Going on strike over union recognition was the right thing to do – but it’s a blunt weapon of last resort. Ian Mollison recalls a year on a newspaper picket line


On the frontline in the Thatcher years T


he Aberdeen Journals dispute is long over, but the events that occurred between 18 August 1989 and 14 September 1990 still surface occasionally. They did in an edition of The Journalist, which recalled how former


Conservative cabinet minister Michael Gove was one of the strikers (‘When journalists go into politics,’ February/March). “The picket line of sacked journalists no longer stands outside the Mastrick newspaper plant (now recently demolished) of the company’s office in Aberdeen. The heroes who stood outside as autumn turned to winter, then spring and summer, have long since returned to a normal life.” These are not my words, though they could be as I was one of the 116 journalists who took a stand against the publisher of the Evening Express and the Press and Journal. These words are from a foreword in a commemorative


illustrated book called Strike! published in 1990. The writer was Iain Campbell, father of the Aberdeen Journals’ NUJ chapel during the dispute. From time to time, I take the book down from the shelf, blow off the dust, and remind myself what it was like to be at the front line of trade unionism in Thatcher’s Britain. And I stood shoulder to shoulder with Michael Gove on the picket line. The strikes were to defend the right to be represented by a union. The company, part of Thomson Regional Newspapers, offered jobs to would-be recruits at salaries thousands lower than those they replaced – and on condition they snubbed collective bargaining. Existing staff journalists were offered lump sums and


salary increases on condition they gave up union representation. Many held out. Others felt they had to swallow their principles and sign… bills to pay and families to feed. Eventually, the pressure could no longer be contained and the


majority of journalists walked out on strike that summer. Following negotiations, the first dispute was settled relatively


quickly. But, within three weeks, the journalists walked out again after a long and heated chapel meeting. However, this time, there were to be fewer of us. Passions were raised at the meeting. Frank views were exchanged. False promises had been made about union recognition. Scotland on Sunday – which reported the dispute fairly even though it was then part of the same group – stated on 31 October that “only the Battle of Wapping can compare in intensity”. For readers of a younger demographic, the 1986 Wapping


dispute between Rupert Murdoch’s News International and the print unions was one of the most controversial in British


18 | theJournalist “


Being on strike is not a jolly. I shake my head when I see some images of today’s strikes throughout society


industrial history. Newspapers were moving from hot metal to computers, and the closed shop was being challenged. The NUJ urged its members not to work there and some refused to go to the new plant in Wapping. The Wapping strike eventually collapsed on February 5 1987. The old Fleet Street had been dealt a fatal blow. In 2016, the Dundee-based Sunday Post closed the last remaining Fleet Street newspaper office. Back in Scotland, our strike was not about higher wages, the closed shop or the introduction of computers. It was about something fundamental – the right to collective bargaining. The strikers ran a steady media campaign, leafleted throughout the Highlands and the north east, protested in person in Toronto at the annual general meeting of parent company Thomson Organization, produced our own Free Press newspaper and steadily picketed the company’s offices through rain, hail and sunshine. The picketing seemed to really irk the Aberdeen Journals senior management. Apparently, it wasn’t a pleasant experience for those who decided to work on. And even less pleasant for those dubbed job thieves for taking the strikers’ places to keep bringing the papers out. New staff were taken on – journalists from elsewhere and those who fancied being journalists, such as teachers and a postman. Some had talent. They were children of the Thatcher era, putting No 1 first. The newspapers suffered as circulations fell and advertising faded away, with local authorities strong backers of the NUJ. Local politicians of all parties were supportive, even Conservatives. Some who became MPs and MSPs felt in the years to follow that they were given less than fair treatment by the Press and Journal and the Evening Express because of their support for the NUJ. Throughout, the strikers had strong support from Aberdeen Trades Council and from fellow trade unionists in the city and far beyond the north east. Donations from journalists elsewhere made it possible for us to keep going. Gradually, the many became fewer. Strikers found jobs


elsewhere. A few could endure it no longer and crossed the picket line. Former colleagues who continued to work through the


dispute were shunned and friendships were broken; some are still not mended. The camaraderie will remain among those who took part.


But I hope than no other trade unionists have to endure such a pain barrier. I do not regret the decision I made, but anyone


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