The History of the Times

by Graham Stewart

  A couple of days after the Deptford fire, Eric Hammond answered the telephone to a caller who assured him, ‘You and your family are going to burn, you bastard.’ He later recognized the voice when he was heckled while giving an interview. It belonged to someone with ‘an honoured presence in SOGAT’.78 At the annual TUC conference in Brighton, Hammond had to be accompanied by bodyguards wherever he went. The Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, also received death threats, with his home in Onslow Gardens becoming a regular destination for hate mail. When he appeared on the panel of BBC TV’s Question Time, demonstrators smashed the building’s windows and at one point the electricity was cut, plunging the studio into darkness. On another occasion, Neil’s attempts to honour an invitation from the Institute of Journalists had to be abandoned when strikers threw smoke bombs into the basement where the meeting was in progress.79 Marmaduke Hussey had to endure obscene abuse being hurled at him by a picket who accosted him as he was getting into his car. As Hussey levered himself into the driving seat the picket slammed the car door on Hussey’s leg. Luckily it was his artificial leg (he had been seriously wounded in the Second World War) and the door ‘bounced back with an almighty clang’. The picket was somewhat taken aback.80

  Throughout the summer, the spate of targeted attacks continued apace. On 19 June, a TNT distribution depot for The Times at Snodland in Kent was attacked by masked intruders who shattered windscreens and damaged property. This was not just a hit and run mission by a few desperados: four hundred demonstrators marched on the depot. Six days later, forty men armed with iron bars smashed into a TNT depot in Luton, attacked police officers with bricks and missiles and destroyed vans while two hundred demonstrators picketed outside. A similar assault was launched eleven days later, causing more criminal damage at a TNT depot in Eastleigh, Hampshire.81 The varied geography of these locations, the premeditated collection of weapons and the size of the supporting demonstration highlighted the organized extent of the campaign being waged against News International and its interests.

  Yet, violent methods – whether by or on behalf of the sacked print workers – were a sign of desperation. In rejecting a £50 million financial settlement and having failed to stop or seriously hamper production at Wapping, such measures appeared to be all the activists had left with which to fight. For those enduring the daily abuse and intimidation on their way in and out of work, this was particularly unnerving. But the question now was whether the militant forces within SOGAT would seek to oust Brenda Dean and all other moderating influences within their union. The showdown came in mid-June at the SOGAT annual conference in Scarborough. Dean entered the hall to shouts of ‘Judas’. But her speech was uncompromising, making clear that no one branch of ‘wreckers’ was going to determine the union’s destiny as a whole. She rounded on the street-corner chants that alleged she had sold her London members down the river: ‘That sort of chant usually comes from those who failed to recognize that there was no longer any river to sell them down.’ It was a strong performance and she carried the day. The conference voted to leave the National Executive in charge of handling the dispute rather than devolving it to the militant London chapel. In a decision that would only later take on great significance, the conference also agreed that the union could not take any action that led to its assets being sequestrated a second time. The will of the provincial majority had prevailed – to the disgust of activists from London. The extent of this culture clash was manifest when one London member, in the course of berating Dean, asked her how he was expected to meet his £50,000 mortgage. Dean attempted to explain: ‘If I go and tell the rest of the union you need help with that mortgage, you’ll get nothing. They’re living in houses that don’t cost half of that as a total cost.’82

