Striking Liverpool dockers furious as 'Red Tory' Keir Starmer refuses to meet them

Liverpool's 560 dockworkers today began their second week of a 14-day strike after rejecting an 8.3 per cent pay rise from Mersey Docks and Harbor Company, according to them would see them worse

Liverpool dockers begin their second week of wage strikes (

Image: Daily Mirror/Andy Stenning)

A few miles down the Mersey from the Labor Conference in Liverpool, striking dockworkers are furious with their employer and Sir Keir Starmer.

The 560 workers, who today enter the second week of a fortnight's work stoppage, accuse the highly profitable Mersey Docks and Harbor Company of breaking promises and refusing to improve a wage offer that would reduce the standard of living.

And they feel let down by the leader of a Labor party formed to represent workers in Parliament.

"We were hailed as key workers during the Covid pandemic and now the company treats us like peasants because they don't want to give us a wage to match inflation," said the foreman of the ship Steve Saunderson, 34, on the picket line.

The strikers have huge public support in Liverpool, where passing motorists honk their horns and local football heroes Neville Southgate and Jamie Carragher voice their support.

Dockers say the pay rise they have been offered will see them worse off than before (

Picture:

Daily Mirror/Andy Stenning)

Folksinger Jamie Webster performed a concert outside the wharf gates which drew a crowd of 2,000.

Former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, former left-winger John McDonnell and RMT rail union leader Mick Lynch all visited to express their solidarity.

Yet the dockworkers are furious that Starmer refused to travel within a few miles of Labour's annual rally to meet them.

“He should have been here the first day when Labor was created t...