Salford Dockers Reunite For Film Preserving Dock History 2026

Key Points

• Former Salford Dockworkers and their Families are Invited to Attend the Reunion & Short Film Premiere at Lower Kersal Social Club on Thursday, October 22, 2026.
• The event has been arranged by Tommy Gaugan, who co-founded Salford Distillery in Blackfriars. His company has developed a limited-release rum in honor of the hundredth anniversary of when Salford became a city.
• The film includes interviews conducted with five former dockers and family members. The entire interview archive will be provided to Salford Council for educational purposes in the future.
• Rob Salt is the last man to have operated the giant cranes at the docks. He called working there the “best days” of his life.
• Manchester Docks was situated in Salford and employed around 5,000 people in the 1950s. However, it stopped functioning in 1982.
• The Docks was created from Manchester Ship Canal, which was opened on January 1, 1894, following six years of construction performed by some 17,000 navvies.
• George Wilson, former Salford ceremonial mayor, remembered dangerous working conditions, deaths in the workplace, multicultural workers’ crews, and 10 years’ long unsuccessful campaign to save two historical cranes.

Manchester (Manchester Mirror) October 17, 2026 — Former dockers who helped shape Salford’s industrial identity are being brought together for a reunion and the premiere of a short film documenting their working lives at Manchester Docks.

As reported by the Manchester Evening News, the event will take place at Lower Kersal Social Club on Stamford Road, Lower Kersal, Salford, on Thursday, October 22. Doors open at 6.45pm, with the event beginning at 7pm. Up to 200 people are expected to attend.

The reunion has been organised by Tommy Gaugan, co-founder of Salford Distillery, which operates beneath railway arches in Viaduct Street, Blackfriars. Attendees will receive a “tot” of the distillery’s new rum, created as a limited release to mark 100 years since Salford was officially granted city status by King George V.

The short film has been commissioned by Mr Gaugan and draws on lengthy interviews with five former dockers and members of their families. According to the Manchester Evening News, the complete archive of interviews will be given to Salford Council so that the material can be used for educational purposes in the future.

Why Are Former Dockers Being Invited Back?

The reunion is intended to give former dock workers an opportunity to meet again, share memories and see a film that records a way of life largely absent from the modern Salford Quays landscape.

Mr Gaugan said the project began with a social-media appeal for people who had worked at the docks or had family connections to them. He said the call produced 150 responses from former workers and relatives.

“For the film we chose a small number so it was intimate,” Mr Gaugan said, as quoted by the Manchester Evening News. “On the day of the premier we are expecting up to 200 to attend. It is an opportunity for the dockers to get together.”

He added that some of the men interviewed had not seen one another for between 20 and 30 years, describing those reunions as “poignant” to capture on film.

The distillery founder said the full interviews last about 30 minutes for many contributors. While the premiere will show a shorter version, the complete footage will be preserved and handed to the council.

“We have had discussions about setting up a booth at the distillery which people can use to record their own memories of the docks which can be added to the archive,” Mr Gaugan said.

What Do Former Dockers Remember About The Docks?

Among those featured is Rob Salt, who worked as an electrician at the docks and was the last person to operate one of its huge cargo-lifting cranes.

“All my life I worked on the docks. Best days of my life really on there,”

Mr Salt said in the film, according to the Manchester Evening News.

He added:

“People don’t talk about the docks anymore. I think they should know it was a working dock. I think we should keep the history alive.”

Another contributor, Jim Moran, worked at the docks from 1968 until their closure. He recalled the competition for casual employment.

“You had two and a half thousand dockers fighting for work,”

Mr Moran said.

The Manchester Evening News also interviewed George Wilson, a former Salford ceremonial mayor who began work as a docker in 1965 on £8 a week. He later became a crane operator, climbing daily into the 90ft-high cabin of one of the docks’ towering blue cranes.

Mr Wilson described the role as physically demanding and hazardous.

“It was one of the hardest, toughest jobs, manually,” he said.

“A lot of people have called dockers lazy, but it was tough and dangerous. I saw seven blokes get killed while working there.”

He recalled one fatal incident in which a reel of paper came loose from a crane and fell on a worker whose father and brothers also worked at the docks.

“It was heartbreaking watching four brothers trying to tear paper off him,” Mr Wilson said.

He said dockers handled copper, ore, cotton and other cargo, often shovelling ore into buckets by hand. He also described the effects of lamp black, a material produced by the combustion of heavy petroleum products such as coal tar.

“Because of the lamp black your sweat would be black coming through your pores, your shirts would be black,”

he said.

How Did The Docks Shape Salford?

Although known as Manchester Docks, the docks were in Salford. The Manchester Evening News reports that they employed 5,000 people during the 1950s and finally closed in 1982.

