Wapping fight into a cul-desac.
The life and death battle for union rights in the newspaper industry is perilously close to an ignominious sell-out as we go to press. The NEC of SOGAT did not vote on a proposal by leading officials to lift the blacking of News International titles and thus purge the union's contempt in the High Court.
But in rejecting this abject surender, the SOGAT NEC, meeting on April 21, adopted no new proposals to step up the fight, whose central tactic - the consumer "boycott"
campaign — has proved an almost were more concerned with the setotal fiasco.
Their swaggering claims of Murdoch's allegedly decimated print run and circulation figures have been exposed as self-deception by Audit Bureau figures which show Murdoch's four titles at, near, or even above their December 1985 levels, and by SOGAT's admission that its membership in provincial distribution and wholesale centres have ignored union instructions and continue handling the scab papers.
Even while striking, sacked printworkers began their mighty march on Wapping from Glasgow and the North East coast, finding the extent of potential labour movement support untapped by the passive "boycott" campaign, SOGAT officials, who had done nothing to build the fight, Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986p3
U PHOTO: Andrew Wiard (Report) 4 questration of their cars and threats to their pay packets - and looking for a way out of the fight.
And while the left in the National Union of Journalists fought a (successful) conference battle culminating in an April 18 decision to demand their NEC step up the fight and take disciplinary action against 500 NUJ scabs at Wapping, SOGAT officials concentrated on preparing the ground for a retreat.
Having rejected an escalation of the fight to Fleet Street, and refused to pursue the fight at the TUC for the expulsion of the scab-herding EETPU, SOGAT and NGA leaders hae turned instead (along with the AUEW) to desperate attempts to rope the EETPU into a joint approach to Rupert Murdoch. They have propos-
Wapping ed a joint "solution" at Wapping which would include acceptance of: •Binding arbitration; •A single national bargaining unit covering both Glasgow and London, and all four production unions (SOGAT, NGA, AUEW, EETPUL).
Apparently the SOGAT leaders hoped that if Murdoch rejected these new union proposals, they would then be able to bring out the EETPU at Wapping to join the fight!
Murdoch of course was much more confident of his EETPU scabs. His response was to offer SOGAT and NGA an increased buy-off, throwing in another £15m in cash on top of the offer of the disused Grays Inn Road printworks. He confidently expects that SOGAT and NGA leaders will grasp for "conpensation" payments long before any stirrings of trade unionism ruffle the surface of Wapping's EETPU.
All of the symptoms so far suggest that Murdoch has read the situation correctly. SOGAT leaders have bottled out of the all-out fight they needed if they were to win.
• Despite strong words against the High Court sequestration of union funds, SOGAT officials have done nothing to tighten up the blacking of News International at provincial distributors and wholesalers, or to discipline its members scabbing on the instruction which provoked the court action.
•Even while union assets have been seized, SOGAT members in Fleet Street and throughout the printing industry have been deliberately left to work normally - as if they can protect themselves by ignoring the fight at Wapping!
• By focussing everything on the moralistic "boycott" campaign of "Don't Buy the Sun", SOGAT and the NGA won a degree of public sympathy at the expense of suppressing class action. Audited figures now show that sales of News International titles have now recovered after an initial decline: for all but the most conscious sections of workers the dispute now appears to be all but over.
• The same "softly softly" avoidance of class struggle methods - adopted as a conscious alternative to the struggle by Arthur Scargill to drive forward the miners' strike — led to a failure to build official mass picketing of Wapping or of distribution depots across the country. The unofficial movement eventually built
weekly pickets — but this kind of support cannot be sustained in the absence of a clear lead at national level, and the numbers involved have
now sharply declined.
• Now as we go to press SOGAT's national officials are still arguing that the union should formally raise the white flag of surrender by lifting the instruction to boycott distribution of News International titles, and thus purge its contempt in the High Court. One factor being used by Brenda Dean to force through such a decision is the lack of funds to organise the union's Biennial Delegate Conference or to pay out unemployment and other benefits to members "unless the contempt is purged". She and others argue that the dispute is already lost, and that the key instruction for boycott action should be withdrawn because it has not been implemented. Rank and file militants report that a national gathering of SOGAT representatives the previous week showed 70% support for purging the contempt, though the proposal was voted down by an Executive meeting on April 21.
