The four headscarf revolutionaries pressed the government to intervene and improve safety standards. It is an effective approach, particularly the section near the beginning in which some of the men on the crews of the doomed ships say goodbye to their families and head out to sea for what the reader knows is the final time. This book not only takes readers out on the women’s campaign trail – it takes us out to the high seas too. Bilocca was held back by half a dozen police from jumping aboard a trawler that was about to go to sea. All correspondence is welcome, particularly if you would like to share a magical Northern experience.

Virginia Bilocca-McKenzie, is the daughter of Lillian Bilocca’s, who kickstarted and was one of the key leaders of the movement. But out of necessity there had grown strong social networks of solidarity amongst the women whose husbands, sons and fathers were out on the trawlers, and this existing culture within the community allowed many women to be quickly galvanised into action when a set of tragedies unfolded in January and February 1968. Documentary which marks the 50th anniversary of the triple trawler tragedy during January and February of 1968, in which 58 men died. After the St Romanus and the Kingston Peridot – skippered by 33-year-old Ray Wilson – had been declared lost, Lillian Bilocca and others gathered thousands of signatures demanding better safety.

addition to writing an inspiring history of the Headscarf Revolutionaries, Lavery has also written a social history of a world that has largely ceased to exist. The front cover of the Hull Daily Mail on 5 February, 1968, the day the loss of the third trawler, the Ross Cleveland, was confirmed. Marge Proops ran a feature on ‘The Real Big Lil’ in the Daily Mirror, and even the Daily Mail carried a supportive front page lead.

At other times, the connections are harder to explain: why was 1848 the year that modernity clashed with feudalism across much of Europe and Latin America? He has never spoken publicly since the 1960s, and refused several requests to be interviewed – a decision I respect. News of the loss of the Ross Cleveland reached Hull as Lillian and two others waited on the dockside for the owners. Just after the second trawler was lost, four local women decided to take action against the poor health and safety regulations and working conditions of the men at the time. Once inside the snapper got his head and shoulders photo of the bereaved mother and left me to get on with the interview.He did, along with the minister of the board of trade, TGWU officers and the fishing industry bosses.

Somehow, the trawler owners had managed to gain exemption from almost all maritime safety and manning legislation passed in the twentieth century, and the accommodation and messing arrangements on-board were shameful. Here they voted to found the Hessle Road Women’s committee, headed up by Bilocca, Blenkinsop, Mary Denness and Christine Jensen, and tasked with pressing their demands with the owners and the government.Fuelled by years of suffering and loss, the headscarfed women rose up to protest against the dangerous working conditions. Yet throughout the vodka-fuelled history lesson all I could think was , ‘that Lily woman looks like my mother’. These included radio operators for all ships, better weather forecasting, training for young deckhands, more safety equipment and a mothership with hospital facilities to patrol with the fleet. Even the phone conversation that reunited Rita Eddom with the one survivor – the husband she’d assumed was dead – was broadcast in full on the evening news. The film tells the epic story of the Hull fishermen who did the most dangerous job in Britain and their wives whose protest ensured such a disaster never happened again.