Strikes docked
EVEN in Liverpool, the penny has drop- ped, so that is the end of the dock strike. What is far more, it is the end of the dock strikes, as we have known them for so long and so often — the stranglehold on the ports as a threat to choke industry, the exporters' ruin, the sure way to unbalance the balance of payments, sterling's bane! Trade and Treasury ministers (and indeed exporters) will have to think of a new excuse when things go wrong, but they must bear that with fortitude, and even try to thank Norman Fowler. Who before him would have dared to bust the dock labour cartel, stand up to a national strike, and, picking his moment, see it off without even sending for a policeman? Ron Todd, digni- fied and baffled, the general (as he said) without an army, found his own job description as much on the line as any docker's, and the best thing for him now would be one of those £35,000 farewells. The strike's fate has been received, not so much as a useful achievement for a country which lives by its overseas trade, ,but as an occasion for nostalgia. The BBC showed 1949's striking dockers marching past the Tower, and commented that in those days the dockers were Labour's staunchest allies. Some allies! Attlee sent in the Army.
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