Any decision to lift the boycotting of News International titles which has remained in force in London would deliver a death-blow to a struggle which has never really been allowed to get off the ground by SOGAT and NGA officials. At each point they have firmly rejected the escalation of the fight into Fleet Street and other sectors of the printing industry even while the press bosses move in with a clear strategy of picking off print workers section by section in a decimation of jobs. conditions and union rights.
During the Wapping fight itself we have seen major concessions by the print unions and the NUJ at the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and the Scottish Daily Record. Next in line with an ultimatum is The Guardian, demanding a 20% cut in workforce and new legally-binding contracts. Employers in the provincial papers — in Manchester and elsewhere — are not far behind in the rush to exploit the print unions' Wapping retreat.
himself, impatient to complete the job at Wapping, dispose of the dispute and screw down the coffin lid on union rights, has attempted to pressure the four NUJ scab chapels at Wapping into tracts. So far they have refused to do s0.
It is not excluded that Murdoch
might even re-employ or reinstate a few of the sacked printers, now that his period of potential legal liability to make redundancy payments has all
but expired. Allowing the establish-
ment if a toothless SOGAT chapel in
Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986p4
AT MAUND CHAPEL SHORT S.O.G.A.T. LONDON MACHINE BRANCH PHOTO: Stefano Cagnoni (Report) Wapping might even be a possible sop for a settlement in the hopes of restoring the full print run on Wapping's ageing presses, and returning News International titles to normal rail distribution.
This kind of "union recognition" would be little more than a fig-leaf for a betrayal by the SOGAT leadership
dispute began most centrally over the issues of jobs and union rights: none of the formulae on offer would give more than a hanful of jobs or anything approaching trade union rights in Fort Wapping.
Talk of handing over the disused Grays Inn Road printworks has successfully focussed print union attentions on compensation rather than
Compensation has also proved a major talking point among the NUI strikers at Wapping, who insist upon calling themselve not strikers but "refuseniks". One reason for this is that many of them have made it clear that they have no intention of returning to work for Murdoch: many have already found other jobs. Few have been regular attenders on the pickets line: indeed the "refuseniks" proved
WARNING MURDOCHS
SCABS CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE POOR WALLA
Printworkers lobby the TUC for support. to be the most dependable supporters of the NUJ right wing in attempting to block a conference call for disciplinary action against the 500 scabs who for over 12 weeks have been flouting official union instructions. The fight for this disciplinary action is absolutely vital if the Wapping dispute is not to be allowed to crack up the organisation of the NUJ in other sectors beyond national newspapers. To allow such public, flarant flouting of union policies would create enormous damage in SOGAT leaders push for surrender
provincial newspapers, book and magazine houses where small NUI chapels fight for survival.
Now that SOGAT's Executive has pulled back from the brink and for the moment held firm against calls for surrender, the key issue remains one of stepping up the fight to a level that can win. That means:
• SOGAT must take action against its 150 scabs still working for Murdoch, pinpoint and picket the local distribution centres handling News International titles, take action against SOGAT members defying in-
Brenda Dean. Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986p5
Wapping structions to boycott Murdoch's titles, and gear up its Fleet St Chapels for supporting action — perhaps beginWapping, and building towards all. ing with a mass stoppage to Wapping, and building towards all-out action.
• The NGA, too, must prepare its Fleet St Chapels to do battle in solidarity with the sacked Murdoch workforce and in defence of their own union rights.
• The goal must be an all-out strike on Fleet Street, bringing the newspaper distribution networks to a halt, and redoubling the pickets on wholesalers and scab transport firms carrying Murdoch and Shah publications.
• TG WU 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.
Would YOU buy a second hand printworks from this