7. The Docks in the Twentieth Century
The Dock Worker's Voice

Despite the increasing mechanisation in the docks there was still a great deal of work for the dockers.

It is true that bulk deliveries of commodities such as oil, coal and grain (which accounted for over three-quarters of the total goods handled in the port) were largely mechanised by the 1950s. But there were many commodities which had to be dealt with by hand.

Cargoes arriving on the quays or wharves had to be sorted out for storage or delivery. Export goods had to be arranged for loading into certain ships going to a variety of destinations.

Apart from Jack Dash's account of the call-on in the 1960s, the sources on these pages are taken from interviews conducted in the 1980s with dockers who worked in the docks and on the wharves from the 1930s to the time when the docks closed in the 1970s.

The call-on

A: 'It's 7.35 now. Hundreds of men stream in through the gates, making their way to the various places for the general call-on, facing the firms' foremen and labour superintendents who will at exactly 7.45 am walk over to the waiting labour-force and make their selection.

The shorter men move in fast, trying to get a "frontier" so that they can be seen, for at times, particularly if there is a fall-off in shipping, the crowd on "the stones" can be four or five men deep and about 500 yards long...

Across the road the foremen are synchronising their watches. Some of the men are practising hypnotism, staring at the back of the neck of a particular foreman in the hope that when he turns round they'll be the first one he'll catch sight of and call on...

'All of a sudden there is a complete hush. Everyone is standing on tiptoe. Over walk the ship and quay foremen, like a sheriff's posse in a Western.

Charlie's gang! Smith's gang! Four men for pro rata on chilled beef! There is a rush and a flurry, arms are outstretched with registration books in the hands (without the registration book you can't go to work).

The little men in the front have been shoved aside. When there's been a heavy spell of unemployment, the call-on reminds you of a flock of seagulls converging on a morsel.'

Jack Dash, Good Morning, Brothers!, 1969.

Conditions of work

C: There's the bales of wool going from the London Dock. You'd perhaps walk two or three miles there. Well, you'd be sweating hot and tired, you know, and they used to leave buckets of oatmeal water and you'd dip a cup in and have a drink, 'cos you needed it pushing all that way.

'Because in the docks and warehouses there were very few toilets and men used to sit on what they - like a pig's trough, five or six in a row, and the conditions were very bad.

There were no taps, nowhere where you could wash. There were nowhere where you could change your wet clothes, you had to work in the wet.'

Alexander Gander.

D: 'They're talking about asbestos now, but I've literally handled tons of that. Raw asbestos, blue asbestos in bags from Africa...

But you never heard of anyone being ill with it in those days 'cos I might have asbestos cos I suffer from bronchitis badly enough..

The tobacco dust... is terrific you know, and you're breathing it in all the time... it used to make your eyes sore and you'd get at little bit of tobacco in your eyes it didn't half burn you, your eyes water like anything on tobacco.'

Bill Abbott.