The press
Power of the press
Paul Johnson
Fleet Street hostility undoubtedly played a part in the collapse of the rail strike. It's hard to remember an occasion when a major industrial dispute began with less sYmpathy in any quarter. Even the Guar- dian was coldly hostile to the NUR. Its leader was headed: 'Where the Subsidies Have to Stop' and it emphasised: 'The brutal truth of the matter is that some two- thirds of the near £1 billion which British Rail will receive this year will go to feather- bedding restrictive practices.' We spend it to 'coddle railwaymen' rather than on 'im- proving health services or raising the level of benefit for the unemployed and the poor'. The efficiency argument was `by no means the monopoly of the privatise-at-all- costs right wing'. So 'Mrs Thatcher and Sir Peter Parker should stand resolutely firm'. The Mirror-group papers gave no com- fort to the unions either. `To add to the delight of the triumphant Tories', was the Sunday Mirror comment, 'workers and bosses on British Rail and London Transport are pitching into each other in a Way that makes a complete mockery of Public ownership.' It helped give the im- pression the Labour movement was being taken over by a bunch of wild revolu- tionaries who couldn't run a publicly- owned whelk-stall, let alone a free country'. The Daily Mirror's Industrial Editor Pointed out that 'three-quarters of freight is now carried by road. So it will be several weeks before the rail strike seriously begins to Impair the economy.' That was 'precisely what the government are banking on to break the strike'. The Sunday People took a similar view: 'This bloody-minded govern- ment wants confrontation with the unions
. So a strike plays right into Margaret Thatcher's hands. She will sit it out while the railmen sweat it out.' The paper thought that 'after a few weeks on £5 strike pay the men will no doubt be offered a cou- ple of extra peanuts and resentfully go back'.
Nor were the papers of the Left any more cheered by the prospect of the rail strike ex- panding into a general battle with the Government. 'The conflict is politically portentous', the Guardian wrote, 'since the railwaymen will be taking on a Prime Minister who enjoys both in general and in .this particular the heartiest public support.' It was especially worried by the idea that `King Arthur Scargill' would be tempted to `don his cardboard crown', since `no `Not so much a strike as an awayday.' dispute passes these days, it seems, without his seeking to climb aboard'. Most of the present industrial unrest was coincidental but if Scargill 'should become the symbolic catalyst of scattered events, Mrs Thatcher could scent a challenge and an issue'. The Observer rejected the argument in some union quarters that we were in for a 're-run of 1974'. 'They would be making a monumental error of judgment', it wrote, `if they resolved to act on this belief and pushed the present disputes to the point of a national confrontation.' The Prime Minister who refused to bow to General Galtieri 'is most unlikely to do so to Sidney Weighell or Arthur Scargill'. Such a battle would inflict 'grave injury' on the unions and 'sign the death-warrant of the Labour Party as an electoral force in British politics'.
The weakness of the railwaymen's case was the common theme. Those favourite creatures from the leader-writer's menagerie, lemmings and Gadarene swine, were doing overtime. 'The Railmen's Suicide Bid' was the title of the Daily Mail leader. The News of the World had 'It's Sheer Bloody Lunacy'. 'An Industry Bent on Suicide?' asked the Sunday Telegraph. The Sunday Express ran a Cummings car- toon showing a Skyhawk of Militants, Trots, Scargill, ASLEF and the NUR firing an Exocet at HMS Britain, over an article headed: 'The Blackmailer is Back: This Time the Answer Must Be No'. Fleet Street anger concentrated on underworked railwaymen. 'I saw six men taking tickets from a commuter train at St Pancras', wrote a News of the World reporter, 'while at Paddington collectors stood around chatting as passengers streamed by.' Much play was made with the new but unused coaches of the ill-fated electrified section Bedford-St Pancras, variously said to be 'in mothballs', 'sprouting weeds' and 'gather- ing dust and rust', since they are one-man trains and the NUR won't allow them to run without guards. The Sunday Times in- terviewed one of the 'Bedpan Line' guards, branch secretary of the St Pancras NUR, a member of the Communist Party and a CND supporter. 'I've talked to a lot of passengers', he claimed, 'and they're ter- rified of trains without guards.' Not a very plausible point, perhaps, and it was the on- ly one I was able to find made on behalf of the NUR.
The decision to call the strike off evoked Fleet Street's general satisfaction. 'The only sensible thing to do', said the Daily Mirror. For the Sun it was 'A Victory for Modera- tion', for the Telegraph 'A Victory for Reason'. The NUR has peered over the brink', was the Guardian's verdict, 'and decided not to jump yet awhile.' The delegates at Plymouth', wrote the Express, `have demonstrated enlightened self- interest.' Some papers praised ministers: `The government has reaped the rewards of firmness,' The Times felt. Others applaud-
ed the action of rank-and-file railwaymen who refused to obey the strike call: 'They don't want to be turned into cannon-
fodder', the Mail wrote, 'in some grandiose Left-wing-led combined operation to paralyse the country'. But Fleet Street could reasonably claim some of the credit itself. Union leaders complain that they do not get a fair deal from the press. On this occasion, with Fleet Street overwhelmingly critical, they are sure to claim foul. But that is to miss the point — or rather two points.
First, reporters and leader-writers cannot present a case if it does not exist. If the Guardian and the Mirror cannot honestly find a pro-union argument then we can be fairly sure there isn't one. Secondly, Fleet Street is only a force when it represents general opinion. No doubt there was anti- NUR feeling among journalists, because they feared crippling distribution problems. Had the strike lasted months and had Sogat workers chosen to mess up Fleet Street in sympathy, one or more papers might have vanished. But Fleet Street bias — if that is the right word — merely reflects the anti- union bias of the nation as a whole, com- posed of perfectly ordinary people who hate and fear union militants who disrupt their lives and imperil their jobs. If Fleet Street really spoke only for a tiny con- spiracy of millionaire proprietors, as the Far Left maintains, it would have no impact at all. It is because it sometimes does ar- ticulate the views of the vast majority, as this week, that Fleet Street is occasionally a mighty power in the land.
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