Dockers wife is set to give a talk about Liverpool Dispute

Oct 22 2009 by Lyndsay Young, Crosby Herald

A WIFE who fought for two and a half years to rally support during the Liverpool Dockers’ Dispute feels nothing has changed.

Litherland grandmother Doreen McNally, 63, who was chairman of Women Of The Waterfront, will speak out about her experiences at a special meeting set up by Sefton Trade Union Council next week.

The Women Of The Waterfront group was made up of wives and partners of almost 500 sacked dockers involved in the dispute, which started in 1995.

Doreen’s experiences were portrayed in the film Dockers, which she and other workers helped to write with Jimmy McGovern.

It started after dockers, employed by Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, refused to cross a picket line at Liverpool Docks in Seaforth.

It became a lock-out and the company controversially sacked almost 500 workers.

The General Worker’s Union had held meetings to get some dockers reinstated but the action was voted against and eventually the whole workforce was replaced.

Doreen, of Henley Avenue, whose husband Charlie was one of the sacked dockers, said: “The bosses sent out letters to homes saying that they were sacked.”