Wapping and Kinning Park strikers and supporters still line the streets, still have marches, and most important of all, still demand nothing less than their jobs and union recognition. Inside the plant, behind the police and barbed wire, the EETPU and NUJ scabs still work on, and T&GWU drivers still load up and drive away. It has been a year in which at every decisive point the strikers and Murdoch have achieved deadlock, neither one obtaining any lasting, fundamental victories over the other. One year later the strikers are still there and are not about to go away.
The context of the strike is important. It began after the defeat of the miners' magnificent struggle. The ensuing political realignments, largely to the right, from background, isolating the print dispute, and other disputes like Silentnight. Inside the trade unions it is no coincidence that it is the same union that pulls the TUC bodily to the right that also joined hands with Murdoch to recruit and maintain the scab worktorce at International No 8 January/February 1987
WAPPING Riot police using their 'right-to-strike' at Wapping on for a year. What have the strikers achieved, and what are the prospects for the struggle? JOHN TUITE explains. Wapping. Of course a TUC that was bending a knee to Kinnock's 'New Rights, New Res- ponsibilties' , complete with state interfe- rence in trade union affairs, was hardly likely to raise a hue and cry when the same state sequestered SOGAT's £17 million assets early into the dispute. the TUC's failure hit the miners, now the printworkers Inside the print industry the situation was equally inauspicious despite the popular im- pression of the legendary strength of the Fleet street unions. Attacks on the NGA, NUJ and SOGAT had begun outside London well be- fore Fleet Street felt the real heat of open battle. The Messenger dispute at Warring- ton with Eddie Shah over union recognition in 1983 is only one example, albeit a memor- able and historic one, not least because of the failure of the TUC to honour its 1983 deci-
World Trade Centre lower Bridge, Andrew Moore/Reflex sions to oppose anti-union laws. The introduction of new technology into the provincial press led to a series of inter-union disputes, with the NGA, who had most to lose from the process, clashing with SOGAT and the NUJ. At the Kent Messenger SOGAT and NUJ members crossed NGA picket lines, while at the Portsmouth News it was NGA members who crossed NUJ lines.
The uneven introduction of new technology and work processes also left a legacy of division within the unions. It is unfortunately the case that SOGAT member outside London viewed with dissatisfaction their brothers and sisters in London, whose union strength provided them with better pay and working conditions. It is to some extent this regional membership that provides the rightwing Brenda Dean with her base, whilst her relationship with the London bastions of the union have always been much more hostile. The failure of the print unions to develop a jointly agreed national plan to meet the employers' assaults related to new technolgy, is now being paid for at a high price. 5
It was always obvious from the start of this dispute that News International strikers had to turn to the rest of Fleet Street for solidarity if Murdoch was to be defeated. Not surprisingly Brenda Dean and Tony Dubbins didn't agree. But more important was the fact that the London leadership of the unions, the London District Committee (LDC) of SOGAT especially, actually found arguments to back up Dean and Dubbins. It was said that to inflict strike action on the rest of Fleet St would leave the newspaper market open to Murdoch's titles. The arguments against this fatuous position have already been well rehearsed. Yet it is important to look at one result of the LDC's position, that is the effect on Fleet Street itself.
Over the the past year the print owners have struck bargains with the unions, or pushed through plans, which would have been unbelievable one year ago. The Labour Party member Maxwell started off the year with a 25 per cent cut in jobs, after threatening court actions, closures and non-union operations at his Glasgow plant.
The Express obtained a similar cut in jobs in April. Associated Newspapers announced plans to shed over 25 per cent of its staff and is moving to a new £130m factory in Surrey Docks in 1988. Job cuts and promises of flexibility are being demanded at the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, which are also moving to a new printing plant at the Isle of Dogs.
The liberal' Guardian is also moving to a high-tech Docklands printing plant this year and insisting on direct inputting by journalists. The Financial Times, also moving to the
Docklands, is cutting staff levels by thirty per cent and demanding direct inputting. The
Observer is farming out is printing to contract in Portsmouth, Peterborough, Bradford and
Worcester resulting in 500-600 redundan-
So there is a major restructuring of the
print industry occurring involving the intro-
duction of new technology,
assaults on demarcation and work
practices achieved by decades of union
struggle, and necessarily of course, a major
attack on the strength and very existence of
the Fleet St unions themselves.
