A few miles down the Mersey from Labour’s conference in Liverpool, striking dockers are furious with their employer and Sir Keir Starmer.
The 560 workers, today starting the second week of a fortnight-long stoppage, accuse the profitable Mersey Docks and Harbour Company of breaking promises and refusing to improve a pay offer that would reduce living standards.
And they feel abandoned by the leader of a Labour Party formed to represent working people in Parliament.
“We were hailed as key workers during the Covid pandemic and now the company’s treating us like peasants because they don’t want to give us a pay matching inflation,” said ship’s foreman Steve Saunderson, 34, on the picket line.
The strikers enjoy huge public backing in Liverpool where passing car drivers toot horns and local football heroes Neville Southgate and Jamie Carragher voiced support.
Folk singer Jamie Webster played a gig outside the dock gates that pulled a crowd of 2,000.
Labour ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn, veteran Left-winger John McDonnell and RMT rail union chief Mick Lynch all visited to express solidarity.
Yet the dockers are furious that Starmer refused to travel a few miles from Labour’s annual gathering to meet them.
“He should have been here on day one when the Labour Party was created to fight for us,” said Saunderson.
“But instead Keir Starmer ’s in the Pullman Hotel having a buffet breakfast. He’s a Tory in a red tie.”
The Labour leader’s decision to withhold support for strikers and an order banning frontbenchers from joining picket lines is creating resentment.
Starmer’s wary of alienating voters inconvenienced by transport strikes and taking sides, arguing Labour in Government would mediate in disputes. The Liverpool dockers’ anger illustrate it’s a risky strategy.
Felixstowe dockers at the country’s largest container port in Suffolk start an eight-day strike tomorrow (Tuesday) and further action is planned in Liverpool after this walkout ends.
When Retail Prices Index inflation’s soaring 12.3% the dockers on the Mersey recognise an 8.3% pay offer plus a single £750 payment would cut their living standards.
They also hotly dispute company claims that average earnings are £43,000 a year, insisting pay is much lower.
“None of us know anybody here paid anything remotely like that,” said Asa Gray, 41, to murmurs of agreement from a large crowd.
The dock picket line is a world away from a conference where Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail yesterday told Labour members that down the road her union’s dockers were being short-change.
Bridging the gap between Labour’s political and industrial wings could be electorally crucial.
