The Headscarf Revolutionaries: Lillian Bilocca and the Hull Triple-Trawler Disaster

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Skipper Len Whur was Lillian’s fiercest critic, accusing her of putting jobs at risk and ‘interfering in something she knew nowt about’. The women's campaign was one of the biggest and most successful civil action campaigns of the 20th century. The public gathered to pay their respects to one of the city's true heroes as Yvonne's funeral procession made its way down Hessle Road. News of the loss of the Ross Cleveland reached Hull as Lillian and two others waited on the dockside for the owners.

This was followed by mass meetings, a march on the trawler bosses' offices and dramatic attempts to stop any unsafe trawlers going to sea. Quickly, Big Lil and her comrades were invited to London to present their ‘fishermen’s charter’ to the Fisheries Minister. As Lil scuffled with police, three young seamen jumped ship preventing the vessel’s departure and effectively initiating a wildcat strike. The Headscarf Revolutionaries thrills with the dangers of the high seas; inspires with the passion of women who changed their world; and reveals the vivid life inside one of the most vital communities of recent history. The campaign then turned to direct action, with the women going down to the dock gates to try to stop trawlers leaving port without a radio operator.The ‘Hull Triple-Trawler Tragedy’ was the loss of three Hull based deep-water trawlers, the Kingston Peridot, St Romanus and Ross Cleveland, within days of each other in the winter of 1968. Somehow these arrangements, and their performance, beckon you to hear them as if for the first time. The song cycle was performed as a multimedia show in Hull Minster for the first time on 8 November 2018, in collaboration with local musicians Sam Martyn and Mick McGarry, with Lavery narrating and presenting a slideshow of seldom-seen images. If I don't get satisfaction I'll be at that Wilson's house, private house, until I do get satisfaction in some shape or form. In 2017, he has contributed to End Notes, a collection published by the University of Hull as part of its Crossing Over project; and Hull: Culture, History, Place (Liverpool University Press, 2017) – with a chapter about trawler safety campaigner Lillian Bilocca.

The tk_or is a referral cookie set by the JetPack plugin on sites using WooCommerce, which analyzes referrer behaviour for Jetpack. The last two were fishing in Arctic waters when they were hit by the worst storm in living memory and were obliterated by the hurricane force winds, blizzards and ferocious waves. This era is integral to Hull's history, and such a thorough going over of these events means that this book will be read and relevant for decades to come.

The scenes at sea are as vivid as anything in Hemingway or Melville, and winter conditions in Icelandic fishing waters make life at Alistair Maclean’s Ice Station Zebra seem tame. She was granted a meeting with Wilson: subsequently, government ministers granted all of their requests. I was not surprised to find out the Brian Lavery has training in both journalism and creative writing. Lillian Bilocca (née Marshall; 26 May 1929 – 3 August 1988) was a British fisheries worker and campaigner for improved safety in the fishing fleet as leader of the "headscarf revolutionaries" – a group of fishermen's family members. Their story has been told on the stage, in books (most notably 'The Headscarf Revolutionaries' by Dr Brian W Lavery), and a BBC4 documentary ‘Hull’s Headscarf Heroes’.