By the middle of the 19th century, The Times, under its great editor John Thadeus Delane, had become reified as the voice of the establishment. Consequently, the newspaper’s ownership was a matter of national importance. In 1908, there was some disquiet when it was bought by Lord Northcliffe. In the early days of Margaret Thatcher’s Government, it was rumoured that Robert Maxwell was a possible purchaser. Rupert Murdoch was also interested and intended to introduce new technology. This alarmed employees, especially the well-unionised printers. The establishment was keen to keep Maxwell – The Outsider, according to Tom Bower – on the outside so Murdoch, owner of The Sun and the News of the World, got his hands on The Times and the Sunday Times. And the stage was set for the last battle in the war between hot metal and compositing using computer technology.
Murdoch was determined to build new premises, in Wapping, equipped with the latest technology, get rid of most of the printers and effectively neuter those who were left. That sat well with an ideologically-driven, right-wing Prime Minister who had already delivered a bloody nose to the unions during the miners’ strike.There was something almost mythical about the way the elemental forces of management and unionism, capital and labour, squared up to each other.
Capitalism says it thrives on competition. That is a lie. Capital strives to dominate a market by controlling wages and the supply of raw materials, doing down rivals and destroying competition.But myth, of course, is never simple. There are complexities, betrayals, tricks, lies, double-dealing, false promises and unexpected – sometimes catastrophic – reversals of fortune. The print unions were powerfully entrenched and could easily disrupt production and, with support from other trade unions, severely handicap distribution.
Eddie Shah, owner of the Messenger Group, with similar ambitions as far as labour, technology and profit-taking were concerned, had demonstrated at Warrington and Stockport how a ruthless employer backed by pliant politicians and police could deal with opposition. The rules of the class war had changed: the closed shop was being eroded, picketing was being restricted and solidarity with other unions curtailed. Workers could now be fired without management facing unfair dismissal claims, unions made responsible for losses during strike action, funds sequestrated. The police had learned from recent strikes in the provincial press and the miners’ dispute.New premises, new plant and new production practices would necessarily lead to a severe reduction of the work force, said Murdoch.
As negotiations between management and unions dragged on, his plans to wreck the power of the unions and change the geography of Fleet Street continued in secret. News International built new premises and installed new technology at Wapping under the pretence it was for a new evening title, the London Post, to be produced with workers from Eric Hammond’s Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union.The move to Wapping was opposed by the NGA and SOGAT; the NUJ also opposed the move and hoped members would not go without negotiation.
The strike started on January 24 1986 and, as this book makes clear, inter-union tensions and failures of trust between production workers, and their various unions, all played a part in the course of events. Effectively, 6,000 workers were sacked. The main public actions took place outside News International premises at Pennington Street, Virginia Street and The Highway, with various and often-violent rallies, demos and meetings.
John Lang, a councillor in the London Borough of Newham and a librarian on the business section of The Times, was acting father of the SOGAT chapel – shop stewards in the printing trade have traditionally been referred to as mothers or fathers of their respective chapels – and Graham Dodkins, whom he met when they were both working at Thomson Newspapers and discovered a shared passion for West Ham United, was back working as a librarian at The Times after a spell at Reuters and as a London cabbie.
One of the most valuable things about their book is the extensive use of personal testimony, especially recounting what happened at union meetings, as well as on the streets. The dispute did not just involve printers, but also managers, clerks, secretaries, librarians, copy typists and messengers. Divide and rule was the order of the day, and the unions probably didn’t realise the extent of the management strategy. Murdoch used non-union labour to transport papers from production to distribution and the police were deployed on military lines.
“A lot of people may have thought it was just another dispute, there’d be a settlement and we’d all walk back… But I never believed that” (Frank). “I could see all these white vans coming down the road. I heard the doors open and shouts of ‘Run!’ The riot police got out and chased us. Some of the men sat down in the road and the police just ran over and clobbered as many people as they could. One of the older men went down. He must have been in his 70s and the police just clubbed him” (Michele). “Like the majority of Sunday Times journalists, I dislike the print unions. An article may be the culmination of weeks or even months of research. It’s only human to resent a threat to its appearance created by one of the National Graphical Association’s interminable demands for extra machine room manning” (Peter Wilby). “It was the first offer and I’d read all the stuff about what the union offered Murdoch, which was most of what he’d asked for, and I was in tears. We’d been down there four months getting our heads bashed in and Brenda Dean had done this. I was raging” (Joyce).
It was a war of attrition which ended on February 5 1987. Things would never be the same again and the events that brought about these changes are illuminatingly chronicled here by two insiders. It was an important part of a bigger picture we now all know rather more about.
