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The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

16 August 2007

I was intrigued to read two articles in last week’s Dover Express in which the Tories’ newly selected Parliamentary Candidate visited Dover to “outline his vision” for our port – and his vision is that the Port of Dover should not be privatised.

I see that Expressman has labelled Mr Elphicke as the “Lawyer from London” but wherever he comes from he ought to know that local people have been opposing Tory plans to sell off our port ever since Margaret Thatcher privatised Sealink Ferries by selling it for song to Sea Containers and they know a thing or two about the subject.

My memories of those days are fresh because I was sailing with Sealink at the time and representing my seagoing colleagues in the very difficult trade union negotiations which came in the aftermath of the sale when the new owners immediately attempted to increase duty hours, cut crew sizes and undermine our conditions of service.

The Tories then set about privatising all of our public utilities including the incompetent sale of our rail system which even the Conservatives now admit was a monumental botch up. But they leaned no lessons from their mistakes and soon afterwards they came for the ports – not failing ports, not subsidised ports but well run successful Trust Ports like Dover.

The Conservative Government couldn’t understand why Dover and the other Trust Ports were not queuing up to be sold off so they forced through Parliament the Ports Act which gave the Secretary of State the power to compel their privatisation and allowed the Government to take half of all the proceeds – nice work if you can get it !

But they didn’t get it because from 1995 and onwards our local Labour Party joined up with our friends in the port and on the ferries and the wider trade union movement and fought a ferocious campaign of opposition to the sell-off of Dover. I invited an army of Labour Front Benches to the port to help our cause, we enlisted Dame Vera Lynn to sing ‘Blue Birds over the White Cliffs of Dover’ – in Parliament Square and through the good offices of the then Speaker of the Cinque Ports – Cllr Jimmy Hood, we even got some careful words of encouragement from the Lord Warden – the late Queen Mother.

It was predictable that the Tories paid little heed to the voices of the people of Dover and they were determined to force a compulsive privatisation on us – but on May 1st 1997 Dover’s voice was heard loud and clear when the electorate voted out Major’s discredited Government and Labour enjoyed a landslide General Election victory. The threat of privatisation was passed – or so we thought.

In the run-up to the 2005 election the Tories’ Shadow Transport Minister stood up in the Churchill Hotel to publicly declare that if the Conservatives were elected they would sell off the Port of Dover, and the rest is history – until Mr Elphicke kindly shared with us his new vision for our port.