  The situation was a stalemate. The News International management was not prepared to improve the offer and the union leadership had been given no room for manoeuvre by its members. To Times journalists the situation was becoming close to intolerable. Those driving into work sometimes spotted strikers noting down their number plates. Some noticed their photographs being taken. Given what had happened at Deptford, this was an effective form of intimidation. What was more, Wapping in 1986 afforded few of the lunchtime and evening comforts to which journalists were accustomed. Even if there had been pubs or restaurants worth patronizing, it was too risky to do so. Many felt marooned inside the compound, a fate as bad for personal morale as it was for getting out in search of news stories. What made matters worse was the limitations of the office environment. A casualty of the move from Gray’s Inn Road was The Times library. Six months after the move to Wapping, Times journalists were still separated from their paper’s books archive and picture library which had been left behind at their former site. In view of staff and space shortage, it was decided to base Wapping’s library around the News of the World’s holdings with the other papers merely adding what contents they could fit in. This was a short-sighted economy of scale. For the next few years, the paper had to continue to make do with inadequate information resources (although, in truth, whether they were better or worse than the previous Times library was debatable). Although improving internet research engines made life easier in the 1990s and there was a sizeable cuttings library, the newspaper still had to rely upon a lamentable range of source material on the communal bookshelves.

  Times journalists had other causes of woe. When they moved to Wapping, the basic journalists’ salary at the paper was, at £15,050, around £5000 less than the equivalent at the News of the World and the Sun. There was a good reason for this: the tabloids made money and The Times made a loss. But the broadsheet’s writers felt they deserved remuneration that represented – to put it mildly – something closer to parity of esteem. On this score, Wapping represented a great opportunity. It threatened to make even The Times profitable. The paper’s NUJ chapel, led by its new father, the religious affairs correspondent, Clifford Longley, seized the moment to press home the advantage, demanding: ‘The time is now right for The Times to make good its claim to be the greatest newspaper in the world, which dictates in turn salaries appropriate to that status … We feel therefore that our goodwill has been exploited for many years.’ The chapel demanded a pay increase of 25 per cent and proper compensation for those who departed citing they felt themselves ‘unable to come to terms with the move to Wapping and/or the introduction of new technology’. The salary demand ignored the fact that the company had increased average pay at the paper by 27.2 per cent between March 1985 and March 1986. As far as Longley was concerned, this was not the point; Times staff were still ‘at the bottom of the Fleet Street pay league’. The paper’s managing editor, Mike Hoy, was incredulous. Inflation was running at around 4 per cent. He assured the NUJ chapel that if they wanted a significantly steeper rise they would have to conclude the sort of agreement that management had demanded from the print unions. This would involve working five days a week (many journalists still managed just four), a no-strike clause, legally binding arbitration and no closed shop.83

  On 9 June, Sun journalists, unhappy with a 3.5 per cent pay offer, narrowly voted to strike. A panicked management swiftly increased the offer to 10 per cent and the threat was averted. The Times NUJ chapel followed suit and were duly rewarded with a ‘full and final offer’ of 10 per cent as well. But the animosity towards not only the managerial but editorial high command was clear when the chapel made a formal complaint to Charles Wilson over the paper’s failure to report the original strike vote at the Sun. Furthermore, the chapel voted by eighty votes to two to strike if the refuseniks who had declined to cross the Wapping picket line were not reinstated.

  This was a serious shot across the bows. Only a third of the paper’s NUJ members had attended and voted in the meeting but it only took this number to wreck the paper. Some wondered if the spirit that had animated the active minority of Times journalists to go on strike in 1980 – thereby ensuring the paper’s sale – had suddenly gripped the chapel once more in this
latest period of crisis. Wilson responded by writing a four-page letter to his staff, appealing to them to stay at their desks. Aside from the specifics of the individual refuseniks’ cases, The Times’s future would be threatened at the very moment it was on the verge of breaking free from the dead hand of those who were making the journalists’ lives so unpleasant from the other side of the wire.84 Longley, however, was making a stand. He spurned the higher pay offer on the grounds that ‘we will not discuss money with you while the jobs of six sacked members are at issue. It would be immoral to talk about money.’85 Yet, in the event, the religious affairs correspondent was deserted by his flock: the chapel voted not to strike over the refuseniks’ fate by sixty-three to twenty-eight. In September, Longley became a martyr to his own cause when the NUJ Executive Committee summoned him before a disciplinary hearing on a charge of conduct detrimental to the interests of the union (for not being a refusenik himself). His first reaction was to get a temporary court injunction against the hearing going ahead. When that failed his union found him guilty, but voted narrowly to censure rather than expel him.86 Perhaps they realized the negative consequences of ridding themselves of a turbulent priest.

