Читать книгу Inside Story: Politics, Intrigue and Treachery from Thatcher to Brexit - Philip Webster, Philip Webster - Страница 11

The Times defied gravity in the period 1978–9. What other paper in the world could cease publishing for a year – the year of all years when Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first woman prime minister – and come back stronger? Perhaps only The Thunderer (the nickname for The Times dating from the nineteenth century) could have done it.

The Times, The Sunday Times and the supplements were taken off the streets during a fierce industrial dispute between management and printers, leaving readers to pine for their return and take other papers while they waited. Their loyalty was tested to the full. Month after month, they waited. And in the end they were rewarded for their patience.

To understand how this all happened the reader needs to be reminded of the circumstances of the time. The disappearance of The Times from the news stands took place during a time of extraordinary industrial disharmony.

James Callaghan, who became prime minister after a Labour leadership election when Harold Wilson suddenly stood down in March 1976, had a miserable period in charge. Wilson had led Labour to a three-seat majority in October 1974 but by March 1977 that advantage had gone because of by-election defeats. Faced with a motion of no confidence that would have brought him down, Callaghan negotiated a deal – the Lib–Lab Pact – with David Steel, leader of the Liberals. Steel’s party would keep the Government in power in return for concessions on policy.

It was an unhappy time and the pact was torn up in September 1978. At that time it looked certain that Callaghan would call a general election but he confounded us all. Appearing at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference where he was expected to name the day, Callaghan dashed expectations. ‘There was I waiting at the church,’ he sang. He wrongly attributed the song to Marie Lloyd; it was by music-hall star Vesta Victoria. Whatever, the message was clear and a surprise: no election.

He must have regretted that decision more than any other. As the Times dispute reached a climax, Britain was entering what became known as the Winter of Discontent. Shakespeare’s opening line from Richard III was used to describe the period of widespread public strikes by unions opposing the five per cent pay cap set by the Government in a departure from its voluntary social contract with the unions.

Strikes by gravediggers, refuse collectors and health workers led to delays in funerals, rubbish piling up in the streets and hospitals doing emergency operations only. It gave the impression of a Britain in chaos and made Thatcher’s election in May 1979 a foregone conclusion. It also rendered her subsequent assault on union power far easier to push through. Snow and freezing conditions in the coldest winter since 1962 did nothing to help matters. The country has seen nothing like it since.

I was then on the parliamentary staff of The Times, and Callaghan’s TUC speech was one of my last jobs before the paper’s closure. The industrial climate in the country was worsening and at The Times it was becoming critical. The unions were militant and the print unions more militant than most. They had tremendous power: stopping a paper to show your muscle was a simple business. If the printers walked out, no one else could do their job. Managements felt impotent.

In April 1978, Marmaduke Hussey, then chief executive of Times Newspapers, had told the unions he was prepared to close the papers if he did not get an agreement to install computer typesetting. This was a forerunner of the war of Wapping, which was to end so differently. The date for closure if talks failed was set for 30 November. Nothing came from the talks in the end and the papers were duly shut down on 1 December. They were subject to what we knew was an uncertain future, even though Lord Thomson of Fleet, the proprietor, insisted there was no question of selling the papers or permanently closing them.

It was a deeply unsettling experience and took some getting used to. In his final article before the paper went to sleep, Paul Routledge, our labour editor (so important were the unions in those days that most of the broadsheets had two, three or even four labour correspondents to cover their dealings), quoted management sources as expecting a suspension of two to three months.

That would get us through Christmas. Those of us working at Westminster had the Commons to entertain us. We retained our passes and went along whenever anything interesting was happening. There was plenty at this time as Callaghan’s decision began to look less and less clever. But it was strange being unable to report.

As the New Year dawned it was obvious that we would not be going to work any time soon. Our National Union of Journalists (NUJ) meetings were things to look forward to, giving us the chance to meet up and tell each other how we were spending our time. I raced through a long-planned book on the recent history of my beloved Norwich City FC, as seen through the eyes of Kevin Keelan (a goalkeeper who still holds the appearance record for the club, and who by then – late in his career – was playing for Norwich in the winter and the New England Teamen in Boston in the off-season).

I worked for various magazines. I even followed a colleague who was making good money working for a major car-rental company delivering cars – at speed – from one depot to another. It was when I was working with eight others to deliver brand-new Volvos from a Buckinghamshire factory to Heathrow Airport and my machine broke down just a few miles from the factory – prompting cries of anguish from drivers for whom this was the main source of revenue – that I decided it was not for me.

I worked for a few exciting weeks as a subeditor on The Guardian, handling political stories written by the likes of Ian Aitken, Julia Langdon and Michael White, and taking orders from a long-haired genius chief sub called Roger Alton. He was to resurface in my life later, on the ski slopes and the cricket pitch and at The Times after spells as editor of The Observer and The Independent.

They were strange days indeed because great stories were happening and we had nowhere to write them. The consolation was a year on full pay while at the same time being encouraged to write for other organs to keep our hands in.

The whole parliamentary team – all of us – went to a pub near the Commons on the night of 28 March and then went to watch the last rites of Old Labour in government. Thatcher, as Opposition leader, had tabled a motion of no confidence in the Government and won it by one vote, 311 to 310, amid scenes of pandemonium as the Tories cheered and Labour sang ‘The Red Flag’. Labour would not return to power for eighteen years: a political lifetime.

Worst of all for us political writers was to miss the historic election night on 9 May 1979, when Thatcher swept to power and promised to bring harmony where there was discord. I and many other reporters could not bear to be at home and spent our evening trailing round party headquarters pretending we were working.

Meanwhile, NUJ meetings rolled irrelevantly on amid deadlock between management and the unions that mattered. It was a dispute that the management was not going to win, and by the autumn of 1979, all sides were looking for a way out.

In his obituary of Duke Hussey in 2007, William Rees-Mogg, editor of The Times for fourteen years, admitted that the papers had reopened on 13 November 1979 (nearly a year after closing) on what he called unsatisfactory terms. This led first to Hussey being replaced as chief executive and eventually to the sale of Times Newspapers by the Thomson family. Rees-Mogg wrote: ‘If his struggle at The Times proved a failure – and it was a policy I supported from beginning to end – it had much more positive long-term consequences. It led to the next struggle against the militant chapels when Times Newspapers moved to Wapping, and that battle was won under Rupert Murdoch.’

When the paper came back, the BBC reported the dispute was estimated to have cost the Thomson organization £30m. Thatcher welcomed the reappearance of The Times ‘with enthusiasm’. She said: ‘The absence of The Times has been tragic and overlong.’ Although we had found interesting ways of spending our time, the journalists agreed with every word of that.

Some 200,000 more copies of The Times were published on the day it came back than on its last print run, while readers announced births and deaths spanning the period of its absence. The Times also published three special obituary supplements to cover the period. It was an event that showed again the loyalty of Times readers and it paved the way for Murdoch’s eventual victory, which led to other newspapers adopting new technology and moving to cheaper premises in east London.

The Thunderer had risen again and within days it was business as normal.