Historic Billingsgate are losing its fish porters that keeps the flow, Gianluca Mezzofiore finds out. Photostory: Lillo Montalto Monella
Costantinos Camilleri has been working for 52 years at the Billingsgate fish market. Half-Italian and half-Greek, he wears with pride a battered enamel badge on his white uniform. It shows his licence number and his historic profession –a fish porter.
Like the rest of the market’s porters, who are about 100, Costantinos is angry at the City of London Corporation’s decision to scrap the licence of the porters. “They’re fucking greedy bastards,” he said pointing, with a sweeping movement of his arm, at the HSBC skyscraper towering over the market.
The Corporation, which owns Billingsgate, revoked in April a bylaw dating from 1876 that allows a superintendent to license anyone with a “good character and fitness” to become a porter. They claim it was redundant, out-of-date and irrelevant in modern times.
“The fish merchants, who are the porters’ employers, should employ who they wish freely, without constraints or empathy,” said Malcolm Macleod, Billingsgate Superintendent for the City of London Corporation. “There are 500 people employed at Billingsgate and only the fish porters have licenses. Why should they receive special treatment?”
However, London Assembly member and Labour party politician John Biggs believes that the Corporation’s withdrawal is a move towards “casualisation” of the City’s workforce. “It seems that the City of London is happy to retain some tradition while dropping other ones, and the difference between the two sides is one of power,” he said. He shares Labour MP Jon Cruddas’ view that the scrapping could be an attempt to dissolve the workforce of the City, while bankers and financiers keep their privileges.
Superintendent Macleod dismisses all these allegations, claiming that without the licences the market will employ more people. “We respect the past, but we can’t live on it,” he said. “We are a business and we have to compete with other markets.”
The same fish porters are aware that their job could soon turn into cheap labour. “It’s disgusting, they want to get rid of us and replace us with some East Europeans to do our job,” said Tom Rissix.
Others think that more sinister reasons are carefully hidden behind the withdrawal. Fish porters, and the market itself, may stand in the way of the Corporation’s expansion plans for Canary Wharf, they claim. “This land is too much in a prime position for the market to stay here,” said Bobby, a fish merchant. “This is just the first step to wrap things up and to move the market somewhere else. It is worth too much money, the land. The Corporation of London, in my eyes, they are the biggest crooks in London.”
“The fish porters transport 25,000 tonnes of fish every year and make a vital contribution to a market which generates around £200million in revenue,” Unite national officer Jennie Formby said.
Billingsgate has been in Docklands for the past 35 years. The leasehold on the Billingsgate complex is up in 2013 and the Corporation is seeking a new location.
Chris, who has been working for 42 years at Billingsgate as a fish porter, has a lot of disappointment in his eyes. “I personally think that the Corporation wants its land back and by getting rid of the licenses from the fish porters, they can take away the tenants’ leases,” he said. “The market will move. It’s a legend that is going to go, and it’s a shame.
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