solidarity and solidarity action. In the final section of this chapter, I examined how the TGWU’s actions impacted how men and women chose to fight the MDHC. The ability of the TGWU to support the sacked dock workers had been restricted by the labour laws of the 1980s and financial strain meant the union was not willing to make the dispute official. A divide developed between the TGWU and the dock community that centred on its close association with conceptions of solidarity. The union prioritized protecting itself financially so it could continue to support its membership. However, men and women of the dock community understood the restrictions on trade unions as part of the dispute and therefore something to be challenged. Without their usual allies, dock workers and members of WOW sought hope in new international connections that they formed outside the framework of the union. The delegations that men and women attended overseas strengthened the solidarity between them and workers beyond industrial Britain. Combined with the outcome of the final settlement, internationalism helped to formulate a stronger sense of imagined solidarity with those suffering from the effects of economic restructuring across the globe. The focus on a wider sense of solidarity led to a new emphasis on different methods of action. Broader explorations of the emotional communities of port employers, official union structures and the government were beyond the remit of this chapter. However, the close attention paid to dock workers and their families in Liverpool has demonstrated that solidarity was not a static feature of working-class communities tied to a specific form of industrial action. Instead, the emotional fluidity of solidarity was, and still is, embedded in the ebb and flow of power that defined who could act and how.

Notes

1. 1.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

2. 2.  A. McIvor, Working Lives: Work in Britain Since 1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 11–13.

3. 3.  A. Mah, Port Cities and Global Legacies: Urban Identity, Waterfront Work and Radicalism (Basingstoke: Springer, 2014), pp. 113–35 and B. Marren, We Shall Not Be Moved: How Liverpool’s Working Class Fought Redundancies, Closures and Cuts in the Age of Thatcher (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 201–33.

4. 4.  See, for example, P. Turnbull and V. Wass, ‘The Greatest Game No More: Redundant Dockers and the Demise of Dock Work’, Work, Employment & Society, 8 (1994), 487–506 and J. Phillips, ‘Class and Industrial Relations in Britain: The “Long” Mid-Century and the Case of Port Transport, c. 1920–70’, Twentieth Century British History, 16, 1 (2005), 52–73.

5. 5.  D. Featherstone, Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 5.

6. 6.  E. Summers-Effler, ‘The Emotional Significance of Solidarity for Social Movement Communities: Sustaining Catholic Worker Community and Service’, in H. Flam and D. King (eds.), Emotions and Social Movements (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 138 and J.M. Jasper, ‘Constructing Indignation: Anger Dynamics in Protest Movements’, Emotion Review, 6 (2014), 208–13 at p. 209.

7. 7.  B.H. Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’, Passions in Context, 1 (2010), 1–32 at p. 21.

8. 8.  Phillips, ‘Class and Industrial Relations in Britain’, pp. 52–73.

9. 9.  D. Kelliher, ‘Solidarity and Sexuality: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners 1984–5’, History Workshop Journal, 77 (2014), 240–62 at pp. 248–52.

10. 10.  B.H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 821–45 (pp. 842–5) and Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods’, 1–32.

11. 11.  Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, p. 842.

12. 12.  R. Clifford, ‘Emotions and Gender in Oral History: Narrating Italy’s 1968’, Modern Italy, 17 (2012), 209–21 at p. 211.

13. 13.  Featherstone, Solidarity, p. 246.

14. 14.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017 and J. Belchem, Irish, Catholic and Scouse: The History of the Liverpool-Irish, 1800–1940 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), pp. 27–55.

15. 15.  Kevin Bilsborrow, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

16. 16.  The Flickering Flame, dir. Ken Loach (Parallax Pictures, AMIP, BBC, La Sept Arte, 1996).

17. 17.  Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 21 July 2017.

18. 18.  P. Ayers, ‘Work, Culture and Gender: The Making of Masculinities in Post-War Liverpool’, Labour History Review, 69 (2004), 153–67 at pp. 161–2.

19. 19.  Turnbull and Wass, ‘The Greatest Game No More’, pp. 489–94.

20. 20.  E.K. Kelan, ‘Gender Logic and (Un)doing Gender at Work’, Gender Work and Organization, 17 (2010), 174–94.

21. 21.  Warwick, Modern Records Centre (MRC), MSS.126/BM/3/1/4/2, ‘Liverpool: The Dockers Fight Back!’, Papers of Bill Morris, Lord Morris of Handsworth, OJ (b.1938), trade union leader and B. Hunter, They Knew Why They Fought: Unofficial Struggles and Leadership on the Docks 1945–1989 (London: Index Books, 1994).

22. 22.  T.J. Scheff, Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism and War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), p. 3.

23. 23.  Micky Tighe, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

24. 24.  Ted Woods, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

25. 25.  McIvor, Working Lives, pp. 91–2 and 163–5.

