In the mid-1980s, most British newspapers were still produced using hot metal. Rupert Murdoch, chair of News International, publisher of The Sun, News of the World, The Times and Sunday Times, was determined to free himself from Fleet Street’s powerful print unions and traditional printing methods. During 1985 he equipped a new plant at Wapping in east London, where new technology would allow journalists to input copy directly on screen.
Following the collapse of talks about working conditions, a strike was declared, striking workers were sacked and overnight Murdoch moved the four titles to Wapping, employing the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union union to staff the new plant. The first copies rolled off the presses on 25 January 1986. Print unions and supporters picketed the entrance to the plant, with The Battle of Wapping – one of the most bitter and violent disputes in British industrial history – continuing for 13 months.
Print workers battle for future: union dispute over News International’s Wapping print plant
By Patrick Wintour, labour correspondent
25 January 1986
Print workers at the Sun and the Times walked out on strike last night in what their unions regard as a battle for their future stake in Fleet Street. The News of the World and Sunday Times print workers were also called out.
Mr Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News International, which publishes the four titles, immediately responded by saying that he would attempt to print the newspapers with the help of members of the electricians’ union, EETPU, at Wapping, east London, and Glasgow.
Senior editorial management last night met journalists on the Sun and the Times to tell them that they would be expected to report for work at Wapping. Management told the journalists that they had a choice between working for the company or remaining loyal to their union’s instructions.
Leaders of the National Union of Journalists last night said that the management’s actions involved an unwarranted change in their employment contracts and need not be heeded. There were signs, however, that many journalists would be prepared to go to Wapping even if this meant going through picket lines being set up by the National Graphical Association and Sogat.
Members of Sogat representing distribution staff in London and the provinces were yesterday instructed by their executive, meeting at the TUC, not to touch any News International titles. The union accepts that this instruction will place Sogat liable to litigation under the government’s secondary actions laws.
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Murdoch produces dailies to top Sunday success
By Keith Harper and Gareth Parry
27 January 1986
Mr Rupert Murdoch last night repeated his Sunday paper success story by printing the Times and the Sun at News International’s new Wapping, east London, plant as smoothly as he had produced the Sunday Times and the News of the World.
He achieved this in spite of a full-scale strike by the two print unions, the National Graphical Association and Sogat ‘82, but with maximum cooperation from the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunication and Plumbing Union and substantial support from members of the National Union of Journalists.
With his printing presses being operated by the electricians, Mr Murdoch needed backing from the journalists. He got it from the Sun journalists, who with few exceptions, moved to Wapping yesterday and who worked normally.
The Times journalists were more deeply divided, and were meeting last night to discuss their position. But according to Mr Bruce Matthews, managing director of News International, 65 editorial staff reported for duty yesterday, sufficient for, paper to be produced with management involvement.
Later, the Times NUJ meeting ended with the majority of the Chapel voting to go to Wapping under the conditions offered by the company, said the union general secretary, Mr Harry Conroy.
Mr Conroy had earlier said that journalists who had gone to Wapping would be ‘wide open’ to attack by an ‘utterly ruthless’ employer.
News International is offering journalists an extra £2,000 a year – plus Bupa membership to operate new technology at the plant – or instant dismissal if they refuse. The Times journalists were given until today to decide.
The company claimed a great success in producing the two Sunday titles. More than 1.2m copies of the Sunday Times were printed at Wapping, and three million of the News of the World – 60 per cent of the tabloid’s usual print at Wapping and in Glasgow. Union action prevented the normal contract printing of the News of the World on the Express group’s presses in Manchester and News International said it would sue over this action.
The Sunday Times total print was 150,000 short of its orders and led to distribution problems, with many readers receiving only parts of the paper which was divided into five supplements.
Few incidents were reported at Wapping as the Sunday newspapers were rushed out in lorries past a handful of pickets. Last night the six-strong picket was in position again at Wapping’s entrance, shouting “scab, scab” as some workers went into the floodlit plant.
