Recently cataloguing some labour movement material I included a historically interesting booklet published by the [Kingston Upon] Hull, [UK], Joint Port Working Committee:
Piece Work Arrangements. As agreed between The Hull Association of Port Labour Employers and The Transport and General Workers’ Union. Hull Printers Ltd., Hull, n. d. [1957 or later]. 24 mo., 132 pages (including 30 blank, presumably for handwritten notes).
At about the same time my attention was drawn to an article in The Guardian newspaper on 16/09/2020 reporting that the city of Hull, along with Blackpool, had the then highest jobless rate in the UK.
Post 1970s industrial change and decline had a destructive impact upon many economic groups and communities. Hull with its docks and fishing industries, along with other communities of concentrated economic production (e.g. mining and steel producing), has been one of those areas hardest hit in the 20th century.
At its peak, at the beginning of the 20th century, Hull was the third largest port in the UK after London and Liverpool employing 13,000 dockers – the total population of Hull (all ages) being 281,525 in 1911. The advent of shipping containers, de-regulation, and privatisation, were part of the processes which changed all that, and by 1988 just 700 registered dockers were employed in Hull.
Dock work globally has a historical record of casual labour, favouritism and corruption in the allocation of work, and intimidation of those workers seeking to organise and protect the interests of dock workers. In Hull, as in many other ports, those dock workers seeking employment were required to present themselves in what was called “The Pen”. The foreman, whose task it was to select those men needed for a particular job, stood on a stand behind a waist high wall to protect him from the dockers who stood in the pen, and who pushed forward to hand him their books showing their work history. It was a degrading process, like a cattle market. Back-handers (i.e. bribes) were often expected by the foremen whose decisions determined whether a man would be able to earn an income, or not, and most often this scene took place on a daily basis. Post-1945 the decasualisation of dock employment became a decades long struggle.
If being allocated work was a continual challenge, then so too were the conditions in which loading and unloading of a ship took place. To give one example, that of unloading a grain ship. In the ship’s hold a docker would be holding open the neck of a 300 pounds (136 kilograms) sack, whilst another filled it with a hand scuttle (a type of bucket). It was back-breaking work in choking dust, with 15 full scuttles needed to fill the bag – which brings me back to the Piece Work Arrangements booklet.
Piece work and payment by results has over time primarily suited employers rather than employees. Today you can look to the experience of workers at Amazon as a ‘prime’ contemporary example. Hull’s dock workers sought to bring some local regulation to their working conditions through trade union membership and activity. Reaching agreement with the Hull port employers over piece work rates, and the organisation of work gangs to carry out the work, was an important part of a struggle to defend and improve working conditions and employment. In other words, to try and bring some degree of control for the dock workers over the labour process.
As a recent graduate in the late 1970s I began teaching on a part-time basis for Hull University. It was in this context that I came to know and work with a remarkable group of Hull’s dockers. From 1978 to 1979 I was responsible for the Hull dockworkers’ day release scheme course which enabled a group of Hull dockworkers, mostly union representatives, to spend one day a week over a number of months on a course organised by the University’s Industrial Studies Unit.
My debt is that this group of men, with many decades of work experience and related industrial struggle and trade union activity behind them, accepted me as a rookie tutor muddling my way through issues which they often had greater insights into than I did[1]. As one of the course participants said during our end of course evaluation, “At the start [of the course] you were like a spring on a stick”; i.e. I displayed a lot of nervous energy.
The course in effect became a project which was to analyse the plan by the British Waterways Board to make improvements to the Sheffield and South Yorkshire canal, enabling larger ships to bypass the Hull docks[2]. As a development it would add to the existing threats of inland container depots and the growth of unregistered docks which provided alternatives to ships unloading and loading in the port of Hull, thus further placing at risk the number of Hull dock workers needed to handle ships. The course became a hands-on research activity for all participants and many hours were spent in the University library as well as in course discussion. Ever resourceful, the group organised a day-long barge trip along the canal so that we could view first hand and photograph the areas proposed for development.
As a group with strong personal ties and a fierce sense of collective humour and banter[3], there I was, with my recently discovered student-centred learning methodology[4], trying to organise a learning framework and co-ordinate a collective effort. Looking back, it seems a naïve ask. My lack of teaching experience and non-existent knowledge of inland waterway systems could have easily been exposed and my confidence undermined. I had the good fortune though to benefit from the group’s strong sense of and preference for collective identity, an identity to which as the course progressed I became for a short period a ‘wet behind the ears’ adopted member. The fact that I was also an active trade unionist meant that the concepts and language of workplace activity were not alien to me, and so we shared a common vocabulary and set of aspirations.
Through application and endeavour the course members produced a series of essays which the University of Hull published:
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Hull dockers’ essays on freight transport systems in Yorkshire and Humberside, and other matters. The University of Hull, Department of Adult Education. Industrial Studies Unit. Occasional papers; no.8. Hull, The University of Hull, 1980, small folio, 61 pages. |
There was a feeling, rightly so, of collective pride when copies were placed in everyone’s hands and a genuine expression of mild wonder that it had been possible to end up with such a result. I was thanked for, as one of the course members said, having ‘got the work out of them’. Truth be said, they deserved my thanks because at a job interview not long afterwards the interview panel were quite taken by this example of adult and workers’ education in action. I was offered the job and thus began many years working in a field I gained as much from as I was able to give. I was launched fully into workers’ education and this unforgettable group of Hull dockers helped propel me on my way[5].
[1] Many of the course participants held voluntary positions (e.g. shop steward, safety representative) in their trade union, and had local Labour Party experience. As is often the case with tightly knit groups it is possible to witness and feel the presence and influence of formal and informal leaders. In this case it was “the two Walts”, Walter Cunningham and Walter Greendale who commanded everyone’s respect and loyalty.
[2] The course and project also examined road and rail transport as alternatives to canal transport.
[3] The playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks.
[4] Methods of teaching that shift the focus of instruction from the teacher to the student. Student-centred learning aims to develop learner autonomy and independence within a supported and supportive classroom environment.
[5] I was also very fortunate to have the encouragement and trust of the staff of the Industrial Studies Unit, Tony Topham, Mike Somerton, and Daniel Vulliamy, who gave me my first opportunities to teach and were a regular source of advice and practical assistance – my debt is equally extended to all three.
This made me realise how much we are living history in our own lives, and reminded me that working as a group is a source of strength and growth. I am sure that those currently involved in community trade union activities are as strong and as inspiring as these people, and saddened that, as before, this is almost invisible in the wider world. I am not a practising face-booker, so I might be missing where such things are now celebrated, however, I have been delighted to share this heart-warming story, which rewarded equally the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learners’ – and which, in a true adult learning dynamic, asks ‘who is the teacher?’