John Gulliver - We recognise the hand that slapped the table
Published: 28 July 2011
WHEN Rupert Murdoch’s hand slapped the table during the parliamentary grilling last week, millions of TV viewers saw it.
But only a few saw the media baron in action when he met a group of trade unionists in the mid-1980s just before he closed down his newspapers, moved them secretly into his Wapping fortress – and sacked 5,000 workers.
The memory is lodged in the mind of Camden Council’s deputy leader, Sue Vincent, because her father Vic sat opposite him and witnessed an amazing scene.
Vic, a trade union shop steward at the Sunday Times office in Gray’s Inn Road, was part of a deputation that had arranged to meet the great man.
For 45 minutes they sat and waited, and then in walked Murdoch – much younger than he is today, of course, full of a sense of power, an owner of the tabloid the Sun as well as The Times and Sunday Times newspapers.
“What do you want?” he asked the deputation.
It was obviously the opening gambit of a man who wanted to shake down his enemies. Vic explained that they wanted to discuss their long term grievance, the need to negotiate their “terms and conditions”.
As he said this, he showed Murdoch their contract. Murdoch glanced at it, took it from his hand – and then to everyone’s astonishment – slowly tore it up.
He didn’t say a word. Then Murdoch walked out of the room. For him, that was the end of the evening.
Shortly afterwards, Murdoch demonstrated his feelings again by sacking all his workers and offering new contracts to those who wanted to work at his new Wapping plant, which he had secretly built.
This moment of high drama loomed large in Sue’s mind as she told me about her father, who died early last year at the age of 80.
“He was a lovely man who would light up a room,” she told me.
Born into a working class family off the Old Kent Road, the family lived in an old house, later condemned. It had no running hot water – a tin bath was kept in the kitchen for the family bath.
Typically, Vic played out in the evenings in those far off days in the 1930s and 1940s, and even starred as a boxer and footballer. He almost turned pro as a featherweight, and later went for trials for Fulham and Chelsea football clubs.
But he settled for a job as a printer and worked first as a typesetter and later a “machine minder” on the big presses at Odhams in Long Acre in Covent Garden, where the Daily Herald and later the Sun were printed.
Inevitably, he became one of the 5,000 men sacked by Murdoch. Both he and Sue’s mother Marian marched and protested outside the Wapping plant. But, like so many of those sacked, his life was turned upside down. Sacked in your fifties! What do you do? And like a few old printers, Vic became a cabbie.
His life would never be the same again. The old camaraderie of the print room was gone – the life of 30-40 years – all gone, the moment Murdoch tore up that contract.
But Vic wanted his daughter to understand the need for respect that ordinary people are entitled to – and when she was only 13 he suggested she should read the classic socialist novel by Robert Tressell, the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
The hands that tore up that contract were the same hands that slapped the table last week.
They were gnarled with rivulets of veins and Murdoch’s face had aged. But it was the same old Murdoch, I believe, with the same contempt for human beings.
I would have liked to have met Sue’s father and had a drink with him.
Murdoch? Never!
Comments
I dare say! Name one decent newspaper?
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 2011-07-30 04:07.There are so many issues that are planet threatening that are going comepletely unreported. Points: Haven't heard anything on TV or the papers about two flooded nuclear power plants in the midwest. Shoot don't even know what state it is in. Haven't heard anything new about Darth Rupert that is newsworthy.. seriously the best you can come up with is a story about a guy that got sacked 40 years ago. pathetic. Has any newspaper or tv station reported anything about New Zealand releasing there UFO reports or the fact that a Canadian Minister of Defense went public with UFO disclosure. If you want news you have to get it out of the US theres no way around it. They don't report crap here and what does get reported is always slanted in favor of the rich and powerful. Enouph truth is told to keep you interested. If you can find a newspaper that isn't part of a conglomerate then maybe its worth wiping your ass with, but it is still beholden to the advertisers that pay there bills and most of them are conglomerate owned. So freedom of speech has been mutated to mean freedom of the Nobility to brainwash, lie and wage class warfare on the rest of us peasants. If you still subscribe to anything King Murdoch owns or continue to advertise in his papers or media, YOU Sir, are, in fact, just as guilty as he is. You are just making less money. grow a set and stand up for something you spineless bastards!
Despicable man
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2011-07-29 14:34.History will show the truth about this man and his destruction of a decent Britain and the construction of the hate-filled press we now have (obviously we still have decent newspapers).
It's amazing that the man who attempted to custard pie this despicable man faces prison, whilst Murdoch and his atrocious deputies still walk free.
Hopefully it will be the end for this man's plan to dominate Britain politically with his propaganda. Just have a look at the frankly hilarious Fox News in the states to see what we could have had.
A truly immoral sociopath. And Thatchers best friend.
Make of that what you will.
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