THE GMB will use the setting of this week’s Labour Party conference to vow to secure justice for the Cammell Laird 37 — the largest group ever jailed for trade union activity in modern British history.
 
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the occupation of the Cammell Laird shipyard in Merseyside. The yard had employed 20,000 workers at its height in the 1940s, but by the early 1980s, this had dwindled to just 2,000 as the Thatcher government pursued a policy of deindustrialisation and the privatisation of British Shipbuilders in 1983.

When a further 800 redundancies were announced in the summer of 1984, the workforce — recognising that the yard now faced an existential threat — took drastic action and occupied an oil rig and blockaded the gangway of the Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Edinburgh.

The occupation was buoyed by support from the local Cammell Laird Occupation Support Group, city council workers and fellow trade unionists, including striking miners.