Britain: An official handbook > 1959

TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
343
Ownership
The ports, in some cases docks only, previously owned by the main-line railway
companies are now under national ownership and are administered by the British
Transport Commission (see pp. 345-8). The Commission owns some 30 per cent
of Britain’s dock accommodation with a total of over half a million feet of quays. A
few of the Commission’s ports are docks developed by former canal undertakings,
such as the Aire and Calder Navigation which developed Goole. The rest are those
formerly owned by the railways. In some cases—e.g., at Southampton and Middles¬
brough—the railways owned the main docks in ports where the statutory authority
was a harbour board. In other cases—e.g., at Grangemouth, Garston and Grimsby—
the port was largely developed by the railway company which was itself the statu¬
tory harbour authority. Some railway-owned ports were, and still are, mainly used
for the railways’ cross-channel services: Folkestone, Harwich, Newhaven, Fish¬
guard, Holyhead, and Heysham are in this category. Among other ports owned by
the Commission are Hull, Swansea, Newport, and Cardiff. The shipping arrivals
and departures at the Commission’s docks, harbours and wharves in 1957 totalled
over 102 million net tons, and the total cargo handled was about 64 million tons.
At the end of 1957 there were 20,000 people employed there.
Other ports are controlled by a public trust on which are represented users of the
port (such as shippers, importers and shipping companies) and other bodies such
as Government Departments and local authorities. Examples are London (con¬
trolled by the Port of London Authority), Liverpool (Mersey Docks and Harbour
Board), Belfast (Belfast Harbour Commissioners) and Glasgow (Clyde Navigation
Trust). The Port of London Authority has 28 members. Ten of the members are
nominated as follows: by the Admiralty (1), the Ministry of Transport and Civil
Aviation (2), the London County Council (4), the Corporation of the City of
London (2), and the Corporation of Trinity House (1). Eighteen of the members
represent various port users: shipowners (8), merchants (8), owners of river craft
(1), and public wharfingers (1). The Authority’s duties include the maintenance
of adequate river channels, the regulation of traffic, the provision and upkeep of
moorings and the licensing of wharves and structures in the area under its control.
A few ports—Bristol is the most important example—are owned by the town or
city council and controlled entirely by a committee of the council.
Finally, there are about 100 ports which are privately owned. Manchester is the
only major port so owned—by the Manchester Ship Canal Company—and here
the Manchester City Council exercises considerable control by appointing 11 of the
Company’s 21 directors.
The powers and responsibilities of the port authorities are, in the main, set down
in private Acts of Parliament which relate specifically to the ports concerned.
Labour
There are about 150,000 people employed in the operation of British ports. Just
under half of these are administrative, clerical and technical staff, and pilots, lighter¬
men and customs officials. Over half are the dock workers (formerly and still
popularly called ‘dockers’) who do the physical work of handling cargo.
Shipping arrivals and departures do not all conform to a regular schedule, with
the result that there is sometimes too much work for the dock workers available,
sometimes too little. Dock labour was therefore largely casual labour until 1941,
when war-time schemes were introduced to control the port registers of employers
and workers. The war-time schemes were superseded in 1947 by a permanent
scheme administered by the National Dock Labour Board. Workers on these registers
now receive a guaranteed minimum wage even when there is not enough work for
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