The last of the “headscarf revolutionaries”
Yvonne Blenkinsop 1938-2022
Yvonne Blenkinsop, who has died aged 83, was the last of the “headscarf revolutionaries” – four ordinary women from Hull who helped transform the fishing industry in the late 1960s. At the time, “trawlers based at St Andrew’s Dock landed 25% of Britain’s total catch”, said The Daily Telegraph; but the management of the fleet was antiquated, and fishermen were obliged to take enormous risks. At sea for three weeks at a time, they would sail 1,000 miles into the Arctic Circle “with no medical back-up or rescue ship”, and sometimes no radio operator, though ships could “turn turtle” at any moment in the rough waters. Yet anyone who objected to these blatantly unsafe working conditions was likely to be blacklisted by local employers, and families “had become resigned” to the fact that their menfolk earned a living in the most dangerous industry in the world.
Blenkinsop was herself a cabaret singer, but she was grimly aware of the cost of going to sea. Her father had been a trawlerman. He had turned down a place on the Lorella, one of two Hull trawlers that sank in 1955 – only to die of a heart attack at sea a few months later, when Yvonne was 16. He was 48, and she was convinced that had a doctor been on the boat, he’d have lived. She recalled that after that, she’d sometimes lie in bed, listing the safety improvements that Hull’s trawler owners could make, if only they were willing to invest in them; almost none were, she said. The industry was “all about greed… They just wanted the money coming in.”
It was the “Triple Trawler Tragedy” of 1968, when three Hull boats went down in just over three weeks, that spurred her into action. After the first two were sunk, with the loss of 40 men, the women of Hessle Road, where most of Hull’s fishing families lived, gathered for a meeting led by Lillian “Big Lil” Bilocca, a cod skinner whose father, husband and son worked at sea. She, Blenkinsop and two others – Mary Denness, the wife of a trawler skipper, and Christine Smallbone, the sister of one – then formed a committee, to demand reform. “After that, the campaign dominated my days,” Blenkinsop recalled. She was so engrossed, she forgot one of her children’s birthdays. “It became my life and my job.”
They marched on the docks, and forced their way onto boats. One of their supporters was the trade unionist John Prescott, who recalled helping them build a giant red cardboard cod, bearing the words “It’s not the fish you’re buying, it’s men’s lives”, which they wheeled around the city. In just ten days, they gathered 10,000 signatures for a petition, the Fishermen’s Charter, calling for more safety kit, better weather forecasting, radio operators for all ships, and a “mother ship” with medical facilities. The campaign met fierce opposition from trawler owners and even some seamen, said Brian W. Lavery in the Morning Star. The women received anonymous threats; Bilocca was fired from her job; and once, Blenkinsop was punched in the face while eating dinner with her husband in a local restaurant.
Nevertheless, they fought on. Their campaign gained nationwide attention, and knocked the Vietnam War off the front pages. In February 1968, they went to London for a meeting with the Board of Trade. Arriving at King’s Cross, they were greeted by reporters, cheering crowds, and a billboard reading “Big Lil Hits Town”. All their demands were met, and rapidly implemented. Returning to Hull, Denness noted that “we have achieved more in six weeks than the politicians and trade unions have in years”. In 2018, Blenkinsop was made a Freeman of the City, to mark her contribution to the campaign, and the countless lives it has saved.