sages financial facts emerged from the Bristol and Avonmouth docks! strike
was generally assumed that the strike cost "the country" a million ounds The Port of Bristol Enployers' Association on two separate days paid aan : of over £600 for two whole pages of the Bristol Evening Post in which to tell the public that the rotten dockers were costi
the Port Almighty packet, ing the Port of Bristol an
Twice, the Transport and General Workers! Union, in bold attempts to tell their striking workers that they were irresponsible, hired Bristol's magnificient Colston Hall at £100 a time, Sad to say though, both these latter attempts at whipping some sense into we irresponsibles failed: the last meeting barely giving us time to appreciate just what our hundred nicker was giving uS. The cost to the Port Employers of these two pages in the local rag was about the exact amount that would have settled the affair of the packaged timber on the ship in dispute = the Gloucester City. It seems that strikes cost everyone a packet, except the poor old docker himself! He, whilst on strike, can draw the princely sum of £10, 10. Od a week, according to our local newspaper again, That is, if he happens to have six or eight kids! Heaven help him if he is single, or just got his wife - then he is told, as were so many of them, to GO BACK TO WORK - only in a more technical manner. The interim agreement that sparked off the bitterness of the strikers soon dropped into second place, as the positive hatred of the useless machinery of the T & GWU Docks! negotiating machinery produced nothing but that wellknown answer of the last ten years = “All in order", The union officials! attitude remained - "take it or leave it". Leave it is what the Bristol dockers did = for exactly three and a half weeks, The stubborn refusal of the officials to take a further look at the ridiculous interim increase of a of a penny stank to high heaven, It must now be concluded that the Devlin's Committee's question as to “whether the Union has lent slightly towards the employers" can only be answered with a strong Yes, Many of us in these parts are now saying that the Union has definitely keeled right over in that direction. The saying "to get to the guvnors you must first get past your Union official" has now become established in our dockSe The strike has now ended, It came dramatically the day after another pitiful meeting at the Colston Hall, which saw a mere ten minutes of sheer comedy. Here the local Docks Group Secretary put a James Bond touch to the statement that a Government Inquiry had been ordered overnight: and that now "as it has become Government business I ask you to return to work." This was after he had stated emphatically that there could be NO discussion and NO questionse One day I might write a book about the whole soggy affair, and call it "A Modern Comedy of Errors." On the other hand I might just sit back a little longer and ask myself - "Are We really the Union?" One thing is almost certain, Mr, Gunter appears to be having the last word, AMEN, AMEN, AMEN. * Mr, McGrath is a leader, of the Bristol Dockers Liaison Committee.