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Great Pompey Myths Debunked - No 1 The Origin of Scummers
Great Pompey Myths Debunked - No 1 The Origin of Scummers
Wednesday, 22nd Feb 2012 08:40 by Stevedore

In this series "Stevedore" takes a look at all those legends & myths that have grown around Portsmouth Football Club and seperates fact from fiction.

In researching this series I came to one conclusion, that most of the images that pompey fans like to portray of themselves and indeed of Southampton and its supporters are based on nothing more than shouting out something with no actual factual foundations, long enough and loud enough to make people think that they must actually be true.

This is certainly the case when Pompey tell the World why they call Saints fans Scummers, they refer back to a Docks strike somewhere back in the mists of time when the working class inhabitants of Pompey were stood picketting the gates of Pompey Dockyard, union men all, only to see scabs from Southampton cross the picket lines and keep the docks working.

The truth of the situation is actually a lot different, Pompey as we know is mainly a Naval base, its commercial port (More of this later) is still relatively small nowadays and up to the last few decades barely existed, home only to a few small freighters.

Being a Naval Base, back in the first half of the 20th century Portsmouth dockyard workers were not legally able to strike, they had no union for one thing and they came under the rules and regulations governing militarly establishments and employees, rule one is they did not have the right to withdraw their labour, the upside though of course was that they were employed and effectively had jobs for life. Google Pompey Dock Strike and you will not find one article telling you of an actual event, but on the contary, literally hundreds telling of why Pompey fans call Saints scummers.

At the same time in Southampton things were much different, Dockers were not employees like their counterparts in Pompey, but were casual labour, every morning hundreds of men would gather outside the dock gates for what was called the tally system, the lucky ones would get work, the unlucky would go home with no pay for that day.

In 1890 Southampton had a Dock strike, google Southampton Dock Strike and its the first thing that comes up and not the last, Portsmouth Football Club had not even been formed at this time, however newspaper reports tell of "Blacklegs from Portsmouth being attacked as they arrived at the railway station"

The tally system continued right into the 1950's until the National Dock Labour Board was formed and dockers not just in Southampton but the other major commercial ports were finally given basic wages and employment rights, the system continued right up until the mid 1980's when after the dock strike of 1984/85 the system was again changed.

In the 70's Pompey had expanded its commercial port activity and was now starting to get a foothold in short sea traffic to France, both coommercial and passenger, it had one distinct advantage over its neighbour Southampton though, the unions in Southampton were strong and therefore rigid shift patterns were adhered to, and this made it difficult for the short sea quick turnaround traffic which needed an adaptable workforce, Southampton didnt have this, but Pompeys ferry port with its non union labour did, with every dock dispute in Southampton, Pompey looked to capitalise, they didnt need to send men to Southampton, the ships came to Portsmouth, Southampton Dockers called for their Pompey counterparts to refuse to handle the ships diverted and to back their strike, being non union men, Pompey werent interested and despite picketing from Southampton Dockers crossed those picket lines time and time again.

In 1984 this came to a head, this strike was going to be long, again initially the cross channel ferries that used Southampton went to Pompey, but the ferry owners had had enough, Pompey welcomed them with open arms despite outcry from trade unions across the country and the ferry's moved to Portsmouth permanently never to return.

So what this brief history lesson shows is that the "Scummers" myth is total fabrication on the part of Pompey supporters, is has actually no foundations of truth, in fact the complete opposite, over a period of 122 years, longer than Portsmouth Football Club has been in existence, it has been Southampton Dockers who have had to fight for their rights whilst time and time again Pompey dockers have refused to back them, seeking their own preferment over that of others and with a long record of scab and blackleg behaviour to help weaken the strikes and of time and time again handling diverted ships which the Dockers of the major ports like Liverpool and London refused to do.

What this shows is that the term Scummers is nothing other than an invention in a pub outside of Fratton Park, its not that original even, many other clubs use it to refer to their rivals, perhaps the difference being, they dont shout it long and loud at every opportunity, they dont have a strange preoccupation bordering on the psycotic about "scummers" they havent let it take over their lives, they dont feel the need to scream "Scummer" till they are blue in the face at any opposing player that might at one time have been a youth team player at Saintsa and then tell their friendsand family how they gave him a "good scumming"

So Saints fans can hold their heads up high, our forefathers have a history of standing up for what is right, but not only that, but of standing up for others round us and refusing to make their plight worse as the Pompey Dockers did in 1890 and again in 1984 with all points in between, Pompey fans can call us scum, but back in those daysthey try to tell us are true, Southampton and indeed much the rest of the country had a far stronger word than scum to use to refer to them, Scab & Blackleg were perhaps two of the politer terms used.

