A History of the Liverpool Waterfront, 1850-1890

Book excerpt: A History of the Liverpool Waterfront 1850-1890: The Struggle for Organisation is a comprehensive portrait of labor relations at the port of Liverpool in the second half of the nineteenth century. After a short introductory background to nascent labor organizations from earlier times, it details the history of dockland labor and the persistent efforts of Merseyside workers to achieve union organization. In the times when the waterfront was packed with a 'forest of masts', before steam finally ousted the wind jammer, this book documents the struggles of the workers and the changes that took place; including detailed descriptions of the increased use of mechanization in loading and unloading goods. Based on the experience of Liverpool workers of the marine and waterfront-a high proportion of whom were of Irish descent-this book challenges long established labor history theories of 'New Unionism' and the alleged inability of unskilled laboring classes to organize themselves. It breaks new ground in understanding the way in which workers organized and built self-reliance. Many of these workers united in a common cause whether temporarily, or as we see in some examples, surviving from the mid-nineteenth Century until their absorption into the modern unions in existence today. As well as being a powerful study of labor relations, David Douglass vividly recreates the hustle and bustle of life on the docks in Victorian Liverpool, where at its height eighteen thousand men earned their living in at the dockside