We Built the Titanic, and We Can Do It Again! - Belfast Workers Seize Bankrupt Shipyard - by Lauren Kaori Gurley - 14 Aug 2019
Workers Seize the Shipyard That Built the Titanic, Plan to Make Renewable Energy There
The
closure of the last shipyard in Belfast would end centuries of ship
building in the city. A group of workers are demanding the U.K.
nationalize the yards.
Late
last month, 130 ship builders, steel workers, welders, and riveters
seized control of the storied Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic in
1909. More than two weeks later, they're still there, and say they
won't be leaving until the docks are nationalized and are used to
produce renewable energy infrastructure.
The docks had moved to
shut down after their troubled Norwegian parent company, Dolphin
Drilling, failed to find a buyer, but militant workers have refused to
relinquish the site, including its two towering yellow cranes, known as
Sampson and Goliath—landmarks that dominate the Belfast skyline.
The
closure of the shipyard, once an emblem of Britain’s industrial power
with over 30,000 workers, would mark the end of centuries of
shipbuilding in the city. But workers from Harland & Wolff are
demanding that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson nationalize the
shipyards and create new jobs in renewable energy there.
“I was
there yesterday. These workers are going to sit there until they get a
result,” a spokesperson for Unite, which represents Harland & Woolf
workers, told Motherboard. “There’s massive potential in wind turbines
and tidal energy. They’re saying they could create thousands of jobs,
and that we need a just transition to renewable energy.”
Some
activists involved in the occupation have cited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and the Green New Deal as their inspiration. In recent years, the
workers at Harland & Wolff have built parts for wind turbines. They
argue that renewable energy jobs would serve not only as a sustainable
solution, but also a practical one because of their skill set.
Image: Unite the Union
The
steelworkers—now in their 17th day of protest—have blocked insolvency
practitioners, known in the United Kingdom as “administrators,” from
entering the site, with around 20 to 30 workers occupying around the
clock. “No one moves onto that site or off that site unless the workers
who are running that site agree to it,” a union official told the media. “No administrator will drive into that workplace unless the gate is opened by workers.”
This
week, the Scottish government announced that it “ready and willing” to
nationalize a shipyard near Glasgow where 350 jobs are at risk. This
could bode well for the Harland & Wolff workers in Belfast. Dolphin
Drilling did not respond to a request for comment.
Gerry
Carroll, an outspoken member of Northern Ireland’s parliament from
Ireland’s socialist party, People Before Profits, has teamed up with
local unions to call for green energy jobs at Harland & Wolff.
Carroll says the Belfast docks have a long history of labor strikes and
worker purges, dating back to the 1910s and into the 1990s, during the
Northern Ireland Conflict. “Catholics have been forced out of jobs...
There’s a poisonous history of anti-communism,” Carroll told
Motherboard. “We fully support the workers and their occupation and
fight."
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