  While dissent from and between NUJ officials was being seen off, News International had decided, once again, to seek legal redress against the manner in which the siege was being conducted. On 31 July, High Court injunctions were granted that permitted the unions to hold demonstrations only on the condition they passed the Wapping plant and did not seek to block it. Any attempt at the latter would be construed as an official picket that, under the terms of the 1982 Trade Union Act, was limited to six individuals. Mr Justice Stuart-Smith reminded the unions that ‘freedom of speech has never extended to intimidation, abuse and threats directed at those going about their lawful business’.87 Unions who failed to restrict the Wapping picket to six individuals would be liable to fines or resequestration. TNT promptly launched similar injunctions against mass action at their depots. At 2.30 in the morning of 1 August, only a few hours after the High Court had pronounced against mass picketing, a mob of two hundred attacked a TNT distribution depot at Thetford, Norfolk. Besides smashing up vans, the assailants tried to set the depot ablaze by firing flares into the building. In this they were unsuccessful although they did manage to torch bundles of The Times that had just been unloaded.88

  Having paid a heavy financial penalty the last time they had come up for contempt of court, the unions took this new legal threat seriously and SOGAT’s head office ordered its London branch leaders to cooperate with the letter of the law.89 Indeed, while the NGA and SOGAT leadership were busy trying to get the EETPU expelled from the TUC, they were also receptive to a further attempt to reach a settlement with News International. In late August and early September, they had a series of talks with Bill O’Neill at a hotel near Gatwick. The issue of a national joint committee to represent members of all unions at Wapping was again raised. O’Neill parried that this would be a matter for the existing Wapping employees to decide and ‘if pushed now’ they would reject the mechanism. O’Neill advised an eighteen-month ‘cooling-off period’ before the proposal was put to them.90 In the meantime, the unions should settle. As an inducement, the redundancy offer was increased from £50 million to £58 million. The unions agreed to put it to their members. Once again, the ballot papers went out in the post.

  There was confusion over who was still entitled to vote. The majority of the four thousand affected SOGAT members had now got jobs elsewhere. Nonetheless, Dean got her way in insisting that since the settlement concerned them too they had the right to decide it. The vote was announced on 8 October. SOGAT members rejected the improved offer by 2372 votes to 960 while NGA members rejected it by 556 to 116 (and the AUEW members by 107 to 47).91 News International’s attempts to get a package approved collectively had now failed not once but twice. A grand negotiated settlement had proved impossible. Henceforth, the company would try a new tactic, making individual offers over the collective leadership’s heads. The dismissed employees would be picked off one by one.

  In the fortnight after the vote, management received 180 letters from sacked print workers responding to the prospect of a private settlement.92 By the time the first anniversary of the strike approached, 1750 had reached agreement. State unemployment benefit was due to end on that date. In order to raise the £2 million need to finance those who continued to be out of work, the SOGAT leadership proposed a six month fifty-eight pence a week levy on all its members nationwide. The membership voted by 51,187 to 44,265 not to contribute.93 Most, it seemed, had had enough of encouraging the London branch to persist in fighting a war that was clearly lost. On 20 January 1987, a further squeeze was imposed when News International went to court to seek from the unions the costs of Wapping’s security measures over the past six months. Events were, it seemed, approaching a denouement. Few appreciated that the worst bout of violence was about to be unleashed.

  VII

  The massed assault on Wapping that took place on the night of 24 January was timed to commemorate the first anniversary of the strike. But its ferocity was sharpened both by the realization that the resistance of strikers was crumbling and by a tragedy that had taken place the previous fortnight. A nineteen-year-old youth, Michael Delaney, was killed trying to confront a TNT lorry in Stepney. Delaney, who had no connection with the dispute, had gone under the wheels while banging on the side of the truck and shouting ‘scab’.94 Lamentably, The Times failed to report the death when it occurred although it did subsequently cover the inquest three months later. A combination of these factors contributed to the dark mood animating those who planned the first-anniversary Wapping attack.

