Tribute to 'working-class women' as council names building after trawler safety campaigner Lil Bilocca

“Big Lil” was a key figure in campaigning for better safety conditions following the disaster in the winter of 1968, when three Hull trawlers sank in as many weeks with the loss of 58 lives.

Instead it was named after Hull's first female GP Mary Murdoch.

Now Hull Council has decided to name the former Age UK building, Bradbury House, which it recently acquired for around £600,000, Lil Bilocca House instead.

Deputy council leader Coun Daren Hale said: "It's a stones throw from the mural of Lil on Anlaby Road.

"I think a lot of people were quite disappointed that she didn't get the name for the bridge.

"There aren't many buildings named after local women because of the way society was run and even fewer for working-class women."

Mrs Bilocca's son Ernie will unveil a plaque alongside Mayor Lynn Petrini on December 17.

The plaque will record the names of the three women who together with Mrs Bilocca - Christine Jensen, Mary Denness and Yvonne Blenkinsop - eventually convinced trawler owners to introduce basic safety precautions following the loss of the St Romanus, Kingston Peridot, and Ross Cleveland within the space of a month.

The women took their battle to Downing Street and met the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, before finally winning the battle for full-time radio operators to be a legal requirement on trawlers.

Mrs Bilocca received death threats and telegrams telling her not to interfere in men’s work and was blacklisted from working in the fishing industry.

Coun Hale said: "What happens generally is that buildings are named after the rich and powerful.

"Working class history is not often written down. Go back a generation or two and there are literacy issues. It is seldom written down and big buildings tended to be named after the rich and powerful.

"At the time because Lil Bilocca was standing up for health and safety there were some in that community, women and men, who felt she was threatening their incomes and livelihoods.

"There have always been these arguments about people who stand up for health and safety.

"Looking back retrospectively history has seen her quite rightly as one of Hull's heroines."