‘We win if we stand together,’ Tom insisted, but nobody answered.
He waved the crane over. He was not defeated yet, he told himself. He might have lost this battle but the war was still on. He was down but he was not out. But however much he bolstered up his hopes, the setback dragged at his spirits. His whole body felt weary. His wet clothes weighed him down, making each movement an effort.
Looking down in the hold, he saw the men rubbing their eyes, tears running down their faces.
‘Don’t!’ he shouted as one ducked his head to wipe his face on his upper sleeve. ‘You’ll make it worse. It’s on your hands and your clothes where you been lifting. It’s burning into you.’
Their sight blurred, the palms of their hands raw, the men worked on. Still the cranes brought ashore more sets of barrels. They piled up on the quayside, threatening heaps of dull rusted steel.
The light was failing fast, but still they carried on working. They were into overtime. Everyone was glad of the extra money, but they were tired. Now was the time when accidents happened through sheer fatigue.
‘All fast!’ came the shout from the hatchway.
Tom signalled to the crane driver. The set went swinging up and over to the quay. Tom straightened up to watch it, then caught his breath. The load was not made up properly. The strop was slipping out from under the end bottom barrel.
‘Look out! Greenacre!’ he yelled, using the time-honoured warning for an accident.
The men reaching up to guide the load down had already realized and jumped back. A cascade of barrels tumbled out of the sky, dropping ten, fifteen feet on to the stones of the quay. There was a crunching sound as they hit the ground and a cloud of white dust blew up into the air, leaving the watching men gasping and coughing.
‘Anyone hurt?’ an anxious voice called up from the hold.
Tom peered through the dust. ‘No, no I don’t think so, thank God. Bloody awful mess, though.’
‘Thank God for that,’ the man echoed, relieved. Tom did not have to ask who it was that had secured the set.
Somebody was going to have to clear the broken load away, and Tom knew who that was going to be – Wilkins’ gang. It ought to be done with shovels and some sort of protective clothing, something to cover their eyes and mouths, but he knew better than to expect that. They were there to unload the ship, whatever the danger to themselves, for the usual sixpence an hour plus tuppence overtime. He looked at them: a sorry bunch, tired and underfed, with red eyes and blistered hands. But they had pride still, and there was a limit to how much they were willing to be pushed around.
Even as the thoughts went through his head, he saw Grant beckon them over.
‘You lot – get these shifted. Any that are broken, put into the waste cart.’
Tom could not stand by and let his mates be exploited.
‘Hold it,’ he called down to the men inside the ship. ‘Grant’s making the truckers clear the broken barrels. They could be damaged for life.’
The gangers shrugged. It happened all the time.
‘Look at what it’s done to you already. Think how it’d be if it really got down inside you,’ he said. ‘Get inside your guts, it would. Eat you away.’
One man nodded, and made his way to the ladder up to the deck. Slowly, the others followed.
Tom waved to the crane driver to stop, then walked deliberately down on to the quay. He stepped through the assembled gang of truckers. Behind him, he could hear the others going quiet, waiting for what was going to happen next.
‘That’s dangerous, Mr Grant. If those barrels are split, the stuff’s going to go all over these men. They need to shift it with shovels, not their bare hands.’
Grant’s face went red with anger. His eyes bulged. The veins in his neck swelled. He jabbed a finger towards Tom.
‘Are you refusing to work, Johnson? Because I warned you . . .’
Tom stood his ground. Grant was blustering because he knew he was in the wrong. He thought he could win just by shouting loud enough. Tom kept his voice reasonable, steady.
‘No, Mr Grant, I’m not refusing to work, and neither are these men. I’m just saying as they can’t lift the stuff with their bare hands.’
‘And I’m saying they bloody will.’ He looked beyond Tom to the group of men, his eyes searching for the weakest to pick on. ‘You –
what’s y’name – Wilkins. Take one of them barrels out to the cart.’
Wilkins hesitated. He looked from Grant to Tom.
‘Don’t do it, Reg,’ Tom told him. ‘You get that down you and you’ll never work again.’
But Grant had a stronger threat. ‘You leave that there and you’ll never work in this dock again.’
There was a groundswell of muttering.
‘Don’t do it, Reg.’
‘He’s bluffing, mate.’
‘Don’t let him push you around.’
