Cammell Laird Workers Imprisoned in 1984

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of a public inquiry into Cammell Laird workers imprisoned in 1984.

I declare at the outset that I am a member of the GMB trade union. I note the unfortunate absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), who has campaigned on this topic consistently since his election to the House, and whose brother was one of the 37. He had hoped to take part in this debate, but unfortunately he has tested positive for covid and therefore cannot be here.

In October 1984, 37 trade unionists who had fought to stop the closure of the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead ended their occupation of a gas rig in the shipyard and were promptly arrested and locked up in Walton jail, Merseyside’s maximum security prison. Their supposed crime was to have been found in breach of a contempt of court hearing following an earlier judicial hearing; as they had been sacked, they were guilty of trespassing.

No other industrial action resulted in so many men being sent to prison. The prison sentence of 30 days was grossly unfair. By the time they were released, the 37 had been sacked. They lost redundancy pay, and those entitled to pension payments lost those too. Officials from GMB believe that one of the men may have lost out on £120,000 or more.

The men were locked up alongside murderers and criminals. They were blacklisted and struggled to find work afterwards. In a democracy, belonging to a trade union and taking industrial action should not lead to the risk of imprisonment. Trade unionists in 1984—and indeed those of us who are trade unionists now—are not above the law, but the Cammell Laird 37 were part of an official national dispute, and they enabled essential maintenance to take place on the destroyer being built at the time. They had impressive records of employment service and were clearly patriotic. The decision to imprison them was completely disproportionate.

There have been many attempts to highlight the injustice of what happened to the 37. They and their families, supported by their trade union, GMB, have campaigned for almost 40 years for this injustice to be made right.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, and I apologise for not being able to stay for all of it. As he said, my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) has campaigned tirelessly on this issue. He tabled an early-day motion in 2021, in which he highlighted, among other things, the immense suffering and economic hardship that the imprisoned workers endured as a result of their month-long detention, and the blacklisting and loss of redundancy and pension rights that followed that imprisonment. Does my hon. Friend agree that any public inquiry should fully take into account such practices?

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[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She and my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead are two of the many MPs who have already raised the case of the 37.

Strikingly, in response to one of the questions tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead in 2021, the then Justice Minister, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), argued that if there were concerns about the imprisonment of the 37, the case should be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The problem with that answer is that the men were sent to prison for contempt of court—a civil matter. As I understand it, under sections 9 to 12B of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, which lists the type of cases the Criminal Cases Review Commission has the power to review, there is no mention of decisions of the High Court to commit someone to prison for contempt of court.

Either a public inquiry is needed to review the treatment of the 37—that is the purpose of this debate—or the case should be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, with all the investigative powers it has at its disposal. If so, the law will need to be changed to bring contempt cases resulting in prison within scope, because the Cammell Laird 37 will have little chance of justice until one or other of those options happens.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate and, with the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), who is absent, for his fight for justice. Does he agree that these miscarriages of justice, which we can simply look at historically, are for those men and their families life-changing and altering? For them to understand that the lessons learned from their story can result in legislative changes can provide closure for families that went through it and provide protection for other families in future.

[Gareth Thomas]

I very much agree with that point; I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support for the case that others and I will make.

In the latter part of 1984, across Britain’s industrial heartlands at the time, huge numbers of jobs in nationalised industries, including steel and coal, were axed by Margaret Thatcher’s Government, with a casual disregard for what would come next for those made redundant and their devastated communities. In shipbuilding alone, a hugely important source of jobs across the UK at the time, British Shipbuilders went from employing 62,000 workers in 1982 to just 5,000 five years later.

It is clear, from papers released by the National Archives and from Margaret Thatcher’s private papers, that Ministers were determined to privatise the building of warships, reduce the number of shipbuilding yards and sell off the remainder of the yards. Those records confirm a central belief of the 37 when they went on strike, that Ministers wanted to close Cammell Laird. They confirm that Norman Tebbit, then Secretary of State, and Norman Lamont, then Minister of State in the Department for Trade and Industry, wanted to close Cammell Laird, potentially as early as the end of the year, when the two ships then being built were expected to be completed.

