Spanish Dock Strike 1986 - BM Blob

The Spanish dockers are on strike once more. They last struck in 1930/'81 and were successful in preventing large scale redundancies. This time the dockers are resisting a proposal put forward by the “socialist“ Ministry of Labour which will effectively amount to half of Spain's docks being sold off to maritime multinationals who can meet the cost of the renewal of docklands infrastructure.

As before the dockers activity is centered around their own autonomous organization the Co-ordinadora.

Two of the following texts were taken from the March '86 strike issue of La Estiba (The Docker), the Co-Ordinadora's bulletin. This paper must rank as the most advanced example of its type in the world and the texts reproduced here do show that the Spanish dockers are keenly aware of the difference between the autonomous movement there and the rank 'n' file movement here.

PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest archive, Nottingham.