Protest Strike Over Gaol Term

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30711, 29 March 1965, Page 11

Protest Strike Over Gaol Term

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, March 28.

The one-day unofficial protest strike by 1200 London dockers because a checker had been given six months’ gaol for stealing New Zealand lamb has been described by the “Sun” as “about the biggest piece of nonsense yet,” even in the chequered history of unofficial strikes.

The “Daily Mirror” has printed a photograph of a stack of lambs in a cold store to illustrate how big a quantity was still missing from the Port Nicholson after she berthed at London from New Zealand a fortnight ago. Originally, 1896 carcases worth £4 10s each were missing. Police have traced 339

carcases, but they are still looking for the rest. The value of meat that is stolen is around £lOO,OOO a year.

A Port of London Authority spokesman said: “There is documentary proof that mistakes are m Je on manifests and that some meat disappears at ports of call.” Of the 385 thefts detected in the London docks in 1963 there were convictions in 293 cases.

Dockers have been asked by Mr Jack Dash, the Communist chairman of the unofficial port workers’ liaison committee, to make a collection to help the wife and children of the convicted checker.

“It was a spontaneous action by men who felt a grave injustice had been committed,” he said.

The Port Line ship, Hobart, sailed from London for New Zealand on Friday with 16,000 carcases of meat still aboard —because dockers refused to unload them as a protest about the sentence on the checker. A hundred of them had black-listed a fleet of trucks belonging to the Kent firm which employed a driver who gave evidence against the checker.

The drivers objected to the black-listing, so the dockers walked out.