We know that, because what emerges from these relatively recently declassified records of the time, is how Cammell Laird’s future became the centrepiece of a fierce Whitehall battle between the majority of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, hellbent on privatisation at any cost, and a far smaller group worried about the future of Merseyside if Cammell Laird closed. At the time, Cammell Laird was one of Britain’s most important shipyards. In existence for more than 150 years, it was a byword for engineering and shipbuilding skill of the highest order.

Warships built at Cammell Laird, such as Ark Royal, helped to protect our shores during two world wars, while other ships built there delivered huge wealth from across the globe to Britain’s shores. The 37 had helped build ships crucial to our efforts to win back the Falklands and later to take on Saddam Hussein. Short of active military service, there surely are not many more patriotic things one can do for one’s country than help build the means to defend it.

Word began to leak out in the spring and early summer of 1984 that Cammell Laird might be at risk of closure. Ministers at the time in the House of Commons denied that any major shipyard closures were being contemplated.

“I know of no such proposal.”—[Official Report, 27 June 1984; Vol. 62, c. 1095.]

So said Norman Lamont, then Minister of State at the Department for Trade and Industry. That was not quite the full picture. The Ministry of Defence had tendered for contracts to build two Type 42 destroyers in late 1983. Cammell Laird’s bid had met the quality threshold and apparently offered the best price. Over the course of nine months, from April 1984 to January 1985, Norman Tebbit successfully persuaded Margaret Thatcher and the rest of her Cabinet to delay Cammell Laird being awarded a contract to build at least one of the planned new Royal Navy destroyers.

The then Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Heseltine, recognising the profound economic and social consequences for Merseyside if Cammell Laird were to close, wanted to place orders for one, possibly two, Royal Navy Type 22 frigates with Cammell Laird, which would have secured the yard’s immediate future, and prevented even more job losses. The records released by the National Archives and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation detail how Norman Tebbit and the Department for Trade and Industry strongly objected, arguing, according to papers at the time now in the National Archives:

“If Cammell Laird did remain open, overcapacity would remain in shipbuilding with gratuitous risk to the successful privatisation.”

Commitments had been made that Cammell Laird would be able to bid and would have “a strong case” for building Type 22 frigates, as far as back as December 1982, by the then Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott, in this House. In April 1984, Michael Heseltine, then Secretary of State for Defence, underlined the significance of that commitment, and the impact on Merseyside if that commitment were not honoured and Cammell Laird closed. He particularly underlined the fact that Cammell Laird had won the MOD’s tendering process.

When British Shipbuilders published accounts in July 1984 for the previous year, it noted that Cammell Laird’s warship-building operations were still profitable, making some £3.22 million in surplus. None the less, Norman Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher and a series of Cabinet allies eventually forced the re-tender of the contracts to build these warships, delaying for almost a year the award of a warship-building contract to Cammell Laird. The papers also reveal how Norman Tebbit wanted to spin the decision, to put the blame and responsibility for the closure of Cammell Laird first on the British Shipbuilders Board and crucially, too, on the workforce, whose growing concern about their future they comment on—although they describe that as union militancy and worsening industrial relations.

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend and congratulate him on securing this important debate. He is making an important contribution around the thrust of Government direction in policy terms in relation to shipyards at this point of time. Does he agree with me that the systematic reduction of the workforce at Cammell Laird from 5,500 in 1977 down to 3,300 in October 1983 and a reduction of another 1,000 in the 12 months thereafter—taking into account the period following the dispute—points to that attempt to undermine British shipbuilding? Is that not why we need this inquiry? Given the fact that, sadly, several of those who were arrested have passed away in the years in between, does that not add to the urgency of the inquiry at this stage?

[Gareth Thomas]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that there is an urgency to this case. I welcome his support for the points that I am trying to make.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is explaining powerfully that justice delayed is justice denied. We have members of the Cammell Laird 37 with us today in the Public Gallery. Is it not important for anyone watching or listening today that we have justice? It is about time. All the documents should be made public as soon as possible.

[Gareth Thomas]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for her support for this debate. I absolutely agree with her concluding point, which I want to come on to in a little bit.