Fleet St was not
only necessary from the point of view of
News International strikers, in order to bring
new forces to bear upon Murdoch. It was
equally crucial to prevent the enforced sepa-
ration of the two, which played straight in to
the hands of the print barons by presenting
them with a divided workforce.
campaigned for Fleet St unions to take soli-
darity with the Wapping pickets would not
only have brought new forces onto the stri-
kers' side and caused the rest of Fleet St
proprietors to come down on Murdoch's
head. It would have increased the confi-
dence, combativity and strength of the now-
battered Fleet St unions themselves.
The political current around the Morning
Star is the chief influence on the London
District Committee. But, having rejected
trying to mobilise Fleet Street, the Morning 6 Star has had increasingly little to put forward
WAPPING as a strategy to win the strike. Even if there are differences between the National and London leadership (who were crucial in campaigning against the two sell-out deals organised by Dean) it is true to say that the LDC has remained within the limits set by the national leadership.
This was most clearly illustrated by events at the SOGAT Biennial Conference, where the LDC handed back the leadership of the strike to a discredited Dean after trouncing her in the ballot over the first money offer from Murdoch.
At every stage in this strike the Morning Star has played a role of reunifying the different levels of the bureaucracy, rather than using its key influence to extend the militancy and breadth of the strike. Anybody who still has illusions in the Morning Star, and especially
those forces inside the Campaign Group of
Labour MPs and their suporters, looking to
it for a ready-made trade union base, would
do well to study the rightward role the latter
has been playing during this dispute.
So what strategies have been put forward?
There has been the boycott campaign, of-
fered up in more vigorous looking wrapping
every time events pose the question 'Where
now?' It has been an undoubted failure. The
small fall in News International sales has
been part of a more general decline in sales of
all the national papers with only the Guardian
escaping it for the moment. And it is clear
that there has been no push to involve print
union branches across the country in even
this limited campaign.
The LDC has of course organised pickets.
But anyone who has seen how the human
resources of large marches to Wapping have
been squandered and dissipated by officials marching them up and down the Highway will know that effective picketting, involving inevitable confrontations with the police, has been carefully avoided.
Perhaps one of the dangerous legacies of the post-miners' strike period is a passive acceptance that pickets are not to stop scab labour getting in or out of the plant, but simply to have a polite word in their ear, or worse, are nothing more than a moralebooster at Wapping.
The LDC has also taken up the demand to expel the EETPU from the TUC for its undeniable role in organising the scab labour force. This correct demand was taken to the TUC conference and won, on condition that the EETPU failed to help resolve the dispute in favour of the strikers. The EETPU did fail.
But the TUC yet again took no action against
Hammond
The TUd's timidity is not just a product of
fear of a split in the trade union movement
and the danger of having to confront a vigo-
rous new right-wing union federation. It also
reflects the fact that the labour movement is
currently travelling through 'Kinnock-land'
in which any major rocking of the boat, such
as expelling a major union with others follow-
ing it, is simply out of the question. The
result is a de facto cold split between the TUC
and any workers who are forced to 'rock the
boat', by resisting attacks on their jobs or
living standards.
While Dean and Dubbins have raised this
demand and grumbled about the TUC's lack
of action, it was also clear during the period
between Murdoch's offers that they were
relying on the EETPU to pressure Murdoch
International No 8 January/February 1987
into negotiations! However, the printers have decided o keep pressing for the TUC to take action against the EETPU. A weekday 9-5pm picke: of Congress House has been mounted. Even if the TUC has requested the pickets be kept to 6 (!) this should become a major focus for all trade unionists interested in democracy and fighting the rightward lurch in the unions.
Support from the TUC is vital for the success of the dispute. But when SOGAT's £17m assessts were sequestered because it refused to lift orders to boycott handling Murdoch's papers by its branches, the TUC did nothing. The TUC was of course busy in 1986 getting together with the Labour Party leadership to support the new trade union policies summed up in New Rights, New Responsibilities. The print dispute is a living critique of these dangerous proposals, which maintain key aspects of Tory anti-trade union legislation. On the issue of ballots, are we to ballot the Wapping scabs before legally enforcing a picket? Where the TUC/Labour Party policies are ominously silent on the qustion of secondary action, the print dispute demands its legality. Print barons like Murdoch and Maxwell are splitting up previously unified enterprises into small separate companies, making illegal even solidarity of a limited nature.
