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The hire and reward haulage strike, January–February 1979, burst upon an unprepared government and media. It was the control over road haulage that made the strike so distinctive, because rather than being ‘a simple absence … a withdrawal of labour’, workers asserted class power across road haulage distribution, symbolized by the lay committee’s issuing or denial of dispensations. It was this that prompted the ire of respectable opinion: workers were to work, not exercise power. Moreover, the strikers in the hire and reward sector called upon all heavy goods vehicle drivers, including those employed by own-account companies and by the National Freight Corporation, to respect their picket lines. They were also supported by workers across much of manufacturing and, above all, in the docks. The Hull strikers were effective in this, though no more than in many other areas, though perhaps for reasons of geography they were especially visible, as Beach explained.
