The dockers' pay-off
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The Government is buying itself out of trouble by putting up £35m to assist the Port of London Authority to increase severance pay to quieten the militant dockers.
This is Bill Rodgers's answer to the defeat of his dock work scheme in the Commons last week and it just will not do. London today means Southampton, Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle and every other port in Britain tomorrow.
The dockers were the architects of their own fate. They refused to move with the times. Containerisation, the real issue of their problem, arrived on the scene 14 years ago. It is a quicker, cheaper and more secure method of transport than general cargo.
The dockers did not accept it at first and when they did they made outrageous claims to handle all sea-bound traffic within a specified corridor of all rivers. The distance varied from five miles to one mile.
Road transport operators and drivers told the dockers where to go but they were the only ones who did so. The TGWU, who have both docks and roads members, kept unusually and uncharacteristically quiet. So did the Government until last Monday when they offered £.35m of the taxpayers' money and typically blamed the PLA for the state of affairs.