ANOTHER VOICE

From the sad story of Wapping a new Resolution is born

AUBERON WAUGH

Christmas, spent in France this year, was made more than usually melancholy by a sad little item I happened to read in the gossip column of the Independent, written by Francis Wheen. In fact, I think it may be one of the saddest things I have ever read. This is what Wheen wrote, under the heading 'Jingle bells':

Rupert Murdoch is trying to inspire some festive spirit at Fortress Wapping. Christmas trees bedeck the corridors. The canteen, awash with tinsel, has been equipped with a sound system which plays non-stop seasonal ditties such as 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town'.

All is merry and bright, then? Alas no. The strict ban on alcohol in the Fortress remains in force. Any office parties on the premises will have to make do with orange juice!

My feelings were made all the more bitter when I reflected how I had hailed Murdoch's move to Wapping as the greatest victory in our island story since Agincourt. He should be made a duke, I cried, for having saved the newspaper industry, rescued Britain from slavery. Rule Britannia. It might have taken a hairy-heeled, tit-and-bum merchant from Oz to achieve it, but the effect was the same. Britons, never, never, never will be slaves.

Now I learn that my colleagues, the journos on the Times and Sunday Times, on the Sun and the News of the World, have allowed themselves to be tricked. As one who has written regular weekly col- umns in my time for three of those four newspapers, I find that many questions which have been puzzling me are now explained: What has happened to Bernard Levin? Why has the Sun sunk into prurient sentimentality about children and sex?

The answer to all these questions is that News International journalists have lost their self-respect. By no means all journal- ists are dipsomaniacs — Levin certainly isn't — but by removing the element of choice, Murdoch has destroyed their will. They are slaves, and it is the greatest error to suppose that slaves can produce a decent newspaper. True, they once built the pyra- mids, but there is all the difference in the world between hauling ninety-ton blocks of granite under supervision and producing a newspaper which people will choose to read. Free drunks produce better newspap- ers than sober slaves, as the wretched Murdoch's performance in this country now proves.

If there was ever a case for boycotting South African goods the case for boycot- ting Murdoch newspapers is 20 times bet- ter: the slave labour to be condemned is here in Britain, rather than 6,000 miles away. The slaves are our own countrymen. I feel we should support the Labour Party in its refusal to talk to representatives of those newspapers, and support the left- wing Councils which ban them from local libraries. Perhaps, in return, they will adopt my own boycott of the Cambridge University Press, which forbids its em- ployees to smoke at work, refusing to buy, display or review books from this tainted source.

None of us should be surprised that Murdoch tries to ban alcohol from his horrible headquarters in the East End, although the attempt shows him for a fool. What is dismaying is that British journalists should acquiesce. Let them cringe and pretend to support political parties they detest. That is all in the grand tradition of my profession. But take away the alcohol, and there is no pride left.

There are other reasons for supposing that Murdoch is a fool, despite the success of his business enterprises and his unim- aginable wealth and power. He spends a large part of his life in aeroplanes, flying betweeen Australia, Britain and the Un- ited States or within Australia and the United States. When I was in Adelaide (where he owned his first newspaper and where he is still venerated as a patron saint), I was told that he survives this form of existence by having an enema before every flight, and by eating nothing on the day of flying. What sort of life is that for a man of 56? Does he not realise how short is our existence on earth? For all his success, all his wealth and power, he is not a free man. It is the life of a slave.

Of course any employer will impose oppressive conditions on his employees if he thinks he can get away with them. The National Union of Jouralists should have protected its members, but the NUJ has decided — for some reason best known to itself — to support the print workers, instead. So half-baked has the NUJ be- come and so infiltrated by gay rights' enthusiasts, bearded wimmin of both sexes and teetotallers, I doubt whether it would stick up for the right of journalists to drink even if it had not decided to support the print workers instead.

The lesson of Wapping is that there is still a need for trade unions to resist oppressive employers, but that British trade unionists are not up ,to the task.

My New Year Resolution is nothing so courageous — or self-important or pom- pous — as actually to resign from the Union to which I have belonged for 24 years. That would be a denial of my new discovery that trade unions are still neces- sary. My Resolution — if such a feeble decision can be dignified by the name — is simply not to pay my Union dues.

Last month I received a peremptory circular from the National Union of Jour- nalists informing me that 'the contribution for all Grade 4 members will be £140 from January 1st, 1987.' Within recent memory, £140 was a decent sum of money. You could have had a night at the Ritz with dinner for three and a magnum of cham- pagne in bed with two tarts of your choice, don't you know. Even now you can buy a bottle of Petrus of respectable vintage for drinking alone. The thought of giving such a sum to these idiots is repugnant to reason.

And for the first time, I observe that they categorise me as a Grade 4 journalist. If I am Grade 4, who is Grade 1? Bernard Plop-Face' Levin, I suppose. Well, let him resign and strike attitudes of high princi- ple. I am not going to pay another farthing to those flabby creatures until they have persuaded Murdoch that Prohibition does not work.