What could have turned out to be a hysterical, disorganised protest is now becoming regarded as something of a fighting machine, backed by hundreds. Safety measures were needed, including ships not leaving port undercrewed and radio operators on all ships. Along with Lillian Bilocca, Mary Denness and Christine Smallbone, they marched through Hull and then onto Parliament to demand a safer fishing fleet.

Fuelled by years of suffering and loss, the headscarfed women rose up to protest against the dangerous working conditions. The trawler owners had known of the probable loss since 13 January but had delayed raising the alarm for a whole ten days.These are minor issues in what is otherwise an excellent book, and I guess it isn’t Lavery’s fault that I am quite pedantic when it comes to grammar and style; I blame it on all the undergraduate marking I do.

Lilian Bilocca started with a petition, took her battle to the docks at dawn, and then led a raid on Parliament. The same day, Bilocca, Yvonne Blenkinsop, and Mary Denness delivered the petition (now signed by over 10,000 people) to Harold Wilson’s Labour government at 10 Downing Street. It shares 1968 with Made in Dagenham, and the ruthless spirit of women determined to change industry. With the collar turned up against the sleet, I felt like quite the ace reporter – the sort Damon Runyon wrote about. Hull’s year as the 2017 UK City of Culture provided a long overdue opportunity for the record to be put straight.One of their complaints was that not all trawlers had a radio operator on board, and that this should be a legal requirement. James Johnson, Labour MP for Hull West, repeatedly raised Bilocca’s blacklisting in Parliament, but to little avail—national attention had moved on. Lavery describes the media furore as Big Lil and the others were photographed by journalists from around the world. Lavery notes in his detailed account of the ‘Headscarf Revolutionaries’, the Secretary of the Hull branch of the Transport and General Workers’ Union encouraged any men not at sea to assist the ‘fighting fishwives’—they had drawn more attention to the issue in a few days than the union had managed in years. His first book, The Headscarf Revolutionaries (Barbican Press, 2015) – now optioned by a major television production company – derived from a funded PhD at that university, where he taught creative nonfiction.

For some women in Hull, this was a tragedy that could have been avoided with better equipment and more stringent safety checks on the trawler ships, and better training for inexperienced crew members.Lavery’s tale of how the Triple Trawler Tragedy unleashed the fury of the formidable women of the Hessle Road is an inspiration, Lily Bilocca personified the courage and determination of an entire community. This is a powerful book that gives full voice to the grief and determination of the women who fought trawler owners and forced them to put men s lives before profit. A barrage of vicious hate mail, often from those she’d done most to help, was sent to her home and to the press. The flowers laid in her memory, paired with the number of people who turned up to pay their respects, spoke volumes about how she will be remembered in this city. In the few weeks that I’d been freelance, pals from my previous job had played a few practical jokes on me.