Dockers can sue government on asbestos
Dockers can sue government on asbestos
A retired docker who suffers from an asbestos-related illness has welcomed a High Court decision allowing him to sue the government for compensation. Robert Thompson, 65, won the right to take legal action along with docker's widow Winifred Rice. The court ruled that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) was responsible for dockers' safety in the 1950s and 1960s. But High Court Judge Mr Justice Silber also granted the DTI leave to appeal. Until 1967 dock workers were employed on a casual basis under the National Dock Labour Board scheme, set up by the government in the late 1940s to organise labour arrangements at ports. Many dockers unloaded raw asbestos from ships. 'The dock labour board put us in a pen like cattle, we were picked out and sent to unload the asbestos from the ships in the docks,' said Mr Thompson. 'If we refused to go on the ships we were sacked. The asbestos was floating around everywhere. The dock labour board must have known they were sending us into danger.' Mrs Rice, whose husband Edward died of the asbestos cancer mesothelioma in 2000, added: 'It's so important that someone takes responsibility for what happened to him - the illness changed him from a healthy 15-stone man to a six-stone shadow of himself. All we wanted was for the dock board to hold their hands up and admit they should have protected him.' Their solicitor Kevin Johnson, of John Pickering and Partners, said the judgment could pave the way for other dockers to claim. 'The judge was right to accept that the dock labour boards must bear responsibility for sending dockers to work with asbestos in unsafe conditions without warning or protecting them,' he said. 'This decision will help other dockers and their families to bring claims for compensation without them having to identify individual shipping companies, many of whom no longer exist.'
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