Anna Green: British capital, antipodean labout

University of Otago Press

$39.95

Reviewed by Dean Parker*

Once the gates on the waterfronts throughout the country were locked," writes Anna Green of the beginnings of the violent and bitter 1951 waterfront dispute, "the employers quietly slipped out of public view."

What was it all about, 1951? A battle between a militant union and a National Government? A shadow cast by the Cold War?

Missing from the conventional depictions, Green points out in this excellent and engrossing study, are the shipping companies.

The cause of the lockout was certainly, in major part, a struggle for control over work on the waterfront. It was the culmination of a 30-year battle during which union members, growing in strength and confidence after a 1913 strike defeat, had forced the shipowners back from a position where they could hire and fire at will.

"Despite [its] vital role in the economy," writes Green, "the organisation and supervision of the work on the wharves was primarily the responsibility of the British shipping companies and their stevedoring operations in each port."

Those shipping lines, pursuing maximum profits, came into constant conflict with the waterside workers. Such antagonism, Green argues, played a significant role in igniting the final conflict of 1951.

There was little security of employment on the wharves. The work was arduous, dirty, dangerous and long (13-hour days were common). Each year there were deaths and serious accidents, yet employers made little effort to provide protective gear, adequate training or first aid posts.

The book has an intriguing chapter on the union's attempt to give the British-owned stevedoring companies the elbow and put the waterfront under self-managing union control - socialism in one company.

But the most fascinating chapter derives from the author's interviews with watersiders on what she scrupulously describes as "informal collective resistance on the job."

The most important form of resistance was spelling - taking it in turn to have a rest. Other forms were the beautifully termed "gliding off" - leaving the job early - and go-slows. Green notes, encouragingly, that even in the depths of the Depression, go-slows could be extremely effective in resisting the employers.

It was spelling that threw employers and governments into a purple fit. A gang of 12 wharfies would split into two groups of six. One group would work the hold while the other would take a civilised spell, a workers' equivalent of lawyers' three-hour lunches with Wednesday off for golf.

"Write a letter to one of the daily papers exposing the evils of the 'spelling' system practised by New Zealand waterside workers," a question in a 1947 fifth form English exam indignantly demanded.

Well, clearly, there weren't any evils. The shipping companies continued to make whopping profits from the rich harvests of their New Zealand freight trade, while the wharfies set for themselves what they considered a reasonable amount of work for an adequate wage.

Green sees it as "an ideological battle that derived from the very core of capitalist production relations: the degree of individual effort expended and personal autonomy that is relinquished in return for a cash wage." Absolutely. And even better, the drudgery of the working day was broken up from long hours of relentless tedium into bursts of hard work and then time off. Hooray.

*Dean Parker writes for television.