On balance, it is difficult not to conclude from the papers I have read that a significant group of Ministers in 1984 were so determined to drive through the complete privatisation of British shipbuilders, regardless of the wider economic and social consequences, that they decided that to achieve this, Cammell Laird had to close, and that any employee or union resistance had to be resolutely confronted.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

When I was an engineering apprentice in the late 1960s in Liverpool, it was abundantly clear to anyone working in engineering that Cammell Laird was important not only for the reasons stated by my hon. Friend, but also for training engineers, who then went off into other areas of the industry. The case that he is making and the evidence he has referred to are important. He has highlighted two options on how to proceed, but if those are not feasible, would something similar to the Hillsborough inquiry carried out by Bishop James Jones, where all the evidence could be properly reviewed and perhaps point in a different direction, be a potential third option? Perhaps the Minister might consider that in his response.

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[Gareth Thomas]

I am grateful for that intervention by my right hon. Friend, who knows the yard, its environs and its significance much better than I do. His point about a potential third option is very important. Crucially, and as I will come on to, it requires such a third option for full access to the various papers that are still available that relate to the closure.

I turn to the court action in 1984. Not knowing any of the Whitehall battle that was going on, the workforce at Cammell Laird had seen their numbers reducing steadily—the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) made—through various waves of redundancies, so not surprisingly they took the decision to go on strike from the end of June 1984. Fearing that British Shipbuilders might move the two ships that the yard was working on, so that they could be completed at other yards, several men occupied the gas rig from June 1984.

The only court record that I could find shows that those occupying the rig and picketing the destroyer that was being built were sacked on 23 August 1984. Just days later, in early September 1984, British Shipbuilders was able to begin court action to accuse the men of trespassing and to require them to leave the rig and stop their peaceful picket.

I gently suggest that it is challenging to believe that the sackings and the court action were not directly related. The men, believing—rightly, we now know—that stopping their occupation would make it easier for the yard to close, refused to leave the gas rig, as required by the injunction. British Shipbuilders then went back to court and it appears that the company successfully asked Mr Justice Glidewell on 13 September 1984 to order that the men be arrested and sent to prison for contempt of court, because they had ignored his earlier court order.

The 37 men only got any sort of legal representation, and only then from the Official Solicitor, when the case was appealed at the High Court on 10 October 1984, but the prison instruction was confirmed. The key judges seem to have made little effort to understand the position of the 37. Justice Glidewell, in insisting on prison if the occupation did not end, made a point of suggesting that national security was somehow at risk. There was no one present to challenge that narrative: the men could not turn up without ending their action; and they certainly did not have the expensive lawyers that British Shipbuilders would have been able to call on to put their case.

Lord Lawton, who was the senior judge when the case went to the High Court, had been a member of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, had visited Hitler in the 1930s and had been selected to run for Parliament. He does not seem to have considered whether a 30-day prison sentence was proportionate. Given that the occupation of the yard had ended when water supplies ran out and that the men had already been in prison for 10 days by the time that he considered their case, it is even more extraordinary that they were required to complete their full sentence.

There were other contempt cases at the time in other industries, but none of them resulted in prison for those involved who were found in contempt, even where, as with the Cammell Laird 37, they did not co-operate with the judicial authorities. Most striking of all is the case of Arthur Scargill and the executive of the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984-85 miners’ strike. They, too, were found in contempt of court, yet never went to prison.

There are many instances of unions being fined during this period. However, despite considerable work by the House of Commons Library, to whose researchers I am very grateful, I can find no record of any other group of striking workers being sent to prison for contempt, or indeed any other large group of workers who were sent to prison at all because of a national dispute, except the Shrewsbury 24, whose convictions were rightly overturned recently by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

So why were the Cammell Laird 37 imprisoned and treated so badly? They had no legal representation of their own; they could not afford the barristers and solicitors who were necessary for them to have a chance of avoiding jail; the Official Solicitor took up their case at appeal, but by then it was too late; and a further appeal to the House of Lords could have happened, but did not.

So who were the 37? Billy Albertina, Eddie Albertina, Francis Albertina, Jimmy Albertina, John Albertina, Jimmy Barton, Christopher Bilsborough, John Brady, Michael Byrne, Thomas Cassidy, Thomas Culshaw, John Dooley, Lol Duffy, Colin Early, Nicholas Fenian, Joe Flynn, Andrew Frazer, Barry Golding, Paul Hennessey, Edward Kenny, Paul Little, Eddie Marnell, Jimmy McCarthy, Anthony McGarry, Philip McKeown, Michael Mooney, Aiden Morley, Sam Morley, Alan Prior, Francis Roach, Stephen Smith, Christopher Thompson, Tommy Webb, Tommy Wilson, Chris Whitley, George Whittaker, and John Wright.

