Black & White Weekly, Saturday April 22, 1893
Probably before this issue comes into the hands of our readers, the great labour war which has been raging in Hull with such bitterness will be at an end, and employers and employed will be pretty much where they were before.
Ostensibly the Hull Dockers have been fighting for the Union, and the ship-owners have been fighting for their right to employ whom they will. In reality it was a stand-up fight between capital and labour, each struggling for the control of dock labour in Hull. Had the masters been entirely victorious they would have crushed the Union, as the men would have driven free labour from the port had the victory been theirs. Unfortunately for the Dockers want of funds handicapped them in the struggle, and although they threatened to proclaim a general strike, the idea was never, probably, seriously entertained.
Finding that they were not in a position to dictate their own terms, the men offered to compromise, but the Shipping Federation remained obdurate. Happily the Government, by private negotiations, brought the antagonistic parties together; and on Monday a conference took place in the House of Commons between Mr. Mundella, Mr C. H. Wilson, the ship owner, Messrs. J Havelock Wilson (“the Sailors’ friend”) Sailor and John Burns, labour representatives and several other members, and a basis of agreement was settled. The men admit the right of non-union men to work with them, and recognise the Ship-owners’ labour exchange, while the masters allow the Union’s “right of existence.”
The strike has been conducted with comparative peace and orderliness, although a force of cavalry and infantry was sent to the town, and two gunboats were stationed in the river, for fear of violence. While the men held monster meetings and carried out the elaborate system of pickets and decoy gangs, the ship-owners turned their clerks into Dockers and imported free labourers from London and elsewhere.
Clerks from Messrs. Wilson’s Office loading and unloading the firm’s steamers in the Railway Dock (left) and Mr. J. Havelock Wilson, M.P. from a photograph by Phillip & Wright, Middlesboro’ (above right)
Our special artist gives us a picture of the scene at dinner time in the Emigrant’s Rest, in the Alexandra Dock, which is fitted up as a dining hall for the free labourers. The tables being laid, at a given signal the sliding doors at one end of the hall were opened, and the hungry crowd of some 400 or 500 men rushed in to the feast. Bread and soup was followed by meat and potatoes, and a mug of beer.
Free Labourers at Dinner, Alexandra Dock’s ‘Emmigrants’ Rest’
Meeting of strikers in Corporation Field preparatory to marching through the town
Rich and Lou Duffy-Howard