A surge of relief and triumph shot through Tom. They had had enough. They were with him. Now he could get somewhere. He stood watching Reggie Wilkins’ face, pitying the man. Grant had picked his victim well. Reg was not a fighter. He was a quiet hero, willing to work all day for half-a-crown rather than let his family starve, ready to endure anything just as long as he was earning. Tom said nothing, letting the rest of the gang do the persuading for him, letting Reg see he had his mates behind him.
Grant could see the tide turning against him.
‘Get on with it!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t just stand there gaping like a bleeding idiot, pick the bleeding thing up and take it to the cart.’
Reg Wilkins seemed to shrink. Slowly, avoiding looking at anyone, he trundled his truck over to the heap of bent and damaged barrels. He bent and picked up the nearest one, then tried to straighten up. But the heavy day’s work after weeks of inadequate food had nearly done for him. He could not lift it on to the foot of the truck. Mesmerized, the others look on. It was painful, watching his feeble efforts.
‘Come on, man, put yer back into it,’ Grant shouted.
Wilkins got a fresh grip round the thing. Grunting, he heaved it forward. But his boot, which was coming apart at the toe, caught on a cobblestone. He tripped. Man and barrel fell against the truck and all three crashed down into a broken heap. The barrel split apart and Wilkins landed face first in a heap of caustic soda.
‘Get him up!’ Tom shouted, running forward himself.
‘Water!’ someone shouted. ‘Put water on him.’
The stuff was already damp from the rain. It was sticking to Wilkin’s hair, his face, his clothing. He was shaking, gasping. Tom pulled him clear and laid him on the stones. And then Wilkins began to moan, then scream, writhing on the wet quay. The men looked on, horrified.
‘Get him in the dock,’ someone yelled.
‘No, no, he can’t swim.’
A bucket of water was hauled up and thrown over the injured man, but it did not wash the soda off, only accelerated the reaction. It was eating into his skin.
‘My eyes! My eyes!’ Wilkins cried out in agony, begging them to help him.
‘Keep bringing water. Fetch a cart. We must get him to the hospital,’ Tom ordered.
A handcart was trundled up. Men with only one jacket to their name tore them off for a makeshift mattress. Wilkins was carefully picked up and laid down. He thrashed from side to side in a vain attempt to escape the searing pain. A last dousing with water, and a team of volunteers trundled him towards the dock gates. His screams echoed off the high warehouse walls and hung on the air.
Tom looked round at the crowd that had gathered. Men from quays all along the dockside had come running. Now they stood in shocked silence. They had all seen accidents before, but nothing like this.
An angry growl started and grew. The men who had seen it happen knew who to blame. Grant stepped in to stop it before it got out of hand.
‘All right, all right, the show’s over. Back to work, all of you.’
Nobody shifted.
‘Come on, we ain’t got all day. Get moving.’
Tom waited for the voices to rise. He knew his mates. They were not going to let this one pass. He walked out into the centre of the gathered men and stood by the remains of the shattered barrels. He raised his hands. The shouts died down. There was an expectant pause. He looked round, gathering them all in with him.
‘We’re not going back to work, Mr Grant,’ he stated.
All around him there was roar of agreement.
Grant waved his arms in anger. ‘You lot take no notice of him. This is just to do with this quay. The rest of you get moving – go on, get back to work.’
Still nobody moved.
‘This ship is blacked, Mr Grant. Nothing on this ship will be touched until we get double pay and special clothing to shift this cargo.’
From the back of the crowd came a shout of support.
‘We’re with you, brother. We don’t go back to work neither.’
The cry was taken up by men from other quays.
‘Nor us.’
‘One out, all out.’
Grant tried to shout them down. ‘You do that and I’ll see you never work again. You go, and there’s a hundred more ready to take your places.’
Jeers and boos were all he got in reply.
Tom raised his hands again. Gradually the noise subsided. All along the dockside cranes stopped working and men leaned over ships’ sides to see what was going on; some were even now walking over to find out what was happening. Now was the moment.
‘Which quays are with us?’ he asked.
From the growing mass around him gangers identified themselves.
Tom nodded. There were enough to really put the pressure on. He knew his cause was just.
‘Are we all together, brothers?’
A great howl of agreement rose and rolled round the vast dock. Tom was lifted up on its strength and solidarity. He turned to Grant, raising his voice so that everyone knew just what the score was.
