Bring out Fleet Street! No sell-out!
Labour Briefing1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
The battle to defend trade union organisation in Fleet Street stands at the crossroads. Murdoch is standing firm and getting his papers out of Wapping despite the mass pickets on Saturday nights and large pickets on other nights of the week. He is suffering some losses through the boycott campaign, but they are losses which are acceptable to him, his aims and objectives — to impose a historic change of relationship on Fleet St by breaking the print unions and introducing full management control through the use of scab labour.
Murdoch was prepared to face a lengthy shutdown if necesary to achieve this, and will regard his present losses as a quite acceptable price to pay for the huge gains which are at stake for the newspaper employers.
It is becoming increasingly evident that the present strategy being employed by the print unions is not going to win the battle. It is also being increasingly obvious — if it was ever in doubt — that the battle involves the whole of the national newspaper industry and not just the News International titles.
The deal at the Express, the Telegraph and the Scottish Daily Record could not make it more clear. The print unions are now signing away thousands of jobs and surrendering working conditions won over decades of struggle in order to "avoid another News International situation."
At the same time Murdoch has been able to use the full weight of the courts against SOGAT with impunity. SOGAT is fighting with the whole of its assets sequestered.
The cold reality is that Murdoch is winning; if he is not stopped he will destroy effective trade unionism if not actual trade unionism in the whole of the newspaper industry. He will not be stopped by the present strategy of confining the dispute to News International.
• The vicious no-strike, no-closed shop, "right to manage" package he proposed could well become the model for every Fleet Street employer. Who would have believed a year ago that the courts could seize the fund of a print union with no reaction? The sequestration of SOGAT affects every member of the union in the printing industry and hangs as a threat over the NGA. Print union members must recognise common cause with the Wapping strikers.
Of course the TUC ducked out of its duty to the miners and stabbed the NGA in the back over the Warrington dispute in 1983. Today's Murdoch battle can be seen as a far more central issue for the print unions than the Warrington fight. But without mass action by printers against the sequestration it is clearly impossible to expect that other unions or the TUC will be pressured into giving increased support.
• The traditional print union policy of playing off one employer against another, by increasing print runs of other titles whilst strikes paralyse production, is inapplicable against Murdoch, who has maintained almost full production throughout, and whose papers are largely passing through the main distributors in each area. An all-out strike in Fleet Street would show the seriousness of SOGAT and the NGA, and expose those SOGAT distribution and shop workers still scabbing on the dispute. Other employers who have backed Murdoch and expect to adopt the same tactics would be faced for the first time with the strength of the print unions in place of the endless retreats of the leadership.
• A Fleet Street stoppage would strengthen the case for solidarity boycotting action and respect of picket lines by non-print unions, especially the TGWU and redouble the impact of print support committees across the country. At present, with printworkers still working normally on the national press, only the most dedicated activists see the fight as serious. Few trade unionists would be prepared to risk their jobs to show support while the sacked strikers' own SOGAT and NGA colleagues do nothing to risk theirs.
• With a stoppage on Fleet Street, thousands of print workers could be mobilised in picketing the Wapping plant, and other targets including distribution depots in and around London. The whole dispute would force its way back into the centre stage of the class struggle.
• The argument that Fleet Street workers are subsidising the sacked strikers from their weekly wage packets — and that the strikers could not afford for them to be called out — is one which accepts the permanent isolation of the fight, and the present half-cock strategy. There is no advantage in tactics which result in a dispute which drags on for month after month making no impact on Murdoch, deluding print union militants, and extracting conscience money from doomed Fleet Street chapels.
• The public "support" that has been won on the strength of the boycott campaign may appear broad but has little if any impact on Murdoch.
• The most decisive argument is also the most obvious: unless the dispute moves into a higher gear, and a new level of confrontation with the employers, the courts and the government, it will be lost. On their present course, Dean and Dubbins can deliver only a shabby, scabbing sell-out. Printers who now falsely believe "we are winning" will become increasingly disillusioned unless they see a way to take the fight forward. Nobody who opposes the fight to pull out Fleet Street has yet offered any credible alternative to step up the fight and put the whole trade union movement on alert.
• At the same time, the NUJ NEC must take disciplinary action agains its 500 scabs at Wapping and gear up its strike office to organise a serious picket rota.
• SOGAT must take action against its 150 scabs still working for Murdoch.
• TGWU leaders must take disciplinary action for the expulsion of the TNT drivers who are flouting the official instruction not to cross picket lines — and mobilise TGWU official pickets to the depots.
• The EETPU must be expelled from the TUC for its scab-herding role in recruiting Murdoch's Wapping mobsters, who have not only put printworkers out of a job, but also threaten the jobs of Fleet St electricians. The expulsion of the EETPU must be linked to a campaign to "poach" sections of their members to other appropriate unions.
• Labour Parties and non-print unions can assist in mobilising pickets for Wapping and for local distribution centres, building support groups and raising money to sustain the dispute — offering facilities for the sequestered SOGAT, organising meetings and speaking tours of local labour movement bodies and workplaces.
Kinnock must be forced to reverse his current disastrous stance of opposing the repeal of all Tory anti-union laws: this year's Labour Party conference must see resolutions spelling out a clear line of restoring the trade union rights and immunities crushed under the Thatcher/Tebbit machine.