Britain than print it under the restrictive practices of Fleet Street. What was certainly the case was that 36 per cent of advertising revenue in The Times came from overseas. So it was decided to print a Europe-only edition that would at least show that the paper was alive and could feasibly be produced elsewhere. A newspaper plant in Frankfurt agreed to undertake the task. This proved most illuminating. In Fleet Street, NGA compositors doing ‘piece work’ managed to type around 3500 characters an hour. They defended their high salaries by pointing to this level of expertise. But the German compositors in Frankfurt – women (all but barred by the Fleet Street compositors) working in a language that was not their own – managed 12,500 characters an hour (in their own language they could set 18,500).32 Such statistics told their own story.
But if a point was proved by the exercise, it was the value of brute force. The British print unions persuaded their German brothers to picket the plant. With ugly scenes outside, the German police discussed tactics with Rees-Mogg who was at the Frankfurt site for the launch. They offered to use water cannon on the crowd in order to clear a path for the lorries to transport the first edition out of the plant but they could not guarantee subsequent nights if the situation deteriorated further. Meanwhile, inside the plant, various sabotage attempts were being detected, including petrol-soaked blankets that had been placed near the compressor – potentially capable of causing a massive explosion, which, as Hussey put it ‘might have blown the whole plant and everyone in it sky high’.33 Reluctantly, Rees-Mogg gave the order to abandon production. Once again, management’s attempts to circumvent their unions had been humiliatingly defeated.
In November 1979, the TNL management formally climbed down and called off the shutdown. They had failed to secure direct input for journalists or to get the print workers to agree legally binding guarantees of continuous production. The only upside to this humiliation was that management was prevented from installing what would actually have been the wrong typesetting system (a disastrous discovery Hussey made late in the dispute when he visited the offices of The Economist and realized his mistake).34 The shutdown meant that The Times, which had long claimed to be Britain’s journal of record, had reported nothing for almost a year. Among the events it was unable to comment upon was Margaret Thatcher’s coming to power. The total cost to Thomson exceeded £40 million. The unions’ concession was that – already obsolete – computer typesetting would be introduced in stages but that NGA operatives would ‘double-key stroke’ all text.
That The Times returned at all after a stoppage of such duration was impressive. That it returned with circulation figures similar to those it had enjoyed before the shutdown was an extraordinary testament to the quality of the product and the extent to which its readers had mourned its absence. Indeed, such was the economics to which Fleet Street was reduced that the eleven-month shutdown left little enduring advantage to The Times’s competitors. The Times’s absence had increased their market opportunity. The Daily Telegraph, in particular, made gains. But gains involved pushing up production levels and this was only achieved at a cost that met the increase in sales revenue. When The Times returned, its rivals had to scale production down again but, thanks to union muscle, they were unable to cut back the escalating cost that had been forced upon them in the meantime.35
It might have been imagined that the journalists’ frustration at the print workers would have bonded them more closely with management in ensuring that The Times saw off its tormentors, but the failed shutdown strategy made many of them equally critical of TNL executives.36 Indeed, the success of the print workers in defending their corner emboldened some of the more militant Times journalists to see what would happen if they too pushed at a door that was not only ajar but loudly banging back and forth in the wind.
During the 1970s, salaries for Times journalists had lagged behind the spiralling inflationary settlements of the period. But during the shutdown, Thomson had kept faith with its Gray’s Inn Road journalists by continuing to pay their full salaries during the eleven months they were not actually doing anything. Furthermore, they were given a 45 per cent pay increase in 1979 to make up for previous shortfalls.37 Despite this, in August 1980 the journalists went on strike when TNL offered a further 18 per cent pay increase instead of the expected 21 per cent.
Of the 329 members of the paper’s editorial staff, about 280 were members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). The union meeting at which the decision to strike was made took place when many were away and – although it represented a majority of those who turned up to the meeting – only eighty-three actually voted for industrial action. They were responding to the call of The Times NUJ’s father of the chapel, Jake Ecclestone, who argued that it was a matter of principle: an independent arbitrator had suggested 21 per cent and in offering only 18 per cent TNL had refused to be bound by independent arbitration. That the NUJ chapel had also refused to be bound by it was glossed over.38
While the independent arbitrator had concentrated upon what he thought was the rate for the job, TNL had to deal with a law of the market: what they could reasonably afford. The difference between the two pay offers amounted to £350 a journalist but, if the knock-on effect of subsequent negotiations with the print workers was factored in, then TNL maintained the difference was £1.2 million. There was certainly collusion between print and journalist union officials in calling the strike. Although many journalists crossed the picket line, the NUJ had taken the precaution of getting the NGA to agree to go on strike too if management attempted to get the paper out.
Management had long come to accept that dealing with those who printed the paper was a war of attrition against a tenacious and well-organized opponent. But the attitude now displayed by some who actually wrote the paper was too much to endure in silence. The strike ended after a week but it destroyed the will of the existing management to persevere. When The Times returned on 30 August, its famous letters page was dominated by readers of long standing who had loyally waited for their paper’s return during the eleven-month shutdown but who now felt utterly betrayed. ‘It is impossible to believe in the sense, judgment or integrity of your journalists any longer’ was one typically bitter accusation. Subscriptions were cancelled, sometimes in sadness but frequently in anger at the fact that ‘you and your staff can have no feeling for your advertisers and readers. Other newspapers do not get into these situations. Your ineptitude beggars belief.’39 But the most important lecture came not from disgusted of Tunbridge Wells but in the day’s leader column, written by Rees-Mogg himself. ‘How to Kill a Newspaper’ ran the length of the page. It washed the paper’s dirty linen in public and some staff disliked the idea that their editor was writing a leader chastising the actions of many of his own colleagues. Jake Ecclestone, ‘gifted but difficult’, was even named in the sermon that laid out before readers exactly the scale of journalists’ pay increases over the previous two years and contrasted it with the extent of the newspaper’s losses. Rees-Mogg pulled no punches, claiming that there could be no such thing as dual loyalty, for a journalist ‘is either a Times man first or an NUJ man first … if the strikers do not give their priority in loyalty to The Times … why should they expect that the readers, or indeed the proprietor, of The Times should continue to be loyal to the paper?’40
This was very much to the point, for the Thomson board had been meeting to debate that very question. Although it was denied at the time, it was the NUJ strike that tipped the balance in convincing Thomson executives to dispose of The Times and, with it, the other TNL titles.41 Sir Gordon Brunton had called senior colleagues to his beautiful country house near Godalming, Surrey, and it was there that the decision was taken. This was then ratified by the Thomson British Holdings board and, over the telephone, confirmed with Lord