Life Without Papers
By BRIAN INGLIS THE earliest sufferer from a printers' strike is the man who likes to read his morning newspaper at the breakfast- table. Since mid-July Dubliners have had no newspaper, and in many a household the problem of readjustment was for a time acute. Insecurely balanced against teapot or marma- lade-jar, a newspaper is a solvent of domestic discord; with- out it citizens found themselves embarrassed, forced to look at their wives and families, even to talk to them. Custom forbade the substitution of a book; it is not done to read books before lunch-time. The strain was considerable.
Yet the Dublin householder gradually grew accustomed to being without his newspaper. The clamour for its return came mainly from other sources, few of which had previ- ously expressed any great affection for the Press. Bookmakers were perhaps the hardest hit by the strike. Not only was the punter unable to find out what horses were running, at what odds and in what races; he was also deprived of the assist- ance of his favourite racing correspondents in his assessment of form and prospects. Consequently, he laid fewer bets. Still more surprising converts to the newspapers' side were the members of the legal profession. Previously a solicitor's dealings with the' Press might have been confined to sending an intimation that if his clients did not receive an apology " given equal prominence . . ." he would start proceedings on their behalf. The absence of newspapers deprived the solicitor of some more of his bread-and-butter; the strike reminded him just how dependent he is upon the Press—in the publication of legal notices„for example, and of adver- tisements relating to sales of property.
. - Advertisers in general were given an unusual opportunity to judge how useful the Press can be to them. The businesses most affected appear to have been those retail stores which are accustomed to launch spectacular " sales " with the help of full-page or half-page advertisements announcing the bargains offered. Sales used to be uncommon outside the post-Christmas period; recently they have tended to become all-the-yeai- round affairs. A number of Dublin shops appear to have forgotten what it was like to put goods in their windows without a marked-down price-ticket attached. These in their turn have created a public who follow sales-advertisements as avidly as other people follow form. The drop in turnover must have been substantial.
The institution that everybody imagined would be most affected, however, appeared unmoved by the strike. It has long been assumed that those deputies who like to make long speeches, and to figure in exchanges of abuse in the Dail, have been mainly concerned with the publicity that they know they will receive in the newspapers the following day—at least in the case of exchanges of abuse, which are extensively reported. But in the absence of newspapers the rows were even stormier than usual. An Opposition deputy accused a member of the Government Party of shooting his big toe off, the night before a Military Pensions Act came in, so as to qualify. The Minister for Education did his best to restore the balance by a merited boot to the Opposition deputy's posterior. As for the speeches, they have never been so long as they were in the sittings when there were no newspapers in Dublin. Possibly that can be explained by the fact that most of the speakers came from Cork, where the Examiner continued publication. Cork bears the same relation to the rest of Ireland as Scotland does to Britain; it is grudgingly prepared to put up with the existence of an alien capital only so long as Corkmen retain thesbulk of the important adminis- trative positions, and can express themselves freely about Dublin's incompetence to deal with Southern Affairs.
The effect of the strike on broadcasting was interesting. Only when newspapers were not available did people realise how much that they regard as news is not presented over the radio. Deaths, for example; a demand promptly arose that something equivalent to newspaper death-notices should be read out each morning with the news bulletins. It was not easy to convince listeners that to cast an eye rapidly down a column in a newspaper, in order to catch any familiar name, is a very different matter from hearing fifty to a hundred notices read out by an announcer. The followers of racing, too, wanted complete lists of meetings, in Britain as well as Ireland, with all the information about runners that is normally supplied in the Press. It would have taken all morning to satisfy them. Still, the strike came opportunely for the campaign at present being waged to remove Radio Eireann from civil-service control and Ministry of Finance restrictions. It was a shock to people who found themselves listening to R.E. more often as a result of the strike to realise how very limited has been its scope.
And the strike itself ? Ostensibly it was over a wage- claim, but the roots go back into history, to the time when printing was highly-skilled. The printing workers then organ- ised a very strong union, through which they have been able to keep themselves in a privileged position in relation to that of most other workers. The employers complain that the work is no longer so skilled, and that the privileged position is maintained only by the use of the unions' restrictive practices which prevent changes. The arguments are startlingly remi- niscent of those used in a similar context before a Royal Commission on trade unions nearly a century and a quarter ago. Then an Irish newspaper-proprietor was able to tell the Commissioners that to fight a strike he had carried off a number of boys from the local charity school, and shut them up in his house (which was also his office) for a few days and nights, at the end of whi they were well-trained enough to bring out his paper. His Tnly complaint was that he had to buy new stools high enough for them to work from. The proprietor was able to boast that he was doing a public service by thus combating the unions. Many a Dublin employer today must wish that he could express himself with the same freedom.
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