Wapping dispute
The
Wapping dispute started on
24 January 1986 when some 6,000 newspaper workers went on strike after months of protracted negotiation with their new employers,
News International (parent of Times Newspapers and News Group Newspapers, owned by
Rupert Murdoch). The company management was seeking a legally binding agreement at their new plant in
Wapping,
London, which would force the workers to accept flexible working, a no-strike clause, the adoption of new technology and the abandonment of the closed shop. For years
Fleet Street had been plagued by poor industrial relations – the so-called "
Spanish practices" had put limits on the owners that they considered intolerable. Rupert Murdoch, a reactionary capitalist from Australia, was determined to take advantage of Britain's Conservative political climate to break the union.
Despite the wide-spread use of the
offset litho printing process elsewhere, the Murdoch papers in common with the rest of
Fleet Street continued to be produced by the hot-metal and labour-intensive
linotype method.
Eddie Shah's Messenger group, in a long running and bitter dispute at
Warrington had benefitted from the
Thatcher government's trade union legislation to allow employers to de-recognize unions, enabling the company to use an alternative workforce and new technology in newspaper production. The dramatic cut in production costs - journalists could input copy directly reducing the need for labour in the print halls – meant that profits would increase dramatically due to increased efficiency.
Immediately after the strike was announced, dismissal notices were served on all those taking part in the industrial action. As part of a plan that had been developed over many months, the company replaced the workforce with members of the
Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU) and transferred its four major titles (
The Times,
The Sunday Times,
The Sun and the
News of the World) to the Wapping plant. Murdoch had misled the print unions into thinking that the Wapping plant was to be used for a new (non-existent) London evening newspaper. And so began what has become known as the Wapping dispute.
In support of their dismissed members, the print unions organised regular marches and demonstrations outside the company's premises, in Pennington Street and Virginia Street, off
The Highway. They also called for a boycott of the four newspapers involved. As the dispute gathered momentum a large-scale police operation was mounted to ensure that the Wapping plant could operate effectively.
In
1987 the strike finally collapsed. With it the restrictive trade union practices associated with the traditional
Fleet Street publishing empires also collapsed and the trade union movement in Britain was irrevocably changed. The actions of
News International and its proprietor,
Rupert Murdoch, together with the EETPU and the police were widely criticised – in particular the heavy-handed policing methods that had been employed. People in Wapping were largely viewed by the police as sympathetic to the case of the strikers, and were frequently denied access to their streets and homes. The strike also coincided with the redevelopment of the
Docklands (of which Wapping is a part).
It was claimed at the time of the dispute that the new production methods would result in an increase of choice in the British press (the majority were – and remain – conservative in orientation), but in practice this was limited. The
Sunday Correspondent was short-lived and
The Independent was taken over after a few years and went through periods of financial insecurity, although this now seems to have improved.
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Fortress Wapping - The Story of the Wapping Dispute
