Dockers, wharfies, longshoremen. Dockworkers go by many names around the world. Perhaps we don't show them enough appreciation. ChatGPT tells me that “today, longshoremen remain essential to the global supply chain. With an estimated 90% of the world's goods transported by sea, dockworkers are responsible for handling trillions of dollars' worth of cargo annually.”
In other words, without dockworkers, global supply chains would break up. The effects would be worse than those of even the worst tariff war.
This no doubt accounts for the many references to dockworkers in For A New World.
Frank Buchman saw industry as a vital area for his work. The Forgotten Factor, a play by Alan Thornhill about industrial relations, was staged widely around the world and seen by a million people. The docks were and remain clearly a key factor in enabling industry to function smoothly.
MRA/IofC's involvement with dockworkers goes back to at least the late 1940s. In a 1950 speech, Buchman quotes from a British dock leader, “one of the men responsible at the time of the big London dock strike of last summer”, who had helped settle a dispute through following MRA's principles. (See Remaking the World, p156)
Jim Beggs was an Australian wharfie, now in his mid-90s. He was known on the Melbourne docks as “Daylight Saving” – because he “put the clock back”, an act of restitution after his encounter with MRA. “Its hard to steal something from the docks,” he said, “but it's twice as hard to take it back.”
To begin with, Beggs was not interested in the disputes which were taking place in the port. “As a young wharfie l had no interest in my union. l never went to meetings. lf there was a dispute l went duck-shooting.” But it turned out that a new neighbour, Tom Uren, was the boss of a stevedoring company in the docks. Over time, Uren, Beggs and their wives became close friends. Beggs was struck by the Uren's attitude. When Uren said that people were more priority than profits, Beggs realised that he was different from the average port employer. He had actually resigned from a well-paid job on a matter of principle. Beggs began to feel he ought to pull his weight on the union side. He apologised to another wharfie for his anti-Catholic prejudice and the two men began to work together as part of a group who backed a man called Charlie Fitzgibbon to be General Secretary of what was then known as the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia.
Beggs says, “Charlie's election brought the union from the brink of anarchy back to the centre of the road. Charlie proved that you could improve working conditions and wages without industrial action. Every two-year contract was negotiated without an hour of work lost. And that in a union recently considered as one of the most indisciplined groups of workers in the country.” Beggs himself went on to have a major role in the trade union movement. For the full story see this article.
Eric Turpin was an Irish man who worked as a volunteer with MRA/IofC for most of his adult life, much of it spent alongside dock-workers. Turpin's biographer, David Howden Hume, recounts some colourful stories.
Turpin had got to know the mainly Irish dock-workers in Manhatten. But he wanted to meet the dockers of Brooklyn, who were mostly Italian. He was told that he'd need to get permission from Tony Anastasia – Tough Tony as he was called. “The Anastasia family was a large one. One brother, Umberto, was head of 'Murder Incorporated', a Mafia business for profit,” says Turpin. Undeterred, Turpin phoned Tony and told him that he and a friend connected with Moral Re-Armament would like to meet him. “I think he agreed to meet us because he was so surprised at the prospect of meeting with anyone connected with anything moral.” Soon afterwards, Turpin arranged for a group of Brazilian dockers, who were visiting the US, to meet Tony and some of his associates. One was Fred Small, a Black longshoreman and union official, who was anything but small.
Small was the son of a poor preacher and, after an unpromising beginning which included a spell in prison, he got a job in the Brooklyn Docks, where he eventually became a foreman. Turpin writes, “Fred drove a cream-coloured Chrysler, which he loved: he said it was his home. If we wanted to meet with Fred, we would keep our eyes fixed on the Chrysler and eventually he would turn up.” Small was the organiser of all the Blacks in the docks and was National Vice-President of the short-lived Negro-American Labour Council. “I think that Tony warned the Mafia to have nothing more to do with MRA, because he later told Fred not to see us any more: however Fred paid no attention,” says Turpin. Indeed Small and Turpin went on to work together, including in Ireland, where they had a nerve-jangling encounter with the leadership of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
For a graphic account of how a new spirit helped resolve a chaotic situation in the Brazilian port of Rio de Janeiro, see the film Men of Brazil. The film, acted by the protagonists themselves, is an example of how human relations are often the key to bringing about urgently needed change, in the docks and elsewhere.
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