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

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The Red Production Company is working on a TV drama adaptation of Lil's actions during and after the tragedy. Marching on the bosses: Lillian Bilocca leads the women of Hessle Road to storm the docks after a rowdy, angry meeting at Victoria Hall attended by hundreds of women. The Headscarf Revolutionaries is an enthralling read, a fitting tribute to an extraordinary woman, and an important addition to working class history.

Her story has been told in Rupert Creed's 1998 book Turning the Tide: The 1968 Trawler Tragedy and the Wives' Campaign for Safety, based on interviews with the campaigning women, which was previously broadcast as a radio documentary in 1994 by BBC Radio 4. Bilocca threatened to picket Prime Minister Harold Wilson's private residence if her demands were not met.There was a single survivor of the three sinkings, 28-year-old Harry Eddom, the mate of the Ross Cleveland, who made a daring escape from the vessel by raft along with two crewmates who ultimately perished. Described as an extremist at first by the opposition, they eventually had to listen to her and the 10,000 people behind her.

They were subjected to a sexist backlash, pillory in the press, poison pen letters, threats and one of them, Lillian Bilocca, lost her job. The movement may have been short-lived, but it bears important testament to the power of direct action and community organising. As a depiction of human courage and the triumph of willpower, the extraordinary story of the disaster’s one survivor holds its own with Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void or any survival epic. with family members, residents, members from Hull's fishing community and Rev Tiby Cotson in attendance. Peart and Mallalieu were told by prime minister Wilson, who was in America, that the women were to be helped as much as possible.In the programme for that exhibition, Warhol coined a phrase: ‘in the future,’ he wrote, ‘everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. The three Headscarf Revolutionists honoured will be Yvonne Blenkinsop, Mary Denness and Christine Jensen MBE for their part in improving the safety standards at sea in the 1960s, which has saved thousands of lives. The Kingston Peridot was subsequently lost – probably on the night of 26/27 January – in icy winds and was reported as probably lost with all 20 hands on 30 January. With overwhelming support from residents within the flats, the three housing blocks will honour the courageous women who never gave up their battle to make the fishing industry safer for fishermen in Hull and all over the country. But the wheelhouse VHF radio had a reach of up to only 50 miles, whereas the UHF radio in the operator’s room could reach worldwide.

Chrissie Smallbone became Chrissie Jensen MBE, the award given for a lifetime’s work in trawler safety, as the first woman in the British Fishermen’s Association. I think people are just realising what she did actually achieve’, Holmes said, ‘The thousands of lives that were saved because of her and the other women’s actions’. Lil Bilocca's story has also been told in Amnesty International's 2014 book Not Just Wilberforce: Champions of Human Rights in Hull and East Yorkshire and a 2015 book The Headscarf Revolutionaries: Lillian Bilocca and the Hull Triple-Trawler Disaster by Brian W.

She quipped in her broad Hessle Road accent: “The married ones come home and take out their wives, then go to the pubs. She married Carmelo [Charlie] Bilocca (1902–1981), a Maltese sailor who worked with the Hull-based Ellerman-Wilson Line, and later as a trawlerman. Hull was at the time, according to Dr Lavery, the "greatest maritime city on Earth", and by necessity one that, on a day-to-day basis, relied enormously on the women who stayed ashore to keep it functioning.