DOCKS STANDSTILL Housewives Begin To Hoard Food

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32354, 21 July 1970, Page 15

DOCKS STANDSTILL Housewives Begin To Hoard Food

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, July 20. British housewives have begun hoarding food, fearing shortages if the national docks’ strike, now in its sixth day, extends into weeks. The main items they are stockpiling are sugar, butter, and tinned and frozen foods.

Rationing was introduced in some stores at the week-end, and meat prices are going up throughout Britain.

A court of inquiry hastily appointed by the Government to investigate the dockworkers’ pay dispute, will today begin preliminaries in search of a quick end to Britain’s state of emergency. And in the early hours of this morning, the Minister >f Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (Mr James Prior) walked round London’s famous Covent Garden market to see for himself how the strike is affecting vegetables and their prices. About 47,000 dockers closed the ports last week when pay talks which began months ago broke down. The Government responded with emergency regulations, putting 36.000 servicemen on stand-by when Britain's vital imports, including fruit, meat and dairy produce, were cut off by a dockers’ vote of 43 to 39 in favour of striking. Loss Estimate At this stage the housewife is the least affected and has little to fear. The dockers’ action has. however, clamped a stranglehold on British trade that has been immediately, and spectacularly, effective.

The movement of import and export cargoes, valued at £37m a day, has come virtually to a standstill. A London stockbroker has estimated that in the first week the strike might mean a loss to the crude trade bal-

ance of £6sm; in the second week £77m; and in the third. £Bom. In the long run, what is lost in the strike period will be largely made up in the monthly figures, but the position of the United. Kingdom's ports as principal avenues to Europe is more permanently endangered. Ships bound for British ports have been diverted to rival ports on the Continent which picked up trad< during the British waterfront strike of 1967, and held on to it. The British Government's state of emergency, gazetted last week, has resulted in men and equipment from all three services being made ready to move in and man the docks. So far, they have not been called for. Nor are they likely to be until after today’s debate on the crisis in the House of Commons.

Extension Feared The dockers’ unions have arranged for some perishable cargoes to be handled, because of genuine fears on all sides of the dispute that the deployment of the troops as strike-breakers could give rise to a walk-out by trade unionists all over the country There are already rumblings that some militant dockers would like to force a show-down by extending the stoppage to airports, the road haulage industry, and the shipping industry—all, at the moment, functioning normally. The dockers, like everybody else, want their food, but there is a real fear that l

if the troops handle other cargoes—for industry, in particular, the militant wharfsiders will see it as strikebreaking and act accordingly, which would mean sympathy strikes in other industries But only a minority would be sincerely sympathetic, for a prolonged strike must affect the pockets of all. The crunch will come In about a week's time, when the men, and their wives, find that their $5 a week strike pay does not buy the luxuries they could afford on the £35 a week and more, they received when working.

N.Z. Produce The amount of perishable goods on the London docks at present is understood to be small and includes only about 20,000 tons of New Zealand lamb and dairy produce. Fruit from Australia shippedJn the diverted container vessels Discovery Bay and Flinders Bay will probably be sold in Europe. Meanwhile, the “bacon and egg run” of scores of tiny fishing vessels from ports in Northern Ireland to Scotland with fresh food continues to be the biggest boost for many years to the hardy herringboat skippers of the North Despite threats from the dockers of pickets on the coast, these fishing-boats are reported to have ferried this week-end 30 million eggs and supplies of bacon, onions and carrots to Scotland, where lor ries were waiting to take the food to Manchester, Birmingham and London.