Pentonville Five
group of British trade union shop stewards imprisoned in 1972
The Pentonville Five were five shop stewards who were imprisoned in July 1972 by the National Industrial Relations Court for refusing to obey a court order to stop picketing a container depot in East London. Their arrest and imprisonment led to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) calling a general strike.
Injunction
The events took place against the background of a clash between the Conservative government of Edward Heath and the trade union movement, involving the first national miners’ strike in Britain since 1926, with mass picketing, and clashes between police and workers.
Dockers at the Chobham Farm container depot, Temple Mills, Newham, were unofficially striking and picketing the site.
The National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC) had issued an injunction barring further picketing, following an application by Midland Cold Storage Company.
Arrest
Picketing continued despite the injunction. Five shop stewards were named by private investigators for the cold storage company – Conny Clancy, Tony Merrick, Bernie Steer, Vic Turner and Derek Watkins. Warrants were issued by the court for their arrest for contempt of court, and they were imprisoned on 21 July 1972.
Protests
Following their arrest, a rolling series of strikes began to cause work stoppages until there was virtually an unofficial national strike.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) then called for an official national strike on 31 July, demanding the release of the five shop stewards.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pentonville Five” as group of British trade union shop stewards imprisoned in 1972. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as group of British trade union shop stewards imprisoned in 1972. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7165271. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972 and 1926.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pentonville Five” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.