Press

Destination London

Robert Ashley

As a child I was always taught that . virtue was its own reward. Being a realistic kid, I understood this to mean it wasn't much use being good, since I wasn't going to get anything for it. Nice though it may be to feel a glow of self-satisfaction, my childish mind had already noticed that it didn't buy much at the sweet shop.

I imagine that the staff at the Manchester end of the Mirror Group Newspapers operation are feeling much the same at the moment. Because they've just been told of some fairly sweeping re-organisation which is going to take place in the next ten months or so, and they don't like it.

What is going to happen is this: all the composing, block-making, and editorial make-up sections will be transferred to London by October of next year. This interesting information was conveyed to the staff in a leaflet called 'Destination Manchester', which is almost the most misleading label I've read.

The Mirror Group's thinking is perfectly understandable. The new automated, computer-based technology can be efficiently located in London, thus effecting large savings in production costs. The _northern flavour will not be lost,

according to Tony Miles, editorial director of MGN, because there will be, in London, a northern editor with a northern night desk, news desk and arts desk. They will be served by a small journalistic staff in Manchester, who will send their stuff down the line. The London "northerners" will then process it and incorporate it in the main body of the paper, which will then be sent to Manchester by facsimile transmission, In Manchester the Withy Grove presses will print the Daily and Sunday Mirrors: half a mile away, along Deansgate, the Northprint presses will do the same for the Sunday People.

Now this is all very well and sounds neat and tidy — all right, then, it doesn't: it sounds bloody complicated, but it isn't really — but the reason the Manchester lads are angry is that their more-or-less self-contained operation has recently been doing. far better than most of the rest of the MGN set-UP' To take the northern Daily Mirror, just one of the three papers involved, they have actually put on more than 100,000 extra copies a day in the last few years, at a time when most national newspapers, the Sun excepted, have had falling, or at best static, circulations.

Bill Duffy, the father of the National Graphical Association chapel there, put it remarkably vividly. He said: "It appears to me that we are having a ritual bloodletting in Manchester to appease the gods in London. There is no overmanning in our department, but we are being sacrificed for others where there is . . . Our assistant general secretary Joe Wade recently said it was time for the unions to grasp the nettle of overmanning. But we are getting the nettle rash from someone grasping it 150 miles away". Apart from being a bit weak on geography — London and Manchester are 180 miles away from each other, not 150 — I thought Mr Duffy's statement absolutely splendid.

The NUJ Manchester chapel were just as positive when I spoke to them: "Unless they give us written guarantees of no compulsory redundancies, we're not even going to start negotiations". They are obviously, and understandably, concerned with the fact that the scheme as at present envisaged would mean that one-third of the Mirror's Manchester-based journalists would have to move to London, one-third would stay in the North, and one-third would "take redundancy", which is the modern euphemism for "get sacked".

Over the last twelve months the Mirror Group have lost about 80 million copies from industrial action. The publication of these latest plans lost about 2.5 million more, since the Manchester NGA simply walked out for twenty-four hours to show what they thought of them, knocking that Wednes

day's issue on the head completely and restricting the Thursday's to one edition instead of the normal six.

What Mirror Group Newspapers are after is a saving on the Manchester operation of more than El million a year, which admittedly isn't to be sneezed at. The saving is even more necessary since Percy Roberts predicts that it will be swallowed up by the rise in next Year's newsprint prices. But, on the Other hand, the Manchester chapels remember something else that Percy Roberts said, And that not so‘ long ago either. The last paragraph of his article on the back page of the MGN pamphlet about their new Development Plan says, in heavy black type: "Manchester has a sPecial significance at the moment as sales of the Daily Mirror in the North are now at a record level and taking sales away every day from the Sun". The lads in the Lancashire Athens are beginning to realise what they think Percy meant by "special significance"

The situation is interesting because it is one example of the Many problems the newspaper industry is going to have to face in the near future. On the one hand, there is a pressing need for the new technology with its saving in manPower costs. On the other hand is the fact that "saving in manpower costs" is only another way of saying that a lot of men are going to be out of a job,

So what is to be done? Some of the answers are there in the Development Plan pamphlet quoted two Paragraphs back. Here is Percy Roberts again: "Job security for staff . . with the prospect of a Pension that will permit retirement in dignity and comfort". And here is the IVIGN Manpower Director, Roy Woolliscroft: "There will be some reduction in staff but we hope to deal with them by one or other of these schemes: voluntary redundancy: voluntary retirement: voluntary retirement of staff over sixty-five. In addition, the recently agreed policies of non-automatic replacement and non-recruitment Will make a significant contribution to the avoidance of redundancy".

The question the boys in Manchester are asking is, how serious were those statements? At the moment they think that laying down a ten-month timetable before' discussions have even started with the unions involved goes right against the spirit of what has been said. And believing that, they can be excused for feeling bloodyminded. How Mirror Group Newspapers are going to handle this one is something the rest of Fleet Street is watching with the greatest interest. Because, of course, no man is an island, entire of itself. They know that they too, are a piece of the Continent, a part of the main. The Mirror's problems, in other words, are theirs too.