Migrant labour is, as Gunther Walraff wrote in his book on Turkish labour in Germany in 1985, degraded and abused historically. Before health and safety laws, social democratic governments and the Social Chapter of the European Union foreign workers were often subjected to inhuman conditions. In 1980 in Holland I experienced the work places in which the lazy, local youth would not work for their pay.
In May 1980 I went to Rotterdam to work in the docks of Europoort. Two or three Dutch agents would bring us from the Central Station to a pub in the suburbs where we would have a morning coffee before being sent out to the port as day laborers. Our tasks involved cleaning out the sediment of crude oil from the oil storage tanks of BP and Shell. We were exposed to benzene fumes. A Tyneside expatriate who had just lost his job as a welder in the ship building industry related that exposure to these fumes within the tanks for more than ten to fifteen minutes would lead to leukemia .
In the docks we cleaned out the sediment of maize from the US double-hulled Liberty ships which still plied their trade across the Atlantic. We were also sent to clean the sea salt from the hulls of oil tankers in dry dock on late night shifts. Other tasks involved loading and unloading grain. On returning from the last task in the work van which was driven by a German refugee from military service, I noticed a commotion at the gates.\It became clear after |I asked the driver to stop the van to talk to these Dutch workers that there was a strike at that warehouse.I gave these militant Dutch workers almost all of the cash -38-118 Guilders and kept 5 Guilders for myself for camping fees,food and fares-I had in my possession,reminded them that they should man a picket line from early morning and wished them well and success.They let out a large cheer and we left. I told my German colleague not to go back to that workplace on the following day. I was later refused work by the agents for four days and around this time was sent to demolish kilns and work with oil effluent.I never returned to that workplace and never saw another strike.
The Dutch!
The Dutch!
We were paid sixty guilders a day and usually worked three days a week. The maximum wage for a Dutch worker of our age was limited by Dutch law to one hundred and eighty guilders for a five day forty hour week.
I soon left Holland but realized it is the Turks, the Germans, the Irish, the English and Yugoslavs who perform any productive employment in that country.
The Dutch? Their famous welfare system? Their protection of foreigners? Their famous tolerance?
Myths!
I'd like to thank Eddi Winters and Frank De Boer! All together now for Frank and Eddi,the Dutch agents....
I'd like to thank Eddi Winters and Frank De Boer! All together now for Frank and Eddi,the Dutch agents....
4.7.2021
A reactionary strike. "Outlander uijs".
If recollection,a fading memory,serves me correctly were not these Dutch workers carrying cardboard placards saying "Uitlander uijs" since some Dutch workers are well-known for breaking their own strike and,as I recall,they dismounted from the van before these noisy scenes and some countries hosted reactionary strikes at the time as fascism was in the air and,shortly afterwards,the International Longshoremen's Organisation tried to procure my services in Cologne before I went to Stuttgart-Mettingen to work for Daimler-Benz for ten weeks.
7.11.2021
Germany 1981. Auslanderhass.
In June/July 1981,after completing my law studies for the Freshers' year,I again ventured back to Germany. Firstly I went to Munich to work in the stores of a truck assembly plant for 396DM (£99) a week for a 39-hour week then further north to work at panel-fixing at heights (Montage,Kevag, Koblenz) for a Herr Breitreiner,a German labour sub-contractor from Bavaria(Bayern). The pay was 999-1002DM (£250) per week for a 56-hour week but I was attacked by fascist agents in a beer-tent and suffered a summer of brutalisation and exploitation at the hands of a Kosovar Muslim.
Again,fascist riff-raff made their appearance at the building site with a similar piece of German cant,"Schwarzarbeiter 'raus"on their home-made cardboard placards after the style of an old American bore,
a call very much the work of a well-heeled Cork ass and follower of Richie Ryan,Garret Fitzgerald and Fine Gael...these reactionary German strikers of a Nazi hue were soon found out to be what the Germans call "Faulenzer" and "Biersaufer".I displayed my student health insurance certificate from Norwich Union to them which I had taken the precaution to pay for. The Southern university students had taken out no such health insurance.
It remains to me a puzzle why so many Free State and German and Dutch riff-raff are treated as anything other than lazy,oafish bores..
...
28.7.2022
Bluffs to gain employment?
"You're playing a dangerous game because you've told a number of people that you broke a strike when in fact you didn't,not knowingly anyway since you don't seem to know yourself,and are in line for a hiding. Trade unionists beat up people who don't join a trade union and don't warn them about dangerous and unsafe work practices and ruthless employers like the European Jews who you met in Holland. Whatever you might think,most of the people who you are dealing with are not informers apart from Brian Mc Cartney. He owns a big house in Holywood in County Down which he told you nothing about. Go up and check what I'm telling you in the Registry of Deeds in Chichester Street in Belfast. Not even his wife's name is on the deeds because he's afraid of her putting him out when she finds out that he's gay. It's at No.7 Ardmore Avenue. He wanted to invite you out but his controller stopped him because he knew you were trying to have him investigated and killed by the IRA. His controller never warned him about you. A handler only looks out for members of the public not IRA men or even other policemen on most occasions. Handlers hate poofs like your friend,Mr Mc Cartney Esquire. Don't give money to strangers or people who you don't know enough about. They might use it against you. That's why most people get beaten up since they're giving it to people who use the money to buy people drink. It doesn't take very much money to get people killed as most people know but not policemen or the gulls who they use to do it."
( My father,1981)
.....
Breaking a reactionary strike requires immense courage and considerable savvy since the lumpen proletarian is lionised in this country by nationalist scribblers like Arthur Griffiths and down-at-heel so-called activists and do-gooders,those who Marx referred to as "hole-and-corner reformers".
Who takes up the cudgel on behalf of those who are rightly regarded as products of the bordello-I am thinking of the German orphans imported into Ireland in the 1950's to get them away from the abortionists-other than Sinn Fein and nationalist get-rich-quick types who would not know their arse from their elbow if it was hung on a wall.
In my instance,Brian Mc Cartney,the cousin of Brendan Hughes alerted the Dublin Gardai to the presence of someone who was opposed to both strike breaking and reactionary strikes. As with the lumpen Irishman in England and the probationary offender,the Gardai and Irish Army gotchas saw in me a mortal for who had to be stopped in his tracks. Taylor and Fox in Ballymun and Burke and Murphy in Kevin Street forced me out of numerous tenancies and into the arms of my nemesis,a Dublin drugs gang.
I was attacked by Gilligan's nominated henchmen the scum of the earth,Cahill and O Brien,with a knuckleduster and a cutthroat razor.
Heroes operating cross-Border from Ballygowan RUC Rugby Club and Newry subjected me to five months of sleep deprivation and "active measures".
Therefore,young students and admirers of cults like Nazi Germany or Dutch liberalism,beware of people such as Fergal Connolly,Mickie Morgan,Con O Leary and Eddie O Connor if you hope to go 'on the road' and keep a tight tongue in your head about your nationalist enemies abroad because Sinn Feiners and people on the margins of society should not be entertained other than with two reliable witnesses.
Joseph Paul Mc Carroll LL B (Hons) (QUB)
