Upon the four women’s return to Hull, Denness told the waiting press: “We have achieved more in six weeks than the politicians and trade unions have in years.” The BBC broadcast a documentary entitled "Hull's Headscarf Heroes" in February 2018, to mark fifty years since the loss of the three trawlers. [14]

Yvonne Blenkinsop and Chrissie Smallbone joined Lillian on the stage. The two women were well-known in the community, especially Yvonne, a local cabaret singer. The Headscarf Revolutionaries thrills with the dangers of the high seas; inspires with the passion of women who changed their world, and reveals the vivid life inside one of history’s most vital communities. The opening of 1968 was such a time. The Prague Spring coincided with the Civil Rights movement in the US, the anti-Vietnam War riot in Grosvenor Square, the March events in Poland, the occupation at Nanterre, and eventually the May Days in Paris. And to this list we can add the uprising of the Headscarf Revolutionaries, which has now been brilliantly documented in a new book by Brian W. Lavery. Their other conditions involved ensuring that all trawlers in the UK were fully equipt with necessary safety equipment and that safety ships would be sent to monitor conditions and be a ship's first port of call should one ever be in trouble.Sole survivor Harry Eddom recovering in an Icelandic hospital after his 36-hour fight for survival. Analysing the events Lavery describes, one might reach two reasonable but contradictory conclusions. Pessimistically, one might note – as John Prescott accepted once in power – that capitalism can’t be reformed. More optimistically, one might add that direct action gets the goods – in a few weeks a few women won changes that for their sector were at least as significant as the concessions earned a few months later by millions of French workers who rendered the state helpless and momentarily forced the government to abdicate. The front cover of the Hull Daily Mail on 5 February, 1968, the day the loss of the third trawler, the Ross Cleveland, was confirmed. In an early interview with me, Mary Denness recalled their arrival at King’s Cross: “It was full of journalists, union men, photographers and TV folk. When we got off, the station was empty, and the platforms were surrounded by those barriers they use on royal visits.”

She combined a career as a singer alongside being a married mother of four. She toured the country as Yvonne — the golden girl with the golden voice.

For me, their true legacy is the innumerable people here today who might not have been but for their campaign. Their story, like their legacy, now belongs to the world. On the 4 th, the Ross Cleveland sank just off the north-west coast of Iceland. Miraculously, Harry Eddom, the sole survivor from the three trawlers, made it to shore. He was found on the 6 th. 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. They also delivered a list of 88 proposals outlining how to make the industry safer, all of which would eventually be adopted. But the family were called to the rest home in the early hours of Sunday, April 24 where Blenkinsop had passed away. The St Romanus did not have a radio operator on board — amazingly this was not illegal. On February 4, only one man (the mate, Harry Eddom) was to survive the sinking of the Ross Cleveland, off Iceland. Fifty-eight men perished across 26 days.