Lamb evades dock strike

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33805, 31 March 1975, Page 2

Lamb evades dock strike

(From

C. S. COOPER,

London correspondent of "The Press")

LONDON, March 30. The strategic diversion of a container ship to Zeebrugge, Belgium, has saved a cargo of New Zealand lamb from being trapped in the strike that has halted London’s Tilbury Docks for more than a month.

After the Australian Endeavour had dropped its scheduled lamb containers at Liverpool it by-passed Tilbury and discharged 2000 tons of meat at Zeebrugge for reshipment to Britain on Channel ferries.

This is the only New Zealand lamb rerouted because of the strike at Tilbury. As conventional refrigerated ships are not affected, there has be n no delay to lamb unloading at Sheerness, down the Thames estuary from Tilbury, or at Avonmouth (Bristol) or Liverpool. FINGERS CROSSED But the Meat Board and importers have fingers crossed for next month, when three container ships are due at London with the season’s peak shipments — 40,000 tons of the 210,000 tons of lamb that will come to Britain this year. Twice last week at angry meetings, and after disputed counts of hands-up voting, an activist element has persuaded the dockers to continue their unofficial strike in defiance of appeals to resume work from the Transport and General Workers Union.

On Thursday they brushed aside a warning from the general secretary of the T.G.W.’J. (Mr Jack Jones) that their insistence on keeping the strike going would lead to a “very bleak future indeed for the port of London.”

The dispute, not unfamiliar to New Zealand in its pattern, is over the dockers’ demand that they be given immediate rights to man the inshore container depots near wharves. ERRATIC WORK

This is a long-festering sore point, and work at Tilbury has been erratic since January, when dockers began blacking selected containers arriving for export. Last month blacking of major container depots and picketing of haulage firms escalated into a walk-out by the port’s 11,500 dockers. Since then, port employers and container operators have been losing Elm a week, and many smaller firms are sliding into bankruptcy. For economically stumbling Brit-

ain it has meant the stagnation of exports worth £2som. Like New Zealand’s to nb ship, more and more vessels are being diverted to Co. tinental ports, and their cargoes hauled to Britain in fleets of juggernaut lorries, using the Channel ferries. So bad is Tilbury’s record, even when working without industrial disruption, that there is a growing trend for cross-Channel ports to handle British cargoes. The fear is that even after the present dispute is settled a significant volume of trade now being diverted will never return to Tilbury. I ANTWERP EXAMPLE ] At Antwerp, for example, unload 34 tons an hour a gang, against Tilbury’s seven tons. For every ton loaded at Tilbury, 5.47 tons is loaded at Antwerp. London’s container depot contractors are well aware of the dockers’ reputation, and dread the restrictive practices that will be foisted on them if — more likely, when — the dockers cross their boundaries.

They say, they could not stay in business at the dockers’ prices — £56 to £6O a week.

Despite a new Government paper which concedes the ultimate right of the dockers to work container depots near docks, the strikers’ militant leaders are demanding an immediate takeover.

SUPPORT QUESTIONED Although they have succeeded in keeping the port at a standstill, at least until the next mass meeting, scheduled for next Friday, the hard-line leaders must be wondering how much of their support will be eroded by then. Even they admit, that at neither of this week’s two meetings were more than 4000 of Tilbury’s 11,500 watersiders present. At both meetings there were accusations of “a fiddle” in the cursory estimation of the number of hands aloft, for or against continuation of the strike.

Rugby.—Ray Sutherland, aged 35, who played Rugby for Marlborough for the last 18 seasons and who captained the team which won the Ranfurly Shield from Canterbury, has stepped down. He will help to train the Moutere club’s senior side.