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The Bristow's Helicopter dispute received wide ranging solidarity from other trade unionists. Prominent among the unions involved was the National Union of Seamen. Dave Edmonds interviewed Harry Bygate chief NUS official, North Scotland for Scottish Socialist. DAVE EDMONDS: How did the NUS first take up support for the Bristow pilots? HARRY BYGATE: Well initially we were asked to support them we said yes, the idea at that time being that if we stopped carrying the passengers that Bristow's would normally have carried and stopped the fuel for the helicopters that would have been sufficient. Unfortunately it didn't prove to be the case we stopped our ships and it just wasn't sufficient. Evolving from that we also got in touch with the ITF and asked them if they would put the same embargo on. They agreed, which was the Dutch, the German and Scandinavian ships. But it took them a couple of weeks to become effective in this.
About the 27th of April the decision was taken that this wasn't effective and then we put our blanket of stopping our ships completely to any rig where Bristow's helicopters were running to. continued on Page 6,
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DE: So does that mean that on some rigs they were getting no supplies in? HB: No. One of the problems on the rigs actually is that a rig might be supplied by two or three ships. Two rigs might be supplied by three or four ships. They're not all NUS so others are supplying.
DE: On May 26th there was a mass meeting of aviation workers addressed by Mark Young of BALPA; Clive Jenkins of ASTMS; Les Shorter of the TGWU, chairman of the National Joint Council for Civil Air Transport and James Milne the General Secretary of the STUC. How successful do you think it was?
HB: Well it was successful in getting hold of all the workers. There had been the usual trade union disorganisation - nobody's sure what its all about, nobody's sure what their unions' doing and the other unions are doing. It was very successful in the fact that we got all the workers in the airport, they all understood the situation, what's being done in other parts of the country with the other unions.
DE: How do you find workers on the rigs see the dispute? HB: As a whole I don't think they realise what issues are at stake. They're not interested in doing an awful lot for an individual trade unionist, a pilot, in a different union. There are, however, quite a few out on the rigs who take an active part or at any rate, an active interest in union affairs and have an awful lot of sympathy but I don't think there's yet enough of this sympathy to get concerted action from the rigs. The point I would like to make, as a trade unionist, is that if we had been more successful than we have been up to now in getting the rigs organised this dispute would have been over in a couple of days.