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Feature: News International Dispute - 25 Years On

Published: 25 April, 2011
by BARRIE CLEMENT

SO why should I voluntarily give up an excellent job as a Times journalist for a future that was, at best, uncertain?

Why did I decide to refuse to cross printworkers’ picket lines at Wapping in 1986? 

After all, I had three young sons, a foster daughter and a newly-acquired mega-mortgage.

In any case, the great majority of Times journalists decided to go to the Murdoch fortress and produce his papers.

But to those familiar with the esoteric ethics of the labour movement it was a logical decision by someone who called himself a trade unionist (and who still does). 

I would like to think that other people with a sense of fairness might sympathise with my course of action. There were even one or two Tories among the so-called Wapping “Refuseniks” who simply didn’t like being pushed around.

Perhaps many people these days would find my behaviour eccentric at best and utterly irresponsible at worst, given my family responsibilities.

So let me offer a few reasons. The first, as I’ve said, was that I was a convinced trade unionist and 6,000 of our print­worker colleagues had been dismissed for going on strike after rejecting an agreement that would have left them impotent.

The second, which might well be tied up with the first, is that I cannot abide bullies. 

Rupert Murdoch was clearly a bully who owned far too big a chunk of British newspapers.

Times journalists were told to forget any qualms they might have about crossing picket lines and report for duty at the east London plant. Otherwise they would be sacked. Oh and erm, there’s a £2,000 lump sum for your trouble. 

In fact the National Union of Journalists had urged editorial staff not to go to Wapping, a complex that had been secretly prepared to produce The Times and Murdoch’s other titles.

A year previously Mrs Thatcher, another bully, had seen off the labour movement’s praetorian guard in the miners’ strike of 1984-85. A year later Murdoch, with the assistance of the Thatcher government, duly crushed the second most powerful group of workers in the print dispute.

Sometimes I think it is not fully appreciated how extreme the Thatcher government was. During the miners’ strike parts of Britain became like mini police states with the movements of anyone who might resemble a striking pitman strictly monitored. I know, because I was often stopped and asked to identify myself when I was reporting the dispute for The Times.

In the Wapping conflict, Murdoch was helped by Mrs Thatcher’s anti-union legislation and a police force that was determined to facilitate the production of his newspapers.

The union movement has never recovered from those defeats. To an extent the NUJ always piggy-backed on the print unions, who were the organisations with the real muscle. 

Since then, the wages of journalists have been in freefall and the influence of their union undermined (but thankfully not extinguished).

Murdoch’s offer to establish an independent board for Sky News to smooth the way to his takeover of BSkyB should be seen in the light of the printworkers’ strike. 

Murdoch set up an “independent” board to oversee The Times when he took it over. But that did not stop him dismis­sing 6,000 print workers and any journalist on his newspaper who had the effrontery to support them.

There is, however, a basic logic at the heart  of trade unionism that ensures that it will never disappear. An employer is invariably more powerful than a single  employee – and the only way round that is for employees to band together. Murdoch wants to destroy that idea.

Barrie Clements is now a freelance journalist after 20 years on the staff of The Independent 

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