Act 2 In a -Liverpool club, the folks are 'Carryin' On'. Maggie May is there, a quieter, more soberly dressed Maggie May, with bitter words for Casey's `friends' and a hard rebuff for Willie Morgan who is still at his fixing ways. The strike is on and biting. The milkman can only sell half-pints as the women's purse strings draw tighter and the men try to rouse up a mass rally. Maggie May and her friend Maureen have no time for it all. The men have got their priorities wrong. There are more important and more natural things than the Natural Struggle, and as for the Union, 'There's Only One Union' that counts and thats the union between man and woman. Casey gets the message. Maggie May is his friend, it's all probability that she'll be his lover before long, but in the meanwhile he won't listen to her angry pleas that all he is doing is putting himself up to be hurt as their lives begin to run away from them. At the march, Casey speaks fluently in defence of his actions and the strike. It is not a case of more money; he and his mates simply will not load a cargo which is going to the other side of the world to oppress men like themselves. But when it is Willie Morgan's turn to speak he takes a practised angle, wooing the men with the money to be earned and mocking Casey's far-away fairy stories, encouraging the impoverished dockers to think of themselves and their families with chauvinistic skill. Before he is finished, much of the spirit has gone from many of the strikers and the glint is gone from the rebellion. Willie Morgan wants more from Casey than his hide. He wants to complete the man's humiliation by taking Maggie May from him. From anger at Casey, the frustrated girl agrees to go out with the boss to New Brighton where he tries to convince her that 'The World's a Lovely Place' as he gropes her grossly. But Maggie May knows that she cannot go through with this whatever happens, she loves her Casey, she always has and she always will. Casey is spending the same time drowning his sorrows and trying to drown the memory and the spirit of his father and everything connected with him. He wants nothing more to do with the Union and with Cogger. He doesn't want to be a hero or a figurehead, he just wants to have peace and quiet and a job and Maggie May. Maggie May finds him wandering about in a boozy stupor and takes him home with her watched by the bitter Cogger. Cogger blames Casey for fumbling his luck, for ruining Cogger's go for glory with 'his' strike. He hates Casey for having the charisma and confidence which he will never have, and he is jealous of the evident love the man has from Maggie May whom he bitterly qualifies as a 'dirty whore'. The other Gang Three members, without Cogger's personal reasons for jealousy, stick up for Casey. Everyone is different and Casey has a right to live as he wants and not as Cogger and any others might wish him to. In the morning, Casey wakes up in Maggie May's bed and real love finally gets around to them. Casey is determined that from now on they will just live their ordinary, quiet life together. But no sooner has Casey left Maggie May's side than Cogger is after him again, trying to separate him from Maggie May with scorn, trying to tack on to Casey and wherever he's going, pleading friendship. When Casey knocks him back, the bitter Cogger changes his allegiance. He heads straight for Willie Morgan with a piece of news. Casey has one last deed to do and if Cogger can't share it with him, then Cogger will damn him for doing it. Casey has gone to the docks. He has broken into a crane and he has begun loading the crates of guns into a cage. Morgan, Cogger and the police they have alerted rush in in time to see the cargo being swung towards the open river. The guns tumble from the crane into the depths of the River Liver and Casey swings the crane back for more But, as he does so, the arm sof the crane becomes entangled with some overhead electric wires. A crane driver rushes forward to shout instructions, but Willie Morgan silences him physically. The crane erupts in a shower of sparks and Casey's body arcs with electricity as the power of the cables pours through the crane cabin. Then, and only then, does Willie Morgan pull the mains switch. As the dead body of Patrick Casey is carried away, Maggie May delivers her last words to Liverpool, the town and the people who killed her Casey.
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