THE PRESS
Evensong in chapel
DONALD McLACHLAN
I had a dream the night before last, in which a few editors, managing directors and ad- vertising managers agreed that for three or four days they would come to their Fleet Street offices as usual but do no work at all. They would solve one another's crossword puzzles, catch up with McLuhan's latest books, and look at television. No leading articles would be passed, no advertising booked. No newsprint would be bought, no staff complaints investigated. Once a day in their employers' time they would meet in a hotel and discuss their grievance. This was that the salary differential between politi- cians and civil servants on the one hand and of themselves on the other were widening to an intolerable degree. If proprietors took no notice they would decide whether to strike or not. For their initial action was not to be described as a strike or a lock-out; it was merely a demonstration of independence such as compositors and sub-editors stage when they hold chapel meetings in working hours.
At this point, understandably, I woke up. The credulity of even a sleeping person can- not be strained too far. The top brass would never do anything like this; admirals do not mutiny. Their pride in their eminence forbids such action, except on honourable political grounds. It used to be the same with editorial staff. The men who created newspapers with their pens did not think of striking. They were loyal to 'the office' because their hearts and brains had gone in- to 'the paper'. Individuals would say—some still do—that they were devoted to the dear old Daily X. What, then, has happened to make 260 intelligent journalists at the Daily Mail hold chapel meetings in working hours (a form of sabotage which in some offices is forbidden by agreement) and now decide to ballot for a strike?
In one place it was suggested that this was just the worm turning after eight months' negotiation: the white-collar, pencil-driving journalist losing patience with the pro- duction man's wages. Indeed, some worm when 125 of the chapel earn over £3,000 a year and the average is £64 a week; some turn when they appropriate five hours of their employers' working day. I saw at the National Union of Journalists central Lon- don headquarters a copy of the AEF journal in which the union congratulated itself on persuading the Daily Telegraph to pay £53 8s for 41 hours work to a day plumber and £82 for 421 hours' work to a maintenance engineer working nights. In principle no overtime would be worked, but if it should happen to be necessary it would be rewarded by time off. 'I ask you', said an official, 'how can I tell our journalists to behave themselves and be patient when they see this kind of payment being conceded to men who go slow, hold up production and resort to every kind of trick to get their way with the proprietors?' I am not quoting the NUJ man, but I am following the example of Thucydides in reporting what it is reasonable to assume the speaker would have said.
I suspect that teachers' union represen- tatives have in the last year or two spoken in just the same way. Once professional people
have caught the habit of comparing their in- come with what is paid for jobs they would not dream of undertaking—no sub-editor wants to be a day plumber—they lose their pride in status and with it their sense of loyalty. They are fair game for the militant chapel member who asks, in tones of irony and passion, why reporters and photo- graphers should be worse paid than night maintenance men, why the former should work all the hours that God made while the latter niggle about overtime. Reply is impossible because the true answer lies in the heart and not in the-head. Those who know it cannot frame it without running the risk of being made to look and sound absurd. Yet managing directors are still surprised when they find that the appeal from the pocket to the heart no longer raises an echo.
However, it looks as if the worst is over. The newspapers did not make it clear for Bank Holiday weekend that the National Union of Journalists had steered the mutineers at the Daily Mail into con- stitutional channels. The militants in the chapel who wanted to go on harassing the management with what amounted to sabotage of production were defeated in a ballot, after moderates had argued _that tough tactics had so far brought no result, beyond a promise that salaries of thirty-one journalists earning less than £2,500 a year would be reviewed. The management stood firm on its position : that a £2 a week rise all round had been accepted by chapels in the Evening News, the Daily Sketch and the Manchester office and that the demands of the London chapel (not supported by the union) for £10 a week backdated and £10 a week in January cut the ground from under their colleagues' feet or—if you prefer that metaphor—would open the floodgates. This argument of principle was just as important as the figures of losses—£825,000 for 1970—given to the Daily Mail employees who, the NUJ chapel apart, found them a reasonable ground for restraint.
What happened next was that a secret paper ballot was taken by the union on the question whether its executive committee should give twenty-eight days' notice of in- dustrial action. An overwhelming majority in favour of a strike would make it difficult for the union to avoid it. A slender majority would make it impossible for the chapel to insist on it. So for another few days the out- come is uncertain and heads will doubtless cool. At the same time the chapels at the Daily Mirror and at the Sun, whose grievances are of a quite different order, have been told that enough is enough and that to interrupt production of papers is wrong. A similar rebuke from the NPA to Mr Murdoch for the tactics followed at the Sun would not have been out of place.
At the union's Fleet Street office there is no doubt where the root of these troubles lies; with Mr Aubrey Jones's recom- mendation, thought up by inspectors of the Prices and Incomes Board, that bargaining should be left to individual chapels, and that office deals should take the place of national and regional agreements. The result, say officials, has been anarchy, with discontent spreading from office to office like the flu; but it has also brought some notable im- provements of pay in places where prestige was always regarded as part of the pay packet. At the Daily Telegraph, for example, most editorial staff have had a rise of 25 per cent and accepted a system of grades to which salaries are attached. One old friend, however, remembers with affection the special, if irregular, increments that the first Lord Camrose would personally award to in- dividuals and is not at all pleased to find what manner of men have joined him in his grade. Paternalism has certain advantages over civil service methods, which egalitarians and efficiency experts—and of course union officials—cannot be expected to recognise.
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