The docks developed around Trafford Road and Ordsall, an area that became known as “The Barbary Coast” because of its mix of gambling, fights, boarding houses and lively pubs. The report describes those venues as refuges for international sailors who had often spent months at sea.

The docks were also depicted in the 1961 film adaptation of Shelagh Delaney’s play A Taste of Honey, in which a black sailor has a brief relationship with 17-year-old Jo before leaving her pregnant and sailing from the docks.

Former docker George Wilson said the workforce reflected a wide range of nationalities long before diversity became a more widely discussed public issue.

“People talk now about diversity – but it was there then,” he said.

“Maltese, Jamaicans, Africans, English, Irish, Hungarians, Polish; every nationality. These were the dockers, not those on the ships.”

He said the docks created strong friendships and community ties across Ordsall, Weaste and Langworthy.

“There would be whiskey boats, cotton and banana boats,”

Mr Wilson said.

“There was good camaraderie, great friendship, and a good community.”

What Was The Docks’ Wartime And Industrial History?

The docks’ origins lie in the Manchester Ship Canal, a 36-mile waterway linking Salford to the Irish Sea. According to the Manchester Evening News, it opened to traffic on January 1, 1894, after six years of construction and cost more than £15m — equivalent to about £2.1bn today.

The canal was built by around 17,000 navvies recruited from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, south-west England, Manchester and Salford. The report states that hundreds of workers lost their lives in landslides and accidents during construction.

During the Second World War, German bombers targeted the docks. A raid on December 23, 1941 caused major destruction.

The hardship of dock work is also recorded in Salford Quays Unlocked – Voices of Manchester Docks, a collection of poems by Lynn Pegler. The Manchester Evening News says the collection recalls conditions around 1900, when men worked for 6d — two and a half pence — an hour, equivalent to about £4 today.

Men reported twice daily to the dock gates in the hope of being selected for casual work. Ms Pegler’s poem, Docker’s Tanner, gives voice to a man returning home after not being chosen.

The final verse quoted by the newspaper reads:

“It’s your brave little face that gets me,
not showing outside that you care,
making one meagre meal last for seven,
backing me when the world is unfair.”

What Happened To The Historic Dock Cranes?

Mr Wilson later campaigned to preserve two Stothert and Pitt DD2 cargo cranes that once stood at the old entrance to the docks. The cranes had towered over Dock 6 and later Dock 8 before being dismantled.

“I fought for ten years to save them,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “They were part and parcel of the docks history. You look now at old docks in Liverpool, London and Bristol and cranes are there as a legacy of what used to be.”

He said he tried to persuade Salford Council to save the structures. A final application for government listing, which would have protected them from demolition, failed.

Mr Wilson also recalled receiving an award from the Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society in 1979, alongside PC John Gilbert, after rescuing a drowning man from Dock 9.

“I jumped in and did a doggy paddle to him, pulling his raincoat in my teeth, and dragged him back towards the side,”

he said.

“Then a bobby jumped on top of me. It was that cold I couldn’t get out, there was ice on the water. But between us, we saved him.”

How Can Former Dockers Attend The Event?

Former dockers and their families are being invited to enter a free ticket ballot. Up to four tickets are available per entry.

According to the Manchester Evening News, the ballot closes at midnight on Sunday, October 18. The screening and reunion will be held at Lower Kersal Social Club, Stamford Road, Lower Kersal, Salford, M7 3SD.

The event will include poetry about Salford and the first pour of Salford Distillery’s limited-release rum. The distillery says dockers and their families will be the first people to taste it.

Background Of The Development

Manchester Docks were created through the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal, which connected inland Manchester and Salford to the Irish Sea. Opened in 1894, the canal transformed the region’s ability to receive seaborne cargo and supported decades of industrial employment.

Although branded Manchester Docks, the docks were physically located in Salford, particularly around Trafford Road and Ordsall. They became central to local employment, community life and Salford’s cultural identity, employing thousands of people before changing shipping practices and industrial decline led to their closure in 1982.

The area later became Salford Quays, a redevelopment now associated with media, culture, leisure and residential development. The reunion and film project aim to preserve first-hand accounts from the people who worked there before that transformation.

Prediction: How This Development Can Affect Salford Residents

For former dockers and their families, the reunion may provide a rare opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and relatives and see their experiences formally recorded. The preservation of full interviews with Salford Council could make those accounts available to schools, researchers and future generations.

For wider Salford residents, the project may strengthen local understanding of the area’s working-class and multicultural industrial history, particularly as Salford Quays continues to change physically and economically. The planned memory-recording booth at Salford Distillery could also encourage more former workers and relatives to contribute stories before fewer firsthand witnesses remain.

For local historians and educators, the archive may become a practical resource for teaching about the Manchester Ship Canal, dock labour, migration and community life. The event itself is unlikely to alter policy, but it could increase public support for preserving oral histories connected to Salford’s industrial past.