Brendan Dempsey
Family Ties
‘I started working on the docks around June of 1963, my father and all my father’s brothers and both on my mother’s side and on my father’s side worked on the docks. They were working men and they worked on the docks all of their life. My mother was born on - in ‘44 Sir John Rogersons Quay, its only across the way here and my father came from Cardiff Lane where is just down where the gasometer used to be and he was born there.’
The Work
‘…well, when I went down the docks as I said, I started in the early 60’s – my first job was – there was no such thing as fork lifters, everything was loose, everything was –timber - timer didn’t come in packages, timber came loose and what I mean by… they were tremendous, they were small ships but tremendous. To see them loaded, the way they were loaded they wouldn’t be one - one piece of space lost, everything was packed, it literally would have been as level as that floor. Those- those floors – that floor you can see, kinda, planks and that’s the way it was on the ships. Tremendous! It was a work of art to see the way those people in Finland would put those ships out. Now these ships were small ships, they were only maybe 5 and 600 ton ships but they would be loaded on the deck right down in to the hatches, and right up on to the deck and right up nearly level with the bridge. In other words - and then they would be all covered with tarpaulin, then they’d have beams come up so as the ship wouldn’t - wouldn’t throw its cargo.’
Button
‘The role of the button was … the button was brought out around 1946… men that were on the docks all of their lives, they had, they had given their life to the docks, it was a way of safe guarding, men’s employment, rather than a man comes back, you’d know maybe who it was… It’s a way of safe guarding those men, that worked there …they more or less would have to be employed first. Union as far as I know the union issued the button and as I said it was a safe guard brought out for that purpose. So that would have been for the men, who were recognized as being kind a regular long term workers… they were registered they didn’t have buttons they were there longer than I was and am they were there and they were casual workers, but they had to as I said, there was always when the button men would be employed, then the casual man from the stand the boss would say, is there any more button men and when he didn’t know that there wasn’t any men there, then he’d start employing then casual men.’
Lever Brothers
‘My mother actually worked in Lever Brothers. She went in at fourteen years of age and got a job in Lever Brothers on her own, went in and asked, she went for interviews and she’d tell us about the jobs. This was in the early 30’s, ‘32’