The drift to the right has of course deeply affected the nature and breadth of solidarity from the rest of the Labour movement. Inside the unions, the NUR has honourably boycotted Murdoch titles, only to find them travelling lorries driven by T&GWU members. Towards the end of the year the T&G in the North West initiated action International No 8 January/February 1987
WAPPING against scab drivers, but it has been too little and perhaps too late.
The print support groups, set up innitially from the experience of the miners' support groups, have been kept largely by supporters of the far left. There are notable exceptions. Tower Hamlets, for example, has mobilised around the important question of police control of their neighbourhood. But support from Labour Parties has been pitifully small in many cases. The realigning Greater London Labour Party has not taken a single major initiative around a dispute involving one of the major unionised industries in their heartland. Unfortunately at Labour Party conference, the only policy reflection of the Wapping dispute was the deeply chauvinist motion press. Moore/Reflex Andrew
Yet this dispute can reach out to broad layers of the working class and oppressed. We have only to think of the areas of the population attacked by The Sun to realise this. Black people, women, trade unionists, lesbians and gay men, all find an enemy at Wapping. A leadership that wanted to win
initiatives like Lesbians and Gays Support the Printers. However at the beginning of the dispute Brenda Dean somewhat hinders the creation of such al-
The role of women, both as strikers and as supporters, has been important in the dispure. But if sections of the left learnt the importance of women's organisation through the miners' strike, it is perhaps the case that the right and the bureaucracy developed a deep fear of it. The women's marches to
Wapping have been among the most brilliant but neither Dean nor the LDC took steps to encourage consistent organisation. So when Women Against Murdoch (WAM) was set up in November a great step forward was made. At the first meeting the question of demanding action from Fleet Street was central, illustrating yet again how the strike can be streng thened by womens' organisation.
The Fleet Street Support Unit is the other main force inside the dispute raising the demand for an orientation to Fleet Street. It has also raised the need for mass meetings of the strikers and an elected strike committee consisting of actual strikers rather than full-time officials. It has been the only consistent force in the strike arguing for a strategy that can beat Murdoch. Unfortunately it hasn't yet sought to have a regular printed intervention into the pickets and chapel meetings, but the popularity of the relatively apolitical "Picket" broadsheet shows that the space is there. As the bankruptcy of the London and national leadership's strategy continues to keep the dispute in the mire, it is from the FSSU that the answer to the question 'where now?' must come.
At the time of writing there are three important events which should be supported. On January 24 the strikers will mobilise to commemorate one year of their struggle There are currently discussions on the mobilising committee elected by FOCs and MOCs about demanding a day of action on Fleet Street. This is vital and a good focus for raising the demand. There are also the pickets of Congress House calling for a reconvened TUC which must gain support from wider layers of the labour movement than printers. Last, but by no means least, the SOGAT executive member and leader of the Wapping pickets, Mike Hicks, has been framed up and imprisoned for one year (eight months suspended). This is an attack of immense importance on the strike. The Labour Party NEC has voted to demand his release. We must pressure them to speak out publicly as well as building broad campaigns to free him.
After one year Murdoch has not rid himself of the huge expenses and harassment caused by his sacked workforce. He is reduced to trying to buy off the strikers one by one. But as the two ballots have shown, the ranks of the strikers remain solid. This is despite the complete lack of a winning strategy from their leadership. Yet without such a strategy the deadlock will continue, with a very gradual erosion of the strikers forces. And meanwhile inside Fleet St the attacks by management will be pressed home even further.
In a year likely to see a general election, no doubt there will be much discussion on the biased, vicious nature of the press. But it is the struggle now occurring at Wapping that will determine in many ways the shape and confidence of the press baron's media machine. The magnificent endurance of the strikers deserves to be matched by solidarity. The tyrannical intransigence of Murdoch needs to be met with a united and defiant labour movement i 7