wapping


30 YEARS AGO TODAY


IT WAS


We could be – and were – dealt with later. To achieve this fell purpose, he sought legal advice from the Queen’s solicitors, Farrer & Co. They advised that the best way to do this would be to provoke the printworkers into a strike, when it would be easier to dismiss the entire workforce. Murdoch took up this suggestion enthusiastically, goading the unions with impossible demands, such as no negotiating rights for chapels on the new site, into a strike ballot. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. Members voted by large majorities for industrial action.


The minute they struck, he struck back harder, dismissing all 5,500 employees on the spot. He could do this because journalists were now setting their own copy and he’d done a secret deal with the Electricians’ Union, EETPU, to man the presses. Vans were hired to bypass the newspaper trains (and sympathetic railway unions) and the Metropolitan Police provided protective manpower, free of charge. Despite 24-hour picketing with occasional mass demonstrations and the burning down of the company’s newspaper reel store, Operation Wapping was a success. It took a full year, pitched battles in the street with mounted police and punitive legal action against the print union Sogat, but Murdoch finally ground down his former workforce and the strike was called off in February 1987. Labour, under the leadership of Neil Kinnock, was equivocal. It was supportive in principle – even “blacking” the titles – but opposed to violence on the picket line, which was mostly the fault of the police.


I know, I was there, speaking on the very worst night. It’s hard to hold your audience when mounted police are charging into the crowd. My wife had to flee for her life. Tory politicians applauded the outcome of the dispute. They had always hated and feared trade union strength, and now they played court to Murdoch, giving him everything he wanted to make vast profits in the UK to finance his growing media empire in the US – where he eventually became a citizen. He became a Hollywood mogul, and his rabidly right wing Fox News is the odious offspring of Wapping. The rising stars of New Labour followed in Thatcher’s footsteps. Tony Blair travelled to the other side of the world to pay homage to News International bosses; he was rewarded with the fickle political support of The Sun come election time – but only if he delivered policies acceptable to the autocrat of screen and print.


Tory anti-union laws survived largely intact. New Labour even exempted Murdoch’s tame house “union” – News International Staff Association (Nisa) – from legislation, giving limited powers to demand recognition from employers.


Let’s not forget the pressure NUJ members were under in this unprecedented conflict. It was bend the knee or get the sack. Journalists who crossed the picket line and went into Wapping were given £2,000 a year pay rises and free Bupa health insurance. They were also told that their NUJ house agreements would remain in force for two years – and promised a swimming pool. They got the bribes, but the union was derecognised, and remains so 30 years later. Naturally, the pool pledge didn’t hold water.


Mogul Murdoch’s unique “special relationship” with the 16 | theJournalist


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Murdoch’s aim was to break the print unions’ power. The NUJ was a sideshow. We could be – and were – dealt with later


political establishment burgeoned yet more when David Cameron became prime minister, with social gatherings, invitations to private meetings, even the loan of a horse to Samantha Cameron from Rebekah Wade, Rupert’s favourite whip-cracking UK executive. NoW editor Andy Coulson became the prime minister’s press secretary. Events have a way of bringing down dictators, and it all seemed destined for the rocks when the phone-hacking scandal broke in 2011.


Murdoch was compelled to pay massive compensation to celebrities. He had to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, grovel to a committee of MPs, and close the News of the World. His takeover bid for Sky News was stymied. Coulson went to prison.


But the NoW was reborn as The Sun on Sunday. Murdoch has extended his global empire. He must think he has it all – and Jerry Hall. The octogenarian magnate married the supermodel.


The story isn’t over. There are still NUJ members on his UK titles. The union was here before he came, and it will be here when he’s gone. Murdoch has done more than any other newspaper dictator to demonstrate why it’s necessary.


Journalists who said ‘no’


We “refuseniks” who would not bow to Murdoch’s bullying all had our own stories. I was thousands of


miles away in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, covering the downfall of dictator Marcos for The Times when the Wapping bomb dropped. As the paper’s South-


East Asia correspondent based in Singapore – sent there after 15 years as labour editor following the miners’ strike of 1984-85 – I had little contact with Gray’s Inn Road. I eventually got a telex


message (remember them?), informing me I would have to file to direct to Wapping, not through Reuters, because the printers were on strike. If I failed to follow


this instruction, I would be “deemed to have dismissed myself”, in the


HR jargon of the day. I spoke to my wife on


the phone, who said I should do what I thought was right, and to a close friend, Johnny Stones, NUM delegate at Frickley colliery in Yorkshire. He told me “if you’re


ringing me, you know already”. That was it. I never wrote another word for The Times. I was on strike from day one and sacked five months later. Around 70 journalists


refused to join Murdoch’s anti-union war. We were a motley crew – subs, reporters, specialists, newsdesk people, even a cartoonist. Some came out from day one – on The Times, specialist writer Pat Healy, FoC Greg Neale, foreign news editor Martin Huckerby, Sue Greenberg, Mike Sumner and Paul Harrison, plus the entire labour team –


Donald Macintyre, David Felton and Barrie Clement. On The Sun, Eric Butler,


Mike Topp and cartoonist Olly Duke. On the Sunday Times, Harry Coen. These are the ones I remember. NUJ organiser Peta van Den Bergh kept a grim roll call of the victims: “Out – sacked”. Perhaps the most


colourful story concerned NoW star reporter Andrew Drummond, who did go into Wapping. He woke up one morning with “scab” written in lipstick on his chest by his partner, a woman striker who belonged to Sogat. He was “out” faster than you can say dismissal notice. And that’s what we all


got. A P45 to remember Wapping. Mine is worth more to me than Magna Carta. In fact, it is our Magna Carta. Sometimes, we just have to say “no” to the powerful.


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