Detail from SS , Heritage Mural, designed and painted by Frank Creber and his sons
The Great London Dock Strike is widely acknowledged as a key event in the development of the modern trade union and labour movement in this country. Following on from earlier strikes by match girls and gas workers, the dock strike signalled a remarkable new era of leadership and organisation in the working classes, contributing to, among other things, the formation of the Labour Party in 1900.
The lives of the dockers and many others in the dock side communities at the time were marked by crushing poverty, disease, squalor and horrendous living and working conditions. This against a background of growing trade unionism among unskilled workers, who had become increasingly dissatisfied with their lot.
On August 12, 1889, at .7.30am, Will Thorne, fresh from his part in negotiating a deal to bring in the eight hour day for gas workers across the capital, following a strike at the Beckton Gasworks, spoke at the South Dock gates of the West India Docks in a meeting organised by Will Harris who worked on the tugs at the Albert Docks.Working class Socialist leader Ben Tillett, a docker himself, joined Thorne on the platform and appealed for the men to form a union and then refuse to go to work unless they had a very modest increase in pay of 1d (one old penny, colloquially called the Dockers tanner) to something approaching enough for a docker and his family to live on, and assurance that no man would be taken on for less than 4 hours a day.
As was the tradition of the period, and for many years afterwards, the dockers agreed to the resolutions by a show of hands, which on this occasion was unanimous. When Ben Tillett took these demands to the dock directors they refused to listen, he returned to tell the men the strike had begun.
Despite the obvious hardships ahead there was enthusiasm. The following day a small strike broke out in the South West India Dock in response to Tillet's statement and it would spread spontaneously and rapidly across the whole of London's docks.
As part of the strike, mass meetings were held at Tower Hill, pickets were established at the dock gates and marches were organised through the City of London. On the whole, the strike remained peaceful, as a result the dock workers gained much support and sympathy from the public.
The employees were intent to starve the strikers out and although the port was at a standstill and their companies losing money they believed that giving into the dockers demands would set a dangerous precedent, but crucially, financial help to the strikers and their families arrived from the Australian Labour , who sent over £30,000 to help the dockers to continue the struggle, alongside organisations such as the Salvation Army and the Labour Church who also raised money in support, Also landlords wgo tried to collect their rents fasced resistance, rent strikes were organised, with one banner reading :"As we are on strike landlords need not call." There was also a remarkable degree of solidarity between different faiths during the strike, in London's east end the Jewish community led a solidarity march with the dockers, a large proportion of whom were Irish Catholics, and together with the Salvation Army provided soup kitchens for the dockers' families and children. The Irish dockers would get their opportunity to return the gesture of solidarity in the battle of Cable Street nearly half a century later, when in 1936, the ' Blackshirt fascists; targeted the local Jewish community in Stepney.
Anyway without this aid and support, perhaps the strike might not in the end have been won, but after five weeks on the 14th September 1889, the strike leaders, negotiated an end to the strike with the dock managers with the employees accepting defeat and granting all the dockers main demands, after they had been met by the powers of mass organisation, discipline and resilience that had been ably demonstrated.
After this successful strike, the dockers formed a new General Labourers' Union, which in due course this union became one of the founders of the Transport and General Worker's Union..Ben Tillet was elected General Secretary and Tom Mann became the union's first President. In London alone, 20,000 men joined this new union. Tillett and Mann wrote a pamphlet together called the New Unionism, where they outlined their socialist views and explained how their idea was a "cooperative commonwealth."
This victory was a turning point, which saw workers across the country, particularly the unskilled workers, gaining a new confidence to organise themselves and carry out collective action. Over the next few years a large number of these unskilled workers joined trade unions, and between 1892 and 1899 membership of trade unions increased from 1,500,000 to over 200,000
