Why does the two-year-old Liverpool dockers' dispute get such piss-poor coverage, asks Mike Holderness - could it be something to do with us hacks? (Sept 1997)

Long-haired lovers of Liverpool

LONG BEACH California, 8 September: dockers strike for eight hours; there are simultaneous strikes in San Diego and the ports of Alaska, British Columbia and Mexico. Aarhus, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Durban, Gothenburg, Figuera da Foz (Portugal), Lisbon and St John (Canada) see 24-hour stoppages. The South African Transport and General Workers' Union pledges a boycott of all vessels bound for a British dock-owner, threatening to cripple its new fruit-importing business.

If you already knew this, either you are the other reader of Lloyd's List, or you watch Fox News in the USA. What's it all about, then, and why is it practically secret?

Those industrial actions, and others around the globe, are in support of 480 dockers locked out of the Port of Liverpool two years ago. They are still out, refusing cash and demanding their jobs back, with union recognition. They have one of the more imaginative trade union campaigns ever. One is invited to the NUJ's 1996 Annual Delegate Meeting, and regales us with tales of successful secondary picketing in New Jersey.

Liverpool's less than three hours from... ummm, Crispin, does one go from Paddington? But the strikers have a phone number, email and several Web pages. There's enough documentation of internal trade union strife to make old-school Daily Mail labour correspondents drool. So the dispute is probably not buried because it's provincial.

Perhaps trades unions are no longer news in the UK? Thatcher took us on, starting with printers and journalists, and the unions faded into history, right?

As Bill Morris of the TGWU wrote to docker Mick Kilcullen on 25 March: "...given the anti-union laws and our own conference decisions, I must not jeopardise the fabric of the Union in the interests of one section of its members." Solidarity, in other words, has successfully been outlawed in the UK, and looks set to stay that way.

In July 1996 the dockers needed to attract the attention of the dockworkers' International, meeting in Montreal -- and the TGWU was responsibly obstructive. So they occupied a crane in the city's docks. They achieved a higher public profile, though, when two Liverpool footballers wore their shirts at the Bergen game on 21 March.

Where solidarity is outlawed, the place to look for it is among outlaws. A meeting of purpose between the Liverpool dockers and the self-described "disorganisation" of Reclaim the Streets (RTS) was inevitable.

What did we hear about this exciting cultural collision between the strikers at the dock gates with their braziers and the people who, when they want to put on a dance party, tend to fill a small motorway? A snide piece in the Guardian and, much later, some incomprehension from John Pilger. (One problem with reporting RTS is that full understanding is hard until you've danced with them.) All the papers, except the Telegraph, swallowed the Metropolitan Police line that RTS were outside agitators at the dockers' 12 April demo in Trafalgar Square. Funny that they could "infiltrate" a protest which they largely organised, and after which the dockers formally "re-iterated their support and respect for RTS".

Bill Morris does have half a clue. The dockers, he declared in that letter, "are no longer running an industrial dispute but a political movement".

Indeed. A movement, perhaps, for all to have real choices and control in our lives, for life to be more than the choice between McJob and the hiring fair, between insecurity with Montgomery and with Murdoch? True, many around RTS vigorously celebrate the right not to work. This is entirely consistent: those who want it should have work with dignity and security.

Not only are the RTS people a lot more fun than your average trade union, but they include many of the brightest, the best and the most moral I've had the privilege to meet.

Even UEFA praised Robbie Fowler for his sense of fair play, while fining him £1000 for his on-pitch demonstration. Freedom, fair play, ideals... how quaint. How un-Eighties.

Some of the dockers believe there is a central news blackout on their campaign. It's not that simple (though evidence of "guidance" is welcome, anonymity guaranteed). Is it, perhaps, that we journalists are so cowed at work that we collectively dismiss the significance of anyone else demanding, struggling for or winning decent conditions of life and work? If that's so, we are guilty of letting personal circumstances, imposed by our bosses, dictate a distortion of the news.

For Liverpool dockers' background on the Web, start at http://www.labournet.org.uk/

(Crap title. Wonder what the editor will run?)

An edited version of this piece appeared in the October 1997 edition of the Journalist, magazine of the National Union of Journalists. This version is © copyright 1997 Mike Holderness; moral rights are asserted.