In the next installment of Great Pompey Myths Debunked, Stevedore will show how the team with all the history and tradition is actually not the 1895 johnny come lately team from Portsmouth

Photo: Action Images



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pompeytillidie added 17:24 - Feb 22
Yes,it is very tiresome and funny
We aren't the ones complaining - or calling you retards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You ,apparently,resent being called scum or your 'leader' wouldn't have wasted half his life writing a load of inaccuracies
See you in April SCUMmers
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SaintNick added 17:40 - Feb 22
pompeytillidie

This story wasnt written by me so your factually incorrect I only spend about a quarter of my life writing innacuracies
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RednWight added 18:07 - Feb 22
Whatever the origins of names we call each other the fact is that scum allthough sometimes not too pleasant to look at does tend to float at the top.
Your skate, on the other hand spends most of its existence at the bottom with the rest of the shyte
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sholingred added 19:45 - Feb 22
They hate the truth,show a link,or a local newspaper echo or their rag to show we broke any strike,they are scabs and scum,and i hope and wish their crap club dies.
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pompeytilidie added 23:56 - Feb 22
to be fair who gives a shit how it started? we call you scummers and you call us skates its the way it is. you scummers should stop with your obsession
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StrasbourgSaint added 12:07 - Feb 23
Laying aside the pointless abuse from Poopeytillidie, this is a decent (inaccurate?) article with some interesting additions, notably from Exferryman and Nick.

Some thoughts:
1. It seems the Soton ‘scabs’ strike-breaking story is a myth. If it could be directly attributed to Docker Hughes, he ought to be in court for incitement.
2. My earliest memory of 'scummers' comes from the Div2 mid-70s matches when we all sang 'In your Liverpool homes' to different words. In the Milton Road end, we'd sing, 'In you Pee-orts-muff slums' and then shout 'slummers' at the blues. They shouted back, 'Slummers', then it became, 'scummers'. At least, that's what I remember, I could be wrong.
3. Remember Shep Wooley? Around that mid-80s - maybe when both teams were in the old Div 1 - he released a song about the scummers. It gained national attention and seemed to clearly mark Saints fans, more than any others, as scummers (or 'the scum').

During the mid-80s, I worked in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. One day, I was in a room of Brits and a couple of Tanzanians, when I found an article about the Southampton Docks' strike in the Telegraph. Unbeknown to me, as I read the article, people were arguing. The two Tanzanians eventually left and slammed the door. The room went quiet and, referring to the dockers, whom the Telegraph claimed were threatening the future of Soton docks (a view I had some sympathy with having heard countless second-hand tails of how over-paid they were and how they would sleep all nightshift whilst the rest of the city was busting its hard-working butt off), I turned to the Brits and, breaking the silence, said, 'bl00dy dockies!' There was a shocked silence. 'WHAT DID YOU SAY?' asked a friend. I explained what I had just read and relief filled the room. They had thought I had said 'bl00dy darkies!' Of course they were shocked, they knew this was something I would surely NEVER say.
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130yrs_and_one_Cup added 22:13 - Jul 30
Not many fishing boats in Southampton then? mmh. I see that back in 1978, up to 450 boats made a living from catching oysters in the Solent, employing more than 700 men at sea. And we are continually told that there was no fishing industry in Southampton. I guess the fishing dispute could be true.

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/district/southampton/12901539.New_Solent_fishing

And the amount of strikes that were instigated from your city, no wonder the ferry operators wanted to come to Pompey. I mean slow working on shifts to get paid for an extra shift. What a load of dossers.
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farehamMod added 01:52 - Apr 15
Quote: 'In 1984 this came to a head, this strike was going to be long'. I don't remember this 'Strike'. This would have been two years after the Falklands War; maybe the recovery was a distraction, so I didn't notice.

Regarding the original 'myth' about the docker strikes and SCUMMERS; so what? Fact is that a lot of young Men like fighting and challenge a rival, whether it's the next door neighbour, the next school, the next town, the next country, or the neighbouring Football Club. That's the truth of it.

Play Up Pompey.
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