The High Court ruled that the Department for Trade and Industry was partly responsible for the health and safety of dockworkers throughout England and Wales in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mr Justice Silber, sitting in London, said that labour boards at the ports, which organised the dockers’ work, were not entitled to pass on all responsibility to the shipping companies that carried the asbestos cargoes.

The DTI, which assumed responsibility for the National Dock Labour Board after it was disbanded in 1967, will exercise its right to appeal.

Today’s ruling was given in cases brought by Winifred Rice, whose husband Edward, died of the asbestos cancer mesothelioma in 2000, and Robert Thompson who still suffers from a disabling asbestos-related illness.

The DTI, represented by Davies Arnold Cooper, argued that the dock board was not an employer, but that it simply arranged labour for shipping companies. But the judge said that the dockers, most of which were employed on a casual basis and worked for different shipping companies each day, were owed a duty of care by the National Dock Labour Board.

Kevin Johnson, a solicitor at John Pickering and Partners, for the claimants, said: "This decision will help other dockers and their families to bring claims for compensation without them having to identify individual shipping companies, many of whom no longer exist."

Adrian Budgen, a solicitor at Irwin Mitchell, welcomed the decision saying that if the ruling is upheld on appeal it would become "infinitely easier for victims to seek compensation."

Lawyers said any docker who worked under the labour board and can demonstrate a medical condition resulting from asbestos exposure may now be able to bring a case. Families of workers who have since died will also be able to sue with lawyers predicting compensation claims running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

After the ruling Mr Thompson said: "The dock labour board put us in a pen like cattle, we were picked out and sent to unload the asbestos from the ships in the docks. "If we refused to go on the ships we were sacked. The asbestos was floating around everywhere. The dock labour board must have known they were sending us into danger."

The ruling comes less than a month after asbestos victims suffered a defeat when the House of Lords ruled, in a separate case, that employers’ responsibility for asbestos sufferers should be limited to the amount of time they worked for any particular company.

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