(2) THE FRST APPRENTICES' STRIKE IN THE YARD
Article written in November 2005
In 1950 I was standing at my bench in the Joiners' Shop when I heard a commotion at the far end of the shop. It was hard to make out faces from a distance for the shop was huge. I would say that over a thousand joiners and apprentices worked there.
In the centre of the shop was the woodworking machines with the wood machinists and their apprentices. Another section was the paint shop with the painters and their apprentices. The benches of the joiners were organised in sections with a chargehand in a brown dust coat and bowler hat. We had about twelve joiner chargehands. Over all the sections was a foreman, who wore a suit and bowler hat Over the whole shop floor was a head foreman in a more expensive suit and the usual bowler hat. But over all of them, including the wood machinists and the painters, was the manager wearing an even more stylish suit and a bowler hat.
We made the furniture for the ships, the doors and frames, wooden stairways, mahogany handrails, teak handrails for exterior use, heavy teak doors for the same purpose. There was no rush because the work had to be perfect. When finished, it was closely inspected by the chargehand who made the decision if it should be passed. It was always an anxious moment for us. We were under continual scrutiny. The chargehand's office was made totally of glass so as he could watch out over the shop floor.
The commotion turned out to be maybe a hundred apprentices from the plumbers and sheetmetal shops in the Thompson Works. They were shouting slogans about wanting a pay rise and they told us apprentices to join them. None of us moved. We were too surprised and even fearful. You could be sent home for a month without pay for some misdemeanours. I couldn't imagine being sent home and having to tell my father news like that even though I was eighteen at the time. We weren't called teenagers at the time. That term was unknown then.
We were five-year indentured apprentices until the age of twenty-one and we had to live at home and be subsidised by our fathers, who usually only had a manual worker's wage coming in with maybe other sons and daughters to keep. Starting at fourteen as an office boy and maybe losing that job was losing the apprenticeship as well. Five pounds had to be deposited by our fathers as well at the start of the apprenticeship. To lose the apprenticeship was to lose that money as well. So father was the man who pulled you out of bed in the mornings from the age of fourteen to the age of twenty-one. Nor could you leave the apprenticeship without written permission from your father. He was very unlikely to do that.
The few who did manage to leave joined the colonial police or the army or navy. Some came back on visits and said it was easier than working in the shipyard with your father as sergeant-major, prison warder and general kill-joy.
The wages for young people in the Yard was poor. At fourteen it was sixteen shillings a week (£0.80p). At fifteen nineteen shillings (£0.95p). At sixteen, and the first year of apprenticeship, it was one pound, four shillings and sixpence (£1.22p). Bus fares for me at the time (I lived out in Carryduff) was four shillings and sixpence a week (£0.22p). Father took you along to Spackman's in High Street and picked a suit, shirt and tie for you, for he was doing the paying. When I wore the clothes I felt like a Victorian mourner. I remember my mother screaming when she saw me dressed in what my father thought was modern dress.
The wages crept up year by year of the apprenticeship by a few shillings. Any time lost through illness or other reasons like bad timekeeping had to be made up after the five years were up. If you had three months to make up then you only got fifth year apprenticeship wages of about four pounds for that three months. The wages on completion of the apprenticeshp was six pounds, four shillings and sixpence. (in 1953) If you decided to live on at home the custom was to hand in half your wages to the house.
During the office boy period the timekeepers in each time office we visited would give us a shilling a week but only if we did our work properly. My father would calculate how much I was being given and I would have to hand that into the house and expect nothing in return. It became normal for we office boys to lie and hold back a shilling or two. In the first year of my apprenticeship I was given two shillings a week pocket money. That crept up year by year as well by a shilling or two. In the third year of my apprenticeship I began doing Saturday jobs to earn more money. It was usually an extra ten shillings for the day, renewing someone's doors or garden gates up the Malone Road. I was reluctantly allowed to keep this.
The plumbing and sheetmetal apprentices taunted us for not coming out immediately. They said they would be back the next day. They came back and there must have been a thousand of them this time with the added shipwright, caulker, blacksmith and riveter apprentices. We were impressed and joined them. Some of us jumped on to benches to implore our mates to strike. Those of us who jumped on the benches were added to the strike committee. This was the first apprentice strike ever in the history of Harland and Wolff in Belfast.
Some lads didn't want to strike for religious reasons. The chargehands advised them to go because there were shouts from us of: `Get his coat!' That became the slogan. We left the Joiner's Shop and stormed all the ships lying in the Musgrave Channel and all the wharves and workshops. We even stormed aboard naval ships under repair. One had two naval armed guards but we just brushed them aside and hunted down the apprentices as if they were rats. Then we gathered outside the Main Office and chanted for Sir Frederick Rebbeck to come out: "Come out this very minute ye wee man ye!" He did come out. I had never seen him before. He was small all right, slightly bent man wearing a grey suit and bowler and a large gold pocket watch and chain. He was so small some of the apprentices called out to get him a box to stand on. His reply was that he would box our ears. He said we were no good to him and no good to ourselves and what did we want anyway. I was so furious I went up to him and told him that the overalls I was wearing cost nineteen shillings. What we wanted was a pound a week rise. He started to imitate me saying: "My overalls cost nineteen shillin's, so it did." While I was arguing with him the harbour police arrived and made for me and the rest of the committee gathered around him. Rebbeck, to his credit, shouted to the harbour police in an angry voice to move away. They also seemed to be no good to him and no good to themselves.' I suppose we thought of him after that as a slightly grumpy old granda who would bear no grudges against us. We liked him for daring to come out and face us in person, alone.
Sir Frederick Rebbeck
After he went back to his office we stood watching the Engine Works a few hundred yards down the road. The gates were closed permanently as usual. We knew they would have to open some time to let lorries in or out. One lorry was about to come out and the huge wrought-iron gate on rollers was opened. About five of the apprentices sprinted towards the open gate. The gateman being on his own couldn't shut it quickly enough nor force it against them so he just raised his hands in surrender. We poured into all the workshops, the coppersmith's shop, electrical shops, brass moulder's shops, furnace rooms, with the slogan: "Get your coat on." There were apprentices who resisted but usually the journeymen they were working with advised them to go with us. After that we marched to Blitz Square or Red Square - as that part of the WW2 bombed High Street was known to the Belfast wits of the period - and held a mass meeting. Some apprentices from the Sirocco Works and Mackie's came out in support of us for a few hours.
We were out less than two weeks when H&W announced through one of the newspapers that they agreed to the one pound rise. As our strike committee was anonymous and we made no contact with the shipyard management except briefly with Sir Frederick Rebbeck, whom we presented with our demands, I suppose the announcement had to be made through the media. We did all this without any trade union organisation or support and with no one over eighteen years old.
We went back to work and the whole structure of the apprentice's committee just disappeared as if it had never been. I can't remember anyone discussing the strike after that. I think it was a major event in the life of we teenagers then. We came mostly from strictly disciplined homes during a period when Bing Crosby was in the top ten records and sheet music.
I think the strike was about more than a pound a week. We challenged the shipyard management and we spoke to their head Sir Frederick Rebbeck directly as equals. Normally we would be overawed by such a man. But mostly we also challenged our fathers who were afraid that our apprenticeships would be terminated. Some of us had to suffer being gurned at night and day during that crisis. We had no wages, such as they were, for two weeks, which put a strain on family relationships.
But we knew we were right. Looking back now shipyard life is the great discipline that stays with most of us during our life.