The press
The union censors
Paul Johnson
The systematic support given to the health service workers by unions which have nothing to do with the dispute raises the dangers of political unionism in acute form, especially for Fleet Street. The print unions have always been greedy and dif- ficult but until recently they had been mer- cifully down on phony idealism. Now they are in the process of being radicalised and are easy game for agitators who want to use industrial leverage to achieve political ob- jectives which cannot be secured through the ballot box. The danger lies not merely in the damage which political unionism can do to the creaking finances of national newspapers by actual shutdowns but, far More, in the imposition by unions of cen- sorship in its most objectionable form forcing editors to print tendentious Material. Last month a coordinated drive against the Fleet Street Sundays by print union Militants obliged many of them to in- sert last-minute 'advertisements' putting the health workers' case, and in the process there was considerable disruption, the Observer, for instance, losing 180,000 copies.
This episode served one useful purpose anYway, in that it brought out into the open that sinister organisation which originally called itself the 'Campaign for Press Freedom'. I have maintained from the start that it ought to be called the Campaign for Press Censorship, for although it has some Worthy objects its real and central purpose, I believe, is to organise the use of union Dower to impose both positive and negative censorship on our free press. On 4 August, The Times printed a letter from a Mr John Jennings, backing the action of the print anions in forcing the Sunday papers to Print their stuff. He described himself as an employee of the print union Sogat' and, More to the point, as secretary of what is now called the 'Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom'. He said that the Campaign was 'not directly involved' in the episode but 'I know many of our members and supporters in Fleet Street were'. I can Well believe it; indeed my guess is that, Without the inspiration of the Campaign, it Might not have taken place at all.
What interested me about the letter was not only the way in which Jennings commit- ted the Campaign to supporting positive censorship but his view that there is no essential difference between print workers, on the one hand, and editors and jour- nalists, on the other, in their power or right to determine what does or does not appear in newspapers. The difference was merely, said Jennings, that 'union members only exercise their power to influence the con- tents of newspapers' occasionally whereas 'editors and journalists are able, because of their privileged positions, to act in an ar- bitrary and partisan way every day of the week if they so wish'.
This, of course, is the philosophy behind the Campaign: that a newspaper is the pro- duct of a collective workforce, each member of which has as much right to a say in the final outcome as any other. Under this system an editor would be nothing more than chairman of a works committee, which would appoint and sack him, and give him orders on a day-to-day basis. Not all those who support the campaign take this 'democratic' view, however. Arthur Scargill, I believe, wants some kind of Ministry of Information, which would run the press like a nationalised industry and appoint editors like colliery managers. That is more or less the procedure behind the Iron Curtain and in most Afro-Asian dic- tatorships. If the Campaigners and their friends ever got into a position to enforce their views, the second method would doubtless be followed sooner or later. But 'Oh, look! A one-parent family.' in the meantime the ethic of the Campaign is founded in 'workers' control' and 'par- ticipation'.
On this point, however, the Jennings statement of Campaign policy contains a significant inversion of the truth. He refers to the 'privileged positions' of editors and journalists, as opposed to print workers. In fact editors and journalists enjoy no legal privileges whatever. Their power to publish rests solely on their talents and experience and their ability to persuade the public to pay money for what they provide. They live or die in that very democratic institution, the market, where readers vote every day in their newsagents. They are subject to the full rigours of all the laws of the land.
On the contrary, it is the print union of- ficials, forming up in front of an editor and threatening to stop work unless he censors something they do not like or inserts their 'advertisement', who enjoy a privileged position. They act against a background of legal immunity to actions for civil damages conceded to unions in a harsher age when it was necessary to protect their members from injustice. For the Observer, whose financial position remains fragile, the loss of those 180,000 copies was serious. But its redress in law is dubious or non-existent. And for a newspaper to start suing its own print workers is a hazardous step likely to lead to the loss of entire issues.
What is not clear to me is whether an in- dustrial dispute arising from an attempt by print workers to control the editorial con- tent of a newspaper is still privileged in law. The 1980 Employment Act did something to limit union immunities. As a result, on Monday the Fleet Street newspaper publishers were able to go to court and get an injunction to prevent print unions from staging a 24-hour stoppage in support of the health workers. Such injunctions do not necessarily work in practice because mili- tant trade unionists tend to defy them. That is what happened on Tuesday. Then the employer is put in the invidious position of setting in motion the wheels of retribution, which can end by sending a union leader to jail for contempt of court. In Fleet Street it takes a strong-minded and adventurous publisher to take such a risk. In any case, the issue of union censorship is a separate one — it is a direct dispute between employer and union — where the 1980 Act or even the new Tebbit Bill, due to become law this autumn, may not help much.
Sooner or later it seems to me Parliament must act to ban all politically motivated strikes, or threats of strikes, by turning them into a criminal as well as a civil of- fence. That would not solve the problem of union censorship but it would constitute a basis on which newspapers could concert together to defend press freedom. Part of the problem is that, during the last decade and more, Fleet Street managements have all gone their separate ways and have been punished accordingly. What they now need is unity and that means one or other of our press tycoons must show, just for once, a bit of leadership.
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