In Southampton we had a number of registered dockers, it was two
thousand seven hundred. Now, these were made up of first of all
preference men, then a number of permanent men. Each of these
employers had a place in the docks where they hired the labour and
it was always out in the open so if it was raining they were stood
there and you would be either picked up or not picked up. They
would all get all excited, the ones that were not picked up cycled
round to another part of the dock to another employer, and that's
the way it went on, around and around like that. In some of the
instances, like the Cold store, where they used to gather around
this employer's representative, in the end they couldn't move, just
couldn't do nothing, just threw the tallys there to give tallys
out, which gave them the job for the day or whatever. And the same
thing applied in what in they called the cattle shed, ... that's
was an infamous place in Southampton, because that was the last
sort out ... there used to be fights in there. Oh, there were
terrible scenes there, especially in the bad times. Just to get a
... sometimes it was only half a day?s work.
