Why not have a Congress of our own

The campaigns to obtain
proper compensation

for industrial injuries... and
adequate safeguards

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for seamen

THE 1880 Employers Liability Act, which was of
particular concern to miners and railwaymen, only
went part of the way advocated by the T.U.C. It
gave the worker a general legal claim for damages
arising out of injury or accident at work: but
the employer was still able to evade responsi-
bility if the injury was caused by a worker “‘in
common employment” with the victim. Only much
later, in 1897, did the Government completely
accept that compensation’ of the victim or his
dependants for industrial accident or injury must
be met by industry, no matter how the accident had

been caused. Even then, seamen were excluded
from this protection.

Meanwhile, during the 1870s,.the seamen gained

some benefit from the Merchant Shipping Act of

1876, sponsored by Samuel Plimsoll, whose
“Plimsoll Line’ was designed to protect them from
the hazards of over-loaded vessels. But. though
copies of Plimsoll’s book. ‘“‘Our. Seamen’’, were
passed round the Trades Union Congress of 1873,
little was done to create a national seamen’s union
until 1887 when the National Amalgamated Sailors
and Firemen’s Union was formed.

Samuel Plimsoll, Liberal M.P., address;
his crusade for safety at sea. ‘

i
ip

A “coffin ship" of the early 1870s, in port. One of those overcrowded,
insanitary and often unseaworthy vessels which were a menace to

seamen, and to which Samuel Plimsoll turned his ardent attention.

Joseph Arch,
farm labourer
the National
Union, which

the end of the,