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HULL C,S.%. SPONSORS A MBETING FOR SEAMEN from Colin Stoneman Seamen presented their case to the Labour movement at a meeting on May 31st in the Hull Dockers' Club, about a hundred people being present, The follow= ing report appeared in the Hull Daily Mail the next day, flanked by three photographs: "Telegrams have been sent from Hull to the Prime Minister and the TUG stating that the seamen's claim is justified. This move came last night at a public meeting at the Stevedorest and Dockers! Club, Postangate, Hull, attended by some 200 -people.e Organised by the Hull Centre for Socialist Education, the meeting heard the seamen's case put by members of the National Union of Seamen, Mr, Gordon Norris, a member of the Victoria and Albert Dock strike committee, London, who is also National Maritime Board negotiator, said the shipowners would pay up if the Government told them to do so, "The incomes policy was being used to shield the shipowners, he claimed, The Government should tell them to meet the seamen's claims out of the profits which the owners had amassed, Mr. Norris said the seamen's strike was the most important dispute the country had faced since the 1926 General Strike, 'The seamen have been waiting for this a long time, and have responded to it in no uncertain terms, The seamen today are more united than at any other time in the history of the movement.' One union after another had pledged support to the NUS and the biggest trouble with the dockers was trying to persuade them to stay at woek. 'They would come out if we asked them,!' he claimed. 'We must go forward to victory. We cannot lose, We need nothing else but the unity of our members to beat the owners,.! "Mr. Norris said there was much more at stake in the dispute than the seamen themselves. The whole British trade union and British working class movement were at stake. ‘'We want a share in the contribution which we are making for the shipowners in big profits,' he said." The chairman was John Bumphrey (NUVB) and tha chairman of the strike committee in Hull, Charlie Hodgkin, was also on the platform. The other main speaker, John Prescott, a seaman, now at Hull University, was the Labour candidate at the last election in Southport. He described how the British Merchant Marine has been declining during the last century through lack of interest and initiative of the owners, profits being invested in other industries. Whereas shipowners in other countries had been operating "container ship" for many years, British shipowners appear to have only just heard of them, being interested only in their "licence to print money." He also defended a "political" approach to the strike, emphasising that seamen did not choose this ground originally, but that rather it was the Government who in siding with the employers under cover of the incomes policy, had tried to present the strike as the "seamen against the nation." There were several speakers from the floor, both seamen and other trade unionists, and a collection for the seamen was moved from the floor. This realised five pounds, with more promised from various sources. Many speakers pledged support for the seamen, without mentioning any practical proposals, and this stimulated Mike Kidron to propose that mass meetings of trade unionists be held to affirm solidarity with the seamen and work out practical proposals to help in various different cirmcumstances.