Murdoch's Grays Inn Road "offer"
Wapping man? IN the mid 1970s a cranky imerican left the Spartacist League developed a bizarre policy for responding to factory closures: the workers should seize the plant - and then sell it off in order to share out the proceeds!
Nobody took much notice at the time: apart from it being impossible to achieve, its was Immediately recognised as simply a "sophisticted" way of accepting closure, and a more "radical" means of allocating redundancy pay. But now it seems that Hupert Murdoch may have caught on to the same idea, and decided to use it as a lever to break the print dispute.
By offering to hand over the Grays Inn Road printworks and offices to the unions for the production of a labour movement paper, or to sell off and divide the spoils, he has focussed on the weakness of those print union leaders and rank and filers who have seen the Wapping dispute as one over compensation rather than reinstatement.
The use of the now surplus plant as a cash-free "lump sum" buy off to end the picketing, blacking and boycott action against his four News International titles is more than just a cheap option for Murdoch (the plant and equipment Is valued at a maximum of £50m if a buyer could be found: yet estimate of the redundancy payments to which he would be liable in sacking the 6.000 printers are as high as £100m).
Were the print unions to accept the deal it would signal total defeat on the central issue at stake -unionisation and the right of print unions to organise freely, elect their own leaderships and act to defend their members in Murdoch's Wapping plant.
It would also mean acceptance of the loss of thousands of printworkers jobs, while the "compensation" payment would be
tied up in a building which the whch only a portion of them ever worked. were taken up, and a labour movement paper were to begin publishing from Grays Inn Rd. there is no good reason why the should come from 6.000 sacked of whom could expect jobs on the new paper. movement: even TUC General Secretary Willis, struggling to of "scab" on the April 6
INT printworkers did not ask for, and in
Assuming Murodch's challenge main financial contribution to this printers - only a small proportion
Murdoch's transparent ploy to enlist the Labour Party leadership as allies in pressing this wretched proposal onto the print unions as so ar had little public success. Party spokespersons have poured doubt on Murdoch's sudden and touching concern for the needs of the labour make himself heard above shouts Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986рб
Hitin demonstration, has argued that the deal must not be done at the expense of the printers.
But the print union leaders did not dismiss Murdoch's offer out of hand. As our second Print Strike Special forecast on the eve of Murdoch's offer, the signs have been for some time that SOGAT and NGA officials are looking to do a deal for "compensation", and that Murdoch wants to end the dispute - with his gains intact.
The refusal to fight massive job cuts at the Daily Express and escalate the confrontation with the Fleet Street bosses; and the collapse of resistance at the Daily Record in Glasgow (where SOGAT and NU] forces had joined in a welcome united stand against Labourite axeman Robert Maxwell) are both indications that the NUI and print union bureaucracies have little stomach for a fight.
For their members on Fleet Street and throughout the provincial press, however, it is a question of
do or die". If the fight is not stepped up, the queue for jobs outside the offices of a Dean/Dubbins/Kinnock daily could swell to tens of thousands.