Uncle Bill and The General Strike (page3)

As Reg drove like a lunatic directly at the picket, Bill would whack the fingers of any man who jumped on the car running boards to hang on. Essentially he would stand in the back of the car, leaning on the fish boxes, flailing the wrench from side to side until the danger had passed. The real problem was, that they became known and expected, so sometimes a sizeable crowd would attempt to stop them, so Reg would need to be very quick at finding shortcuts to avoid the picket.

Although ‘The General Strike’ ended after only a few days, the miners did not return to work until August, accepting lower wages and longer hours. Trade union membership declined after the strike. Nevertheless, it provided the excuse for retaliatory measures against trades unions and led to the passage of the 1927 Trade Disputes Act, which restricted the ability of workers to strike. As for the Elliott Fish & Chips, the fish was eventually delivered again regularly by rail, and things returned to normal.

As a footnote, when I was a boy, I didn’t have a paper round, I worked instead for Mr. Nash who was the Kemsing fishmonger. In school holidays, I used to have to be up at 4.30 in the morning, to travel up to London with Mr. Nash in his Ford Van. We would park in Eastcheap, and walk down the very steep hill to the market.

Billingsgate Fish Market 2005

After the fish was haggled over and a price was agreed, it was placed into boxes of two stones apiece, about 12 kilos. There was no mechanical way of transporting the fish from the market to the waiting vans in East Cheap, and so a porter was hired for the task The fish porters were the strongest men I have ever met, and would carry many boxes of fish on their heads, centred on a tarred cork hat.

A Fish Porter c 1950

Here’s an account from Ted Lewis, a fish porter for 50 years:-

"It was like in the docks, it was a family thing. Nearly everyone who worked there belonged to a family who had always been in the market".

Ted's job was to carry fresh fish from delivery lorries into the market, and to vans waiting to take orders to customers. Porters wore sturdy hats with flat tops so that they could carry heavy crates of fish on their heads. This was the easiest way to carry heavy, bulky loads up the narrow steep hill. The hats had wide brims so that the smelly fish slush, draining out of the boxes, would not run down the porter’s cheeks!

A porter with a single box- They often carried many!

Some of the porters had barrows, and could place a mountain of boxes on them and drag them up the hill to Cheap Street.

Billingsgate Barrows c1960

The barrows had a chain stretched between the handles, so that, as the barrow was pulled up the very steep hill, the chain would tighten across the porters waist. If his hands slipped on the handles, his body would take up the strain.