Intergenerational Lessons from the Liverpool Dockers’ Strike: Rebuilding Solidarity in the Port

The CASA bar is located in a nineteenth-century red brick terraced build ing on Hope Street in Liverpool, with a bright red star as its emblem. On first glance, it looks like an ordinary bar, with a menu for food and beer on a signboard at the entrance, and a notice advertising weekly entertainment features (Figure 5.1). However, the CASA (an acronym for the Community Advice Service Association) is no ordinary bar. It is a living museum of the Liverpool Dockers’ Strike (1995–1998), a charity and bar set up by sacked dockworkers after the strike to offer support to sacked dockworkers and their families. Posters, plaques, letters, ban ners, and other mementos of support from the days of the strike cover the walls of the bar. A faded wooden placard from the strike with the phrase ‘One of 500 Sacked Liverpool Dockers—Never Cross a Picket Line’ is mounted on the ceiling above the entrance to the cellar bar (Figure 5.2). The back room has an entire wall covered in plaques, each one from a different supporter during the strike, including sev eral prominent figures. The upstairs offices also include photographs of important labour leaders, letters of support, as well as more recent pam phlets and notices about trade union issues. The whole of the CASA is imbued with the collective memory of the strike, as a ‘site of memory’ (Nora 1989).