A DEATH ON THE OCEAN WAVE

Sandra Barwick on the

trade union that is adrift in the doldrums

CHAOS and darkness reign in the Nation- al Union of Journalists, and a new Lord of Darkness, or General Secretary, as he is more usually known, is about to be elected. Whether he will be able to intro- duce light into their affairs is doubtful; if he does not, the fear must be that it cannot be long before it disappears into a black hole.

This is a pretty state of affairs for a once powerful union: a union which once had Fleet Street in the grip of a closed shop, whose strike weapon already had such effects that it carelessly delivered the Times and Sunday Times into Rupert Murdoch's hands, and which hoped to inherit, through new technology, the abso- lute power Fleet Street printers once held.

It is a particularly ironic state of affairs for an organisation once fond of telling managements (often, admittedly, scanda- lously incompetent, not least in their flab- by surrender to union bullying) how to manage. Members' money — paid at the rate of £90 a year for provincial journalists and up to £153 for Fleet Street — is evaporating at such a rate that it would produce better value if they cleaned their ears and wiped their noses with the bank notes they instead hand over to the NUJ.

At present the NUJ thinks that it is heading for a £1 million deficit by Septem- ber, made up of a £900,000 overdraft and a £200,000 debt to the National Graphical Association. Its figures may not be reli- able. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard's Fraud Squad is still investigating a missing £19,000. Fraud or someone's incompe- tence? It is not yet clear.

This is all horribly familiar. Another £18,000 in 1988 and an earlier £28,000 in expenses in 1987 was unaccounted for. No charges were ever brought over the missing money: police were unable to establish that offences had been committed. Even more cash had vanished than that, according to Gary Morton, the provincial papers orga- niser for the union, and now a candidate for general secretary. A few years ago there was excessive spending on a number of subordinate councils: the money has gone, but no one knows to whom, where or for what.

'There's three chunks of money gone for

certain, but it may well be four or five — again no one knows. The attitude towards money here seems to be entirely cavalier,' says Mr Morton. 'The police are investigat- ing the latest affair but whether they will take the matter any more seriously than we do is a question we have to ask. There's an air of unreality. To discuss financial reform here is to be a pianist on the Mary Celeste.'

The Mary Celeste and the Titanic are recurrent images in the speech of union officials. Delegates at the annual confer- ence have repeatedly turned down cost- cutting packages, most recently in March. At the last National Executive Council meeting members complained that they were trying to make decisions on the future without any detailed or up to date financial information.

Mr Morton, a member of the British Communist Party, quotes Adam Smith and has trenchant views on financial reform, which he thinks should include paying off around half the NUJ's 80 staff, refusing to take on strikes unless there is a likelihood of winning, and moving to a smaller building. Acorn House, near King's Cross Station in central London, is thought to be worth around £4 million, but each day the value of this asset crumbles.

At present the union is spending at least £20,000 a week on strike pay, on no fewer than four disputes. Every penny of this is being borrowed from the banks at 17 per cent interest. More disputes may happen at any time, and the Union's strike pay of around £150 to £175 is among the most generous of any union: these two facts may not be unconnected.

In addition to this, overspending on the NUJ's 'general expenditure' budget is ab- out £400,000 a year, largesse lavished on general administration with few results: the administration of the NUJ cannot keep proper track of members' subscriptions and does not even know how many mem- bers it has — 26,000 and falling is only one estimate. Its inefficiency is notorious. Mr Morton's view, seconded by many others within the NUJ, is that members of the union are regarded with indifference and contempt by some of its officers.

Except, perhaps, during elections. For the first time the General Secretary is being elected by postal ballot, though this has only come about because another candidate, Steve Turner, Father of the Chapel of the Daily Mirror, threatened to take the union to court. Mr Turner is on a moderate ticket: he wants constitutional reform to give the union back to its members, but he sees no need for 'If you won't bicker with me I'm going to someone that will.' spending-cuts. Even so, he may be the union's best hope of deliverance from Harry Conroy, who has presided over the catastrophe of the past five years, and is standing for re-election. A fourth candi- date Eamonn McCann is a member of the Socialist Workers' Party and a Londonder- ry freelance. Ballot papers are due to be counted by the Electoral Reform Society in mid-July, if the NUJ has managed to identify its members and their addresses and get the papers out by then. It is by no means certain that the NUJ is capable of holding a valid postal ballot.

Five thousand new members would be needed to cover the union's deficit, but there is little prospect of them. The scene has changed since the Seventies, when the NUJ, with closed shops in Fleet Street and in magazine groups, had an effective monopoly. Even the NUJ's most ludicrous gestures — like its telegram of condolence to Gaddafi over the American bombing of Libya — then hardly dented its mem- bership, however much they harmed its standing.

Members' loyalty was then enforced by three sorts of fear: fear of not being allowed to earn a living, fear of being shunned by colleagues, fear of being sack- ed by management. Mrs Thatcher saw to the closed shop, and new personal con- tracts mean that the old arguments used to pressurise the unwilling into the NUJ — 'Why do you take the wage rises we get for you then?' — appear ever more limp. Only the third category of fear remains a recrui- ter for the NUJ, and it will only be the result of newspaper management's incom- petence if the NUJ's membership does not wither away.

The most likely destiny for a union on the threshold of financial collapse is in sight: absorption by a bigger union. The vision of a mega-media union, encompas- sing actors, musicians, cameramen and printers has long shimmered alluringly in the desert through which Harry Conroy has been trudging. In this context the £200,000 interest-free loan from the NGA takes on a prophetic air.

This denouement should please no jour- nalist. More than ever, given the pressures for privacy laws and the present contempt in which the trade is held, an organisation is needed to present the specific case of journalists: to challenge legislation in the courts, (one area in which the NUJ has done useful work); to lobby MPs; to combat bad practices; to give legal and tactical advice on methods of countering the excesses of the megalomaniacs and incompetents who are instinctively drawn into the high profile business of owning and managing newspapers.

Such an organisation could only be effective if it was seen to be moderate, useful, competent, sober, and solvent: but what response except echoes do those words raise, on board the Mary Celeste of the National Union of Journalists?