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

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Earlier this month, the special memorial garden to honour those lost at sea found its permanent home on St Andrew's Quay.

Today, the phrase I coined for my book title, the Headscarf Revolutionaries, has become shorthand for these brave campaigners. On the day the book was launched in 2015, four plaques were unveiled by the Lord Mayor in Hull Maritime Museum to commemorate their campaign. Gibbons, Trevor (4 February 2018). "Triple trawler tragedy: The Hull fishermen who never came home". BBC News. BBC . Retrieved 8 February 2018. Author Brian W. Lavery has a long association with Hull, and describes this book as being the result of a promise that he would "set the record straight" about Mrs Bilocca. The book begins with an account of life for fishers on the trawlers. This was an incredibly hard job; the work required huge physical effort, long hours and often took place in appalling conditions. The ships themselves were frequently dangerous with safety equipment damaged or missing. Lavery points out that at the time ships from European fleets had better equipment and sailed with a command ship that helped look out for the smaller vessels as well as providing support. Crew members were handsomely rewarded for their dangerous work, though the real profits were made by the owners. Like most in the Hull fishing community she hailed from the tight-knit community of Hessle Road. Surrounded by heartache and loss, she decided enough was enough. Organising meetings with trawlermen, their families and local politicians and unions – she started a movement. Upon the four women’s return to Hull, Denness told the waiting press: “We have achieved more in six weeks than the politicians and trade unions have in years.”Photographs and other illustrations courtesy of Hull Daily Mail, Headscarf Pride and the research archive of Dr Brian Lavery Bilocca has been described as a national figure and a local folk hero. [2] She was commemorated by a Hull City Council plaque in Hessle Road in 1990 that reads "In recognition of the contributions to the fishing industry by the women of Hessle Road, led by Lillian Bilocca, who successfully campaigned for better safety measures following the loss of three Hull trawlers in 1968"; another plaque in her honour is at the Hull Maritime Museum. [13] A mural on Hull's Anlaby Road painted by Mark Ervine and Kev Largey depicts Bilocca and her connections with the "headscarf revolutionaries" and the triple trawler tragedy. [11]

Hull’s mural depicting Lillian Bilocca, who led a campaign to improve safety conditions on board North Sea trawlers

One of the four working class-women who rapidly forced an entire industy to change has died just weeks short of her 84th birthday — biographer BRIAN W LAVERY recounts her life and achievements

The Headscarf Revolutionaries is an enthralling read, a fitting tribute to an extraordinary woman, and an important addition to working class history. But at the exit, there were thousands waiting and cheering. A newspaper billboard read: ‘Big Lil Hits Town’. In three weeks in January and February 1968, the Hull trawlers St Romanus, Kingston Peridot and Ross Cleveland all sank in freezing North Atlantic waters. Fifty-eight men from the city’s Hessle Road fishing community died. After the St Romanus and Kingston Peridot were reported missing, and with her own son on board a trawler north of Iceland, Bilocca started a petition demanding safer working conditions. The petition was soon circulating widely; hundreds of women collected thousands of signatures. As Brian W. Lavery notes in his detailed account of the ‘Headscarf Revolutionaries’, the Secretary of the Hull branch of the Transport and General Workers’ Union encouraged any men not at sea to assist the ‘fighting fishwives’—they had drawn more attention to the issue in a few days than the union had managed in years. These four women took on trawler bosses and the establishment and won, making the world’s most dangerous profession — deep sea trawling — safer by far. I am going over. We are laying over. Help us, Len. I am going over. Give my love and the crew’s love to the wives and families…”

Public outcry of the situation died down and life went on. The city of Kingston-Upon-Hull marched on. It relied on the fishing industry at sea and on-shore to live. The tragedy lived on in the family’s heads as their loved ones sailed off once more.Photos of the 17st housewife fighting police, who prevented her from boarding, made headlines. A Sunday tabloid dubbed her ‘Big Lil’. From then on she was lionised and patronised in equal measure by the media – like a cross between Boudicca and Nora Batty. Yvonne Blenkinsop and Chrissie Smallbone joined Lillian on the stage. The two women were well-known in the community, especially Yvonne, a local cabaret singer. Dozens of locals donned their fanciest headscarves in Queen Victoria Square to raise awareness and celebrate the achievements of the four revolutionaries, Lillian Bilocca, Yvonne Blenkinsop, Christine Jensen, and Mary Denness. Their campaign captured the public imagination and shamed bosses and government into immediate action. Fishing was suspended off Iceland until the weather improved. Owners were legally forced to launch a ‘control ship’, the Ross Valiant. A new full-time ‘mother ship’ later replaced it. In October 1968, a public inquiry resulted in the Holland-Martin Report into Trawler Safety. All the demands of the Fishermen’s Charter were met, most before the inquiry, and the remainder soon after. On the 4 th, the Ross Cleveland sank just off the north-west coast of Iceland. Miraculously, Harry Eddom, the sole survivor from the three trawlers, made it to shore. He was found on the 6 th. The same day, Bilocca, Yvonne Blenkinsop, and Mary Denness delivered the petition (now signed by over 10,000 people) to Harold Wilson’s Labour government at 10 Downing Street. They also delivered a list of 88 proposals outlining how to make the industry safer, all of which would eventually be adopted.