  About 12,500 demonstrators marched on the site. The company’s security cameras showed a relatively non-violent protest in progress until 7.30 p.m. But the ensuing assault had been carefully planned. The first sign that an orchestrated offensive was being unleashed came when an attempt was made to electronically jam police communications. Then a sting wire was unfurled across the road with the intention of maiming police horses and their riders. There was also an attempt to ignite petrol when five litres were spilled onto the road in front of the police officers. Some rioters overturned a lorry – the same one that had carried the band that had led the march to Wapping – and tried to set it on fire. Missiles were thrown. Uniformed police fell back to be replaced by those in riot gear. An hour later, the police lines had succeeded in pushing the demonstrators back from the top of Virginia Street into the Wapping Highway. Brenda Dean could be heard from the union rostrum lecturing the police to stop harassing the crowd. The security cameras then recorded an unidentified man wearing an armband apparently assuming command of the agitators. He called a group of about twenty-four of them into line. They were all wearing balaclavas and scarves over their faces. This vanguard launched itself at the police, trying to drive them back into Virginia Street. Under a hail of broken bricks and pieces of paving stones, the police line faltered. Mounted police tried to shore up the line and grab some of the activists only to be answered with a hail of thunderflashes, petrol bombs and scaffolding poles. The police sustained many injuries.95

  Such was the ferocity of the assault that at one point the attackers looked like breaking through into the compound. At the opposite end of The Times building, Andrew Neil’s office was dangerously close to the main gate. Fearing it was about to be overrun, Neil’s bodyguard burst in and tried to persuade him to retreat to the print hall building where he could hide in the last redoubt – locked in behind the steel fire doors at its heart. Neil, who was in mid-meeting, would not be moved. He opted to stay behind with his staff, although he did ask ‘them to check that the underground passages connecting our building with the main facility – and our last line of refuge – were open and clear for a dash to safety’.96

  The audit of war produced sixty-seven arrests (of which thirteen were print workers) and injuries to thirty-nine police officers. Eleven police
horses were injured and nine police vehicles damaged. Around thirty demonstrators suffered injuries when mounted police tried to push the surging crowds back. Barbara Cohen, a spokeswoman for a team of observers filing a legal report to the Home Secretary, blamed the police for the problem on the grounds that ‘there was barely a visible police presence during the march, which was peaceful and orderly. When the marchers reached Wapping, the sight of rows of riot police equipped for violent conflict raised the tension.’ Among the Labour MPs who had addressed the demonstration was Dennis Skinner who told the crowds that Labour’s chances of success at the next general election depended upon ‘extra-parliamentary activity’ to ‘win it on the streets’.97 Certainly, a portion of the streets was ripped up as the pile of discarded weaponry, including chunks of paving stone, assembled by the police the following day demonstrated. A permanent legacy of the night was left in the rows of missing spikes removed from the Wapping Highway’s Victorian iron railings. They had been thrown as javelins at the police.

  While some in the Labour Movement chose to see the riot as a consequence of police brutality, others were appalled at the discredit it was attaching to the cause. Neil Kinnock described the violence as ‘hideous and horrifying’ while Norman Willis condemned the ‘disgraceful and violent scenes’.98 Indeed, Willis was now adamant that the strategy of organizing mass demonstrations at Wapping had to stop. The morning after the riot, Dean telephoned Bill O’Neill to request an urgent meeting. O’Neill, who was completing the process of his US naturalization, made clear he could not leave America and wondered if it could wait until he returned. Dean was determined to meet sooner, adding that she wanted the strike brought to an end before her executive met on 5 February. With Bill Miles, she flew to Paris and there caught Concorde to cross the Atlantic.