50 Years Ago: Plimsoll Line
Samuel Plimsoll hated Toryism, but the depth of his hatred of Liberal government was shown when he said in the House of Commons on May 14, 1873:
“I am a Liberal of the Liberals. I have supported Liberal measures ever since I came into this House, but it has been borne into my mind that the interest of the working classes, when at issue between themselves and capitalists, are safer with the Conservatives than with the Liberals.”
Thirty-one years after the load line was lowered; thirty-one years after the Plimsoll Mark was established, David Lloyd George became President of the Board of Trade, and he wiped out the labours of Plimsoll by issuing new regulations raising the load line. The Plimsoll line—the charter of the seamen—was dead. In its place was substituted the Lloyd George load line.
On Saturday, September 21st, the Board of Trade enquiry into the loss of the North Briton was held at Cardiff. The magistrate who presided over it summed up thus:
“For some time before the vessel foundered, and when her condition was hopeless, the crew—those 20 brave men of that brave class, the British Mercantile Marine—stood together on the deck with their pipes in their mouths, silently, calmly, dauntlessly facing death. Without a murmur or a cry they perished in the sea. Their lives were sacrificed to the 130 tons of additional freight.” He pointed out that:
“According to law she was not overladen, but the Court is satisfied that consistent with safety the loading was excessive,” and “the primary cause of her loss.”
The Court put the Board of Trade the following question for urgent consideration:
“Do the disasters to vessels that have occurred since March 1906, when the rules for assigning a ship’s freeboard were revised, and whereby numerous vessels had their freeboard reduced, call for further immediate revision of such rules?”
(From the SOCIALIST STANDARD October 1912)