Fleet Street had always been the home of Britain’s news­pa­per indus­try. The emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy and anti-union gov­ern­ment, com­bined with restric­tive and unpro­duc­tive union prac­tices all came togeth­er in the mid 1980s. That recipe changed the face of Britain’s news­pa­pers and Fleet Street for­ev­er.

Earnings and 1960s and 1970s Practices

Earn­ings for some trades in Fleet Street had been arti­fi­cial­ly inflat­ed. When the Sun­day Times moved to be print­ed at Thom­son House in 1961, increas­ing cir­cu­la­tion would have meant an addi­tion­al machine — and men — were need­ed had they stayed where they were. As the new­er press­es could accom­mo­date this extra work an agree­ment was reached that the Sun­day Times would pay the equiv­a­lent of the extra crew to the Father of the Chapel to dis­trib­ute among exist­ing print­ers. In the ear­ly 1960s the Tele­graph had an offi­cial man­ning fig­ure of 306, and the 252 men who worked shared the oth­er 54 pay pack­ets between them­selves.

Over at the Sun­day Mir­ror, an agreed sys­tem of breaks for ware­house work was devel­oped with one hour break per three hours worked. This was enforced through one-off, two-on prin­ci­ples. To meet peak demand the ​‘off’ man could be asked back and paid at the over­time rates. This was called blow.

Restric­tions on admit­tance to a Union and demand for work­ers meant some papers were employ­ing crafts­men casu­al­ly that might also be employed else­where — dou­ble work­ing, was espe­cial­ly preva­lent on Sun­day titles for those men work­ing on dai­ly news­pa­pers.

Final­ly, fat, was the prac­tice of pay­ing com­pos­i­tors for set­ting work for which cus­tomers had sup­plied their own blocks. Man­age­ment had been able to ​‘nego­ti­ate’ that to allow plates to be sent direct to the news­pa­per, com­pos­i­tors should not be dis­ad­van­taged and so they would be paid as if they had set those adver­tise­ments them­selves.

Strong unions, keen to pre­serve their craft and lim­it the sup­ply of qual­i­fied work­ers (usu­al­ly lim­it­ed to sons of mem­bers) were pit­ted against poor man­age­ment unable to nego­ti­ate well for the com­mer­cial ben­e­fit of their news­pa­pers.

Wapping Dispute

By the ear­ly 1980s tech­nol­o­gy had advanced to allow for elec­tron­ic com­po­si­tion of news­pa­pers and more flex­i­ble print­ing. This had a com­mer­cial upside of allow­ing jour­nal­ists to enter copy elec­tron­i­cal­ly and head to the press with min­i­mal inter­ven­tion, rather than through the myr­i­ad trades and tra­di­tion­al print­ing prac­tices then in use.

Mur­doch was keen to cap­i­talise on Mar­garet Thatch­er’s anti-Union laws and take advan­tage of these tech­nolo­gies so built and equipped a brand new plant at Wap­ping under the cov­er sto­ry that it would be used for a new news­pa­per, The Lon­don Post. This fit-out work was com­plet­ed by mem­bers of the Elec­tri­cal, Elec­tron­ic, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and Plumb­ing Union (EETPU) — this became the AEEU, Ami­cus and final­ly merged in to Unite.

Mur­doch offered tra­di­tion­al trades redun­dan­cy pay­ments to move to mod­ern meth­ods of pro­duc­tion, and unions would not accept the offer. On 24 Jan­u­ary 1986 the unions went on strike. News Inter­na­tion­al issued dis­missal notices for the 6,800 employ­ees involved con­tent that the Wap­ping plant would be used for the pro­duc­tion of their titles — the Lon­don Post was a cov­er for the move of this work.

At the new plant in Wap­ping, some 670 employ­ees were used to pub­lish and print what had been pro­duced by 6,800 peo­ple at Fleet Street.

Print union demon­stra­tions were large with 1,200 arrests dur­ing the year-long dis­pute. Police were used to main­tain access to the premis­es as strik­ers filled Pen­ning­ton Street and installed them­selves at Vir­ginia Street and The High­way. Draw­ing in oth­er unions, British Rail union mem­bers were encour­aged not to ship news­pa­pers. Mur­doch respond­ed by switch­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion from rail to TNT. Unions were keen to stress their anti-vio­lence stance, but police end­ed up using riot shields at some points.

No days of pro­duc­tion were lost at Wap­ping and the dis­pute end­ed on 5 Feb­ru­ary 1987.

Summary of Trades and Unions

Man­age­ment: exist to make mon­ey, not nec­es­sar­i­ly the peo­ple who direct oth­er to work.

Con­tent [‘Copy’]: is usu­al­ly cre­at­ed by Nation­al Union of Jour­nal­ist (NUJ) mem­bers. If this was deliv­ered by tele­phone, this was tran­scribed by Nation­al Soci­ety of Oper­a­tive Print­ers and Assis­tants (NATSOPA) mem­bers. If the copy arrives by scan­ner or tele­graph, the Nation­al Graph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion (NGA) mem­bers would han­dle this.

Edit­ing is com­plet­ed by NUJ mem­bers, but any dark­room work is done by NATSOPA mem­bers. Except if those pho­tos were received by wire or radio, then NGA mem­bers devel­op those.

Com­po­si­tion was com­plet­ed by the NGA. This was checked by read­ers, also in the NGA, sup­port­ed by assis­tants [‘copy hold­ers’] who were in NATSOPA. The per­son pulling the proofs from type for the read­ers would have been a mem­ber of the Soci­ety of Graph­i­cal and Allied Trade (SOGAT). Where print­ing blocks were need­ed, these were done by mem­bers of the Soci­ety of Lith­o­graph­ic Artists, Design­ers and Engravers (SLADE).

The NGA and NUJ come togeth­er at the stone, with the NUJ mem­ber, a stone-sub, stand­ing on one side, and the NGA mem­ber on the oth­er assem­bling pages. These pages were turned in to stereo­types by MGA mem­bers who were for­mer­ly in the Nation­al Soci­ety of Elec­trotypers and Engravers.

Print­ers would belong to either NGA or NATSOPA, which was formed from the Lon­don Machine Man­agers Soci­ety. Dis­tri­b­u­tion would be by SOGAT mem­bers.

Sup­port­ing the whole enter­prise would have been mem­bers of elec­tri­cal and engi­neer­ing staff, elec­tri­cians belong­ing to the Elec­tri­cal Trades Union (ETU) and engi­neer­ing staff being mem­ber of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Union of Engi­neer­ing Work­ers.

Union Organisation

Each union in each news­pa­per forms a ​‘Chapel’, with an elect­ed ​‘Father of the Chapel’ (or Moth­er as NATSOPA and NUJ admit­ted women). This role is akin to a Shop Stew­ard. The senior Father of the Chapel at the news­pa­per is title ​‘Impe­r­i­al Father’.

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Location

Pen­ning­ton Street, Wap­ping

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Head­er Image: News Inter­na­tion­al Build­ing, Wap­ping cc-by-sa/2.0 — © Roger Jones — geograph.org.uk/p/2478979