26. 26.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

27. 27.  Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 21 July 2017.

28. 28.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

29. 29.  M. Kerr, The People of Ship Street (London: Routledge, 1958), pp. 40–51.

30. 30.  Ayers, ‘Work, Culture and Gender’, pp. 161–2, Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017 and Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 21 July 2017.

31. 31.  B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso Books, 2006), p. 6.

32. 32.  M. Lavalette and J. Kennedy, Solidarity on the Waterfront: The Liverpool Lock Out of 1995/96 (Birkenhead: Liver Press, 1996) pp. 1–2, 39–41.

33. 33.  Lavalette and Kennedy, Solidarity on the Waterfront, pp. 1–2.

34. 34.  Bob Ritchie, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

35. 35.  Lavalette and Kennedy, Solidarity on the Waterfront, p. 28 and P. Dorey, ‘Weakening the Trade Unions, One Step at a Time: The Thatcher Governments’ Strategy for the Reform of Trade-Union Law, 1979–1984’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 37 (2016), 169–200 (pp. 177 and 184).

36. 36.  B. Towers, Waterfront Blues: The Rise and Fall of Liverpool’s Dockland (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing, 2011), pp. 253–4, 286–9.

37. 37.  Lavalette and Kennedy, Solidarity on the Waterfront, pp. 20–23.

38. 38.  T. Lane, Liverpool: City of the Sea (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997), p. 25.

39. 39.  G. Taylor, ‘The Dynamics of Labour Relations at the Port of Liverpool, 1967–1989’, unpublished PhD thesis (Manchester Metropolitan University, 2012), pp. 158–241.

40. 40.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

41. 41.  Taylor, ‘The Dynamics of Labour Relations at the Port of Liverpool, 1967–1989’, pp. 141–2.

42. 42.  Towers, Waterfront Blues, pp. 284–9.

43. 43.  Terry Southers, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

44. 44.  Bob Ritchie, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

45. 45.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

46. 46.  M. Weiss, ‘Introduction: Fear and Its Opposites in the History of Emotions’, in M. Laffan and M. Weiss (eds.), Facing Fear: The History of Emotion in Global Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 1–9.

47. 47.  The Flickering Flame, dir. Ken Loach.

48. 48.  Marren, We Shall Not Be Moved, p. 213.

49. 49.  Kevin Robinson, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

50. 50.  Ted Woods, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019) and Frank Lannigan, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

51. 51.  Lavalette and Kennedy, Solidarity on the Waterfront, pp. 39–43.

52. 52.  Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 21 July 2017.

53. 53.  Kevin, interview with the author, 12 July 2017.

54. 54.  M. Clua-Losada, ‘Solidarity, Global Restructuring and Deregulation: The Liverpool Dockers’ Dispute 1995–98’, unpublished doctoral thesis (University of York, 2010), pp. 150, 156–61, 168–70, 174–7.

55. 55.  Frank Lannigan, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

56. 56.  Jasper, ‘Constructing Indignation’, p. 209.

57. 57.  Writing the Wrongs, dir. Solon Papadopoulos (Planet Wild, 1999).

58. 58.  Lavalette and Kennedy, Solidarity on the Waterfront, p. 77.

59. 59.  Dockers, dir. Bill Anderson (Parallax Pictures, 1999).

60. 60.  Andy Dwyer, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

61. 61.  Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 21 July 2017.

62. 62.  Jasper, ‘Constructing Indignation’, pp. 208–13.

63. 63.  Sue Mitchell and Doreen McNally, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

64. 64.  Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, 21 July 2017 and C. Stephenson and J. Spence, ‘Pies and Essays: Women Writing through the British 1984–1985 Coal Miners’ Strike’, Gender, Place and Culture, 20 (2013), 218–35.

65. 65.  Lavalette and Kennedy, Solidarity on the Waterfront, p. 47.

66. 66.  Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods’, p. 20.

67. 67.  ‘ “Me on a Picket Line!” (Cathy Dwyer, 21 Nov 1995)’, Labournet, www.labournet.net/docks2/9511/cathy.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

68. 68.  MRC, 601/R/20/2/3, ‘Dockers Charter, no. 2, Dec 1995’, p. 3, The Socialist Party (formerly the Revolutionary Socialist League, Militant Tendency and Militant Labour).

69. 69.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

70. 70.  D. Cantor and E. Ramsden, ‘Introduction’, in D. Cantor and E. Ramsden (eds.), Stress, Shock, and Adaptation in the Twentieth Century (Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2014), pp. 1–18.

71. 71.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

72. 72.  T. Dixon, Weeping Britannia: A Portrait of a Nation in Tears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 7.

73. 73.  The Flickering Flame, dir. Ken Loach.