“What a way to go to work,” said a Sogat man as cream coloured luxury coach passed through the 10 foot tall gates which were surrounded by razor wire. The interior of the coach, bathed in the cosy pink glow of its strip lighting, looked luxurious but empty.
“They are lying on the floor so that we don’t see them” “Neil, Neil – come here Neil, Neil, you sod,” shouted another picket despairingly as the Sun man’s Ford Escort screeched through the gates.
This is an edited extract. Read the full article here and here.
Editorial: The battle for Wapping
27 January 1986
If it weren’t for Westland, of course, it would be Wapping that dominated every headline and television news. Watch this space. Wapping has barely begun yet.
At one level the meticulously orchestrated confrontation between Mr Rupert Murdoch and the country’s two most powerful printing unions can be seen as just another chapter in the long, painful history of Fleet Street warfare. A pulsating chapter, to be sure: perhaps even the pivotal one in a book which henceforth may be mainly footnotes and appendices. But it doesn’t stop there. Within a couple of days we must inexorably expect the first steps to throw Mr Eric Hammond’s electricians out of the TUC. Thereafter the crisis will spread in all manner of unpredictable ways – with the Labour party and its leadership sucked unwilling to the vortex.
The battle of Wapping will be won, we guess, by the side that has gauged the mood of the times most accurately. If the print workers can make other unions feel that theirs is a symbolic cause which, willy-nilly, has to be truly supported, and slogged through, then there will be many twists and turns to come. If Mr Murdoch has read the runes aright, then this is his moment, to be capitalised upon with characteristic single-mindedness. The overriding question every participant and every onlooker will have to ask themselves, meanwhile, as the days drag by, is how they wish to manage technological change. Is it something – see the old, dead Programme for Action – to be acknowledged and agreed in an industry (any industry) where partnership matters? Or is it something to be resisted to the last, as the waves pile higher on the beach?
This is an edited extract. Read the full article.
Refuseniks who resist lure of ‘Wapping lies’
By Dennis Barker
29 January 1986
Thirty self-styled journalistic refuseniks sat in a well-guarded tomb in the centre of London yesterday, refusing to move out to Wapping at arbitrary notice to please Mr Rupert Murdoch.
A young and denimed Sunday Times man sat in the features office and proclaimed, amid strained laughter from equally rebellious colleagues: ‘We have learned in the past few days, since the ultimatum to go to the new Wapping works or be sacked was sprung on journalists, that there are lies, Wapping lies and Murdoch journalism. We are being treated with contempt and that is why we are sitting tight in Gray’s Inn Road, trying to work normally.’
An older hand, who had come into the almost deserted Sunday Times building only to collect his papers en route for electronic marvels further east, said drily: ‘I have learned nothing new in the past few days. The way this management has set about the move to Wapping is quite true to form. My threshold is such that I am not shocked by it.’
And the veteran exited for Wapping, while a bunch of colleagues assured him that they bore him no ill will on this account. He reciprocated. The 30 refuseniks – half the 60 who had voted the previous day to stay put at an official National Union of Journalists’ meeting – are determined not to be at odds with their Wapping bound brothers.
Yesterday they were also determined to carry out their contracts faithfully and give Mr Murdoch’s News International no legitimate pretext for their dismissal. But anything normal was highly unlikely in the building, which is directly overlooked by Mr Murdoch’s own room in the adjoining Times offices.
To get inside the building to make their moral stand the refuseniks had to carry newly issued staff passes, be interrogated by a muscular security man directly by the front doors and then make their way to their own deserted and gloomy offices with the heating apparently waning.
There they were up against the discouraging fact that it appeared that Wapping was in a position to ring them but did not, while they were in no position file their stories to Wapping without being asked because Sogat 82, one of the print unions on strike was not manning the Wapping switchboards.
One young reporter who saw what was going on and decided to try Wapping excused himself by saying that he had no objection to modern technology – and he did have a £60,000 mortgage and a young family.
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