They were, of course, painted as militants, a line that the right does rather like to use a lot. The politics and tactics of the 37 may not have been to everyone’s taste, but their pride in the job they did and their respect for the role that the ships they were building were set to play were never mentioned in court, or in much of the media coverage at the time. Even while they were picketing the destroyer, they were allowing other workers on to carry out essential maintenance, with the leaders of the Cammell Laird 37 intervening to stop others from occupying or going on to the destroyer.

These were working-class men—hard-working, some very skilled. They were not schooled in the law or in high politics, but there is surely something very honest in wanting to defend your community, and, as I understand it, the Cammell Laird yard was certainly fundamental to the economic and social fabric of the Wirral and wider Merseyside community. The men did not stop the eventual closure of the yard, but their actions in helping to publicise what the loss of the yard would mean certainly delayed its closure. Eventually, one of the contracts to build the Type 42 destroyer was finally given to Cammell Laird, saving many jobs for a while longer.

Very few people want to go on strike—a truth that very few Conservatives have been willing to acknowledge down the years—but it is a fundamental right that should be protected. Of course, what links the case of the Cammell Laird 37 to today is that the Conservative party is still trying to criminalise those who want to push for better jobs, a decent living and dignity in their employment. The desperate Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill that Ministers are pushing in an attempt to divert attention from a miserable record of economic mismanagement mirrors the efforts of Ministers back in 1984 to try to avoid public responsibility for the consequences of axing huge numbers of jobs across our industrial heartlands.

The Cammell Laird 37 were brave men. They faced the full wrath of the judicial, media and political opinion of the time; they had the chance to say sorry in court for occupying the yard—in legal language, to purge their contempt—but that would have been apologising for fighting to stop the yard’s closure and save their community. Not one of the 37 did so, even when the mother of some of the men died. Others in the group encouraged those men to say sorry, so that they could leave prison to grieve and say longer goodbyes, but they would not: they were determined to stay, side by side with the others. They made a point of going back to prison after the funeral to show their support and solidarity. They went in together, and they came out together.

The 37 have campaigned with, and through, the GMB to try to find out the full picture as to why they were sent to prison, with a film, a book, and rallies and meetings across the country down the years. They have searched for all sorts of records and made numerous freedom of information requests. Police records from the time, Walton jail records, and full records of the involvement of the official solicitor or Attorney General do not appear to be publicly available; what we can, I think, definitively say is that throughout 1984, decisions about the future of Cammell Laird were being taken at the very highest level of Government. The possible role of government —in its widest sense—in the decisions that led to those men being imprisoned and losing so much should be explored by those whose powers allow full and complete access to any remaining records. The proportionality of sending the men to prison at all, and of keeping them there once the occupation had ended, also merits review.

In the end, this is about 37 men who were sent to prison when no other comparable national dispute, at the time or since, saw a similar outcome. As such, I hope the House will be sympathetic to the case for a public inquiry, a Hillsborough-style inquiry or, indeed, a review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

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[Gareth Thomas]

I am grateful, Sir Christopher, for the opportunity to make a short winding-up speech. I am very grateful to hon. Members who have attended the debate, including my hon. Friends the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth), my hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) and for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). I am grateful for their support and knowledge.

I am also grateful for the Front-Bench speeches. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) was clear in his support for the release of documents. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for reiterating our party’s commitment to review this issue in Government and ensure the release of all documents.

I am grateful to the Minister for offering to look at two possible legal remedies. I will certainly write to him. I welcome his acknowledgement of the impact that imprisonment had on the 37.

I take the opportunity again to praise the GMB union for its tenacity in supporting the 37—in particular, Eddie Marnell and the others who have continued to campaign consistently on this. This is the only remaining case of trade unionists being sent to prison. It was wrong then, it is wrong now and we need some sort of inquiry to put it right.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential merits of a public inquiry into Cammell Laird workers imprisoned in 1984.