Wapping 25 years on

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is top of the news again as it fends off accusations of hacking into the phone calls of hundreds or thousands of people. Public anger over the appalling standards of Murdoch journalism threatens to derail his bid to buy up the whole of BSkyB.

He has been dominating the UK media scene for 30 years, and the biggest single step he took was when he moved his four national newspapers to a new non-union plant and sacked 5,500 people, the whole production workforce.

This was in January 1986 and the year-long strike that followed has gone down in history as the Wapping dispute, one of the major events of the Thatcher decade.

The CPBF is marking this 25th anniversary with a public meeting in London, which attracted 200 people on January 25, and this Radio Free Press podcast.

Presented by former BBC political correspondent Nick Jones – who reported the Wapping dispute – it features:

ANN FIELD, former official with the print union SOGAT and a union activist on The Times;
JOHN BAILEY, a chapel father for the NGA print union at the Sun;
GRANVILLE WILLIAMS, the leading left-wing commentator on media ownership and regulation; and
TIM GOPSILL, editor of Free Press.

Radio Free Press is a campaigning service, aimed at informing people who are concerned to preserve independent, diverse and accountable media in the UK. Please pass the link to the podcast on to colleagues, friends and fellow campaigners.