‘You go tell your masters, Mr Grant: double pay and protective clothing. Until then, nothing on this side of the dock moves.’
Cheers and whistles greeted the ultimatum. Grant’s reply was nearly lost in the tumult. But as the crowd parted to let him through, Tom heard the foreman’s last threat.
‘I’ll get you for this, Johnson. I’ll make you pay if it’s the last thing I do.’
‘
GIVE ME THAT,
Mum. I’ll finish it off.’
‘No, it’s all right. You had all them envelopes to do.’
‘I’ve finished ’em. Come on, give it here.’
Reluctantly, Martha handed the shirt over to Ellen and sagged back in her chair, head back, eyes closed.
Ellen moved the single candle a little closer and carried on stitching the patch to the back. The shirt was so old that it had ripped when one of Jack’s friends grabbed it during a game of football.
‘It’s not going to last much longer, Mum.’
‘I know, lovey. But if we can just hold it together till this strike’s over we can let it go for rags.’ Martha was so tired that her voice slurred as she tried to talk.
‘Why don’t you go to bed, Mum? It might be ages before Dad’s in.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ But still she sat there, shapeless in the eighth month of her pregnancy, too tired to move.
Ellen wished she could offer a cup of tea, but it was too late now to go next door to boil a kettle. She shivered. The little kitchen was cold. Her father was late and her mother looked dreadful, with dark rings under her eyes. Fighting the eternal battle with dirt, on top of a pregnancy, little money coming in, and now a strike, was almost too much for her. Ellen was frightened. She had never seen her mother look like this before. Always Mum had been strong, even through the bad times like when they all went down with scarlet fever.
‘Come on,’ she said, standing up, holding out her hands, ‘I’ll help you up.’
‘You’re a good girl, Ellen.’ With a groan, she let herself be hauled to her feet, but still she hesitated, standing leaning on the table and looking towards the street door. ‘He should have been back home by now. I don’t like it when he’s out late. I don’t like the sound of this meeting, either.’
‘He’ll be all right, Mum. Will’s with him, remember. They was going to walk home together.’
‘Yeah, I know. I just don’t like it, that’s all. I wish he was safe home.’
She finally let herself be persuaded up to bed. Ellen sat down again to the mending. A boxful of envelopes sat on the table, a thousand, all neatly addressed in Ellen’s sloping hand. She glanced towards them with hatred, both hoping and dreading that there would be another batch next week. It was the best-paid outwork they had got yet – found through Gerry, who had recommended her as a Millwall Central girl with neat writing – but she loathed the evenings of penpushing after a day of it at school and then homework. By the end of the batch she had writer’s cramp and her eyes were gritty with fatigue. Not that she would have dreamed of complaining. Always in her mind was the knowledge that she was fourteen years old now and should be out earning her living. If she left school and got a job at a factory, they wouldn’t be in quite such a fix now. Guilt gnawed at her when Jack went off at the crack of dawn to his job helping the milkman before going to school, or Daisy came in exhausted from clearing up at the greengrocer’s, bearing the meagre basket of damaged vegetables that were her pay. Her little brother and sister were helping. Sitting each evening and most of the weekend addressing envelopes hardly rated comment.
Her father was late. Automatically she went to look at the clock in the parlour, before remembering that it was no longer there. Along with their best clothes, the spare knives and forks, the ornaments and the mirror, it had gone to the pawnshop. Things were very tight at the moment. If this strike really developed into anything, they would be down to living on the odds and ends that her mother and the children brought in.
‘It could be the best thing to happen to all of us for years,’ Tom had said to them. ‘If this revives the union, we could bring the whole West India to a standstill. We got right on our side. That Reggie Wilkins, he took three days dying. They didn’t ought to treat us like that. We got to make a stand.’
A fund was being set up for the Wilkins. Families with next to nothing in their own pockets gave what they could and kept the widow and her children out of the workhouse. The papers got hold of the story, but reported it in very different ways. ‘Terrible death of docker’ trumpeted the
Herald
. But
The Times
reported ‘Irresponsible strike by dock labourers over incident of carelessness’, and implied that Wilkins had been drunk at the time. In the meantime, valuable cargoes had been lying in ships’ holds for four days and the owners were getting restive. Tom was optimistic about winning. The meeting tonight was to keep up the men’s enthusiasm.