Hollywood strike action brings back memories

Jan 23 2008 by Sue Scott, Evening Gazette

NOW I'm going to be very partisan.

As an old shop steward, I always enjoyed strikes. And the news that the Golden Globes Hollywood fest has been cancelled as a result of a strike by film writers cheered me up no end.

For a start, unlike the normal run of British strikes, the Hollywood dispute is - in the old sense of the word - a very gay affair indeed. Forget the usual dour image of a rain soaked picket line outside rusting factory gates.

This is California. The Hollywood picket lines are being respected by all the celebs. Tom Hanks and Keira Knightley are there with the best of them, and showing solidarity is the motto of the day for the likes of George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cate Blanchett and Johnny Depp.

This is all a lot different to what I recall. For a start the picket lines have no braziers, bobble hats and donkey jackets. Instead it's West Coast sunshine, taffeta dresses and tuxedos.

It all brings back memories. But Britain has had strikes with verve and panache too. For some reason they always seemed to involve bus workers.

I remember one strike in Hull, where the busmen and women agreed to strike on one particular midday. But there was no steady dribble of late morning double-deckers back to the depot - instead, on the stroke of 12, buses came to a grinding halt across the whole of the city, in the middle of roads, at bus stops and one - reputedly - on the middle of the Humber Bridge.

But this was capped by another bus protest in Liverpool at a time when I was working there. In this one the conductors continued to work normally - but they all collectively 'forgot' to take their ticket machines with them. Within a hour or so, word got round and I can remember what looked like every street urchin in the city enjoying unlimited free rides.

Now I have to say that my experiences weren't so glamorous. Indeed, a year or so back, I was mortified to see one of this paper's 'Remember When' pictures showing a picket line outside a steelworks gate with your recumbent Park Bencher seemingly fast asleep by a warm brazier. Thankfully I was tucked up well away to the rear of the picture!

So congratulations to the Hollywood scriptwriters downing tools - or in their case laptops and expenses forms - in protest against job conditions. It only makes me sad that those of us who did the same thing about sackings in the less sexy world of heavy industry didn't have the same media savvy - that might just have altered the outcome.

- Park Bencher