ABSTRACT
Unions of dockers, like those of other workers, have often been studied in a rather narrow context: as local organisations, as a part of the national labour movement, or as partners in industrial relations. The outstanding common feature of all the ports was the extreme instability of the dockers' unions. The casual workers were harder to unionise, but more strike-prone than the regulars. The social-democratic strategy seemed the only effective counterweapon, and it was only half-willingly and after long internal struggles that Hamburg dockers embraced this kind of unionism. The establishment of lightermen's union in 1866 opens the record of formal organisation in the port of London. In 1901 Le Havre port unions helped to create a National Federation of Port and Dock Workers. Tidal ports created opportunities for short-term tactics, as the example of Le Havre shows. The dominance of trampships in Rotterdam, for instance, created a need for casual labour that far outweighed the lack of tidal movement.