74. 74.  Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 21 July 2017.

75. 75.  MRC, 601/R/20/2/3, ‘Dockers Charter, no. 2, Dec 1995’, p. 3, The Socialist Party (formerly the Revolutionary Socialist League, Militant Tendency and Militant Labour).

76. 76.  ‘Casualisation. Dockers Prove Charges’, Labournet, www.labournet.net/docks2/9605/CASUAL.HTM (accessed 3 June 2019).

77. 77.  ‘Speech by Bill Morris, Gen. Secretary of T&GWU, to Liverpool Dockers, 14 March 1996’, Labournet, www.labournet.net/docks2/9608/MORRIS.HTM (accessed 3 June 2019).

78. 78.  Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 21 July 2017 and MRC, MSS.126/BM/3/1/4/10, John Pilger, ‘They Never Walk Alone’, Papers of Bill Morris, Lord Morris of Handsworth, OJ (b. 1938), trade union leader.

79. 79.  M. Clua-Losada, ‘Solidarity, Global Restructuring and Deregulation’, p. 107 and A. Murray, The T&G Story: A History of the Transport and General Workers’ Union 1922–2007 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2008), pp. 174–9, 184.

80. 80.  Bill Morris, ‘Union Dues’, The Guardian, 7 December 1996, p. 94 and MRC, MSS.126/BM/3/1/4/15, ‘Setting the Record Straight’, T&G Record February/March 1997, p. 4, Papers of Bill Morris, Lord Morris of Handsworth, OJ. (b. 1938), trade union leader.

81. 81.  MRC, MSS.126/BM/3/1/4/15, Merseyside Port Shop Stewards Response to ‘Setting the Record Straight’, 9 April 1997, Papers of Bill Morris, Lord Morris of Handsworth, OJ. (b. 1938), trade union leader.

82. 82.  Jean Fox, ‘The Rats, the Weasels, the Snakes! … How Can They Do It to Us?’, Labournet, www.labournet.net/docks2/9710/FOX.HTM (accessed 3 June 2019) and Bob Ritchie, interview with Bill Hunter, 1995–8, www.billhunterweb.org.uk/interviews/History_as_Told.htm (accessed 3 June 2019).

83. 83.  Kevin, interview with the author, 12 July 2017 and Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, 21 July 2017.

84. 84.  M. Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012), p. 15.

85. 85.  ‘Internationalism Is about Our Only Hope (Richie Gerrard at Seaforth, 20 November 1995)’, Labournet, www.labournet.net/docks2/9511/gerrard.htm (accessed 3 June 2019) and C. Carter et al., ‘The Polyphonic Spree: The Case of the Liverpool Dockers’, Industrial Relations Journal, 34 (2003), 290–304.

86. 86.  N. Castree, ‘Geographic Scale and Grass-Roots Internationalism: The Liverpool Dock Dispute, 1995–1998’, Economic Geography, 76 (2000), 272–92 (p. 283).

87. 87.  B. Marren, We Shall Not Be Moved, pp. 219–22.

88. 88.  ‘Merseyside Port Shop Stewards Press Release’, Labournet, www.labournet.net/docks2/9709/PREREL.HTM (accessed 3 June 2019).

89. 89.  MRC, MSS.159/4/557/2, ITF Dockers’ Section Steering Committee, 27 February 1997, International Transport Workers’ Federation, Dockers and Portworkers, 1996–8.

90. 90.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

91. 91.  Carol (pseudonym), interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 21 July 2017 and P. Bradley and C. Knight (eds.), Another World Is Possible: How the Liverpool Dockers Launched a Global Movement (London: Radical Anthropology Group, 2004), http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/reading/all (accessed 3 June 2019).

92. 92.  B. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 6.

93. 93.  MRC, 601/D/2/4/5, Letter from Merseyside Port Shop Stewards, ‘Liverpool Dockworkers Final Settlement’, The Socialist Party (formerly the Revolutionary Socialist League, Militant Tendency and Militant Labour).

94. 94.  MRC, MSS.126/BM/3/1/4/21, Copy of the final settlement, February 1998, Papers of Bill Morris, Lord Morris of Handsworth, OJ (b. 1938), trade union leader.

95. 95.  MRC 601/D/2/4/5, The Liverpool Dockers and Stevedores Co-Operative, ‘The Initiative Factory’, The Socialist Party (formerly the Revolutionary Socialist League, Militant Tendency and Militant Labour), p. 14.

96. 96.  P. Shennan, ‘Save The Casa’, Liverpool Echo, 19 January 2015, www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/save-casa-ex-echo-writer-8475662 (accessed 3 June 2019).

97. 97.  A. Mah, Port Cities, pp. 127–33.

98. 98.  Kevin, interview with the author, The Casa, Liverpool, 12 July 2017.

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