About Two Bob

THE PRESS

By DONALD McLACHLAN

tn.: Ah! The press is with us tonight, I see. Why don't you chaps stand up to the unions in your own industry?

• : That is the proprietors' business, and the managers', as you well know.

• All right, but you editors could write about it; why don't you, instead of telling me how to run my union?

ma,: Because the unions wouldn't stand -for it, nor would the managers.

• In that case you deserve what you get.

I must say, after last week's talk of a news- paper strike, I have been tempted to go up to Blackpool, meet my friend as he comes off the TUC platform, take him to. the nearest bar and tell him what has been going on between Fleet Street managements and the unions they deal with. For never, never before did anyone expect to see newspapers resisting union threats with Labour government support; or to see a cost of living bonus of two shillings a week— long agreed with the unions—refused because of a.

wage freeze. What drama, what novelty, what em- barrassing predicaments behind the scenes!

But why go up to Blackpool and play bull in the china shop when everything is being done to prevent breakages and stoppages? So far as I can make out, the unions are now not insisting that they get the promised bonus; but they do insist that the proprietors should not pocket the florin. Messrs Briginshaw, Eastwood and Bon- field would be happy to see the money going to charity; but it must not 'swell the profits' of the bosses. It may be crazy economics to add un- necessarily to the newspapers' costs, but this is a crazy time and I see their point.

So the Fleet Street strike seems to be off; but was it ever on? Was it likely that there would be a test case, about the effect of the wage freeze on contracts already made, in this industry of all industries? Could the unions have commanded any public sympathy for some of the highest-paid workers in the country, enforcing restrictive prac- tices which have long been notorious? Could ministers and newspaper proprietors have stood shoulder to shoulder, Wilson, Stewart and Gunter, with King, Berry and Aitken? The layman might have liked it that way: after all, radio and tele- vision would take care of his news as they did in the strike ten years ago; three or four papers might be driven out of business; but it would teach the unions the lesson that one can work oneself out of a job.

The layman would not be entirely wrong; but he would be ignoring the fact that the effort by both sides of the industry to improve efficiency has lately been going better. Much goodwill has been created which a strike would destroy. He would also not know that restrictive practices are not as bad now as when the Shawcross report denounced them in 1962: one Sunday paper, says the Newspaper Proprietors Association, has cut its Saturday staff in one department by 300, and one daily paper is employing 300 fewer men. Nor would the layman recall that in October both sides will receive from the Economist In- telligence Unit a report on productivity which may light the way to further progress.

link why,' the layman may ask, 'am I so ignorant about press affairs? Why has my daily paper been giving me only twenty-line com- muniques on what passes between unions and proprietors? Why are the leader columns silent? If this dispute had been in any other industry it , would have had front-page treatment daily. Why - was there -nothing in the Insights, Focuses, Back- grounds and signed- columns of the Sundays?' • It is not easy to give a straight answer. The Fleet Street convention is that management does not dictate to editorial, unless the manager thinks the editor is bent on killing the paper and its profits. Thus if proprietor or manager tells the editor that it is touch-and-go whether the unions withdraw their labour or not, it is most unlikely that he will feel justified in writing an attack on the unions—or even in commenting at all while negotiations are on. Imagine the feelings of the compositor as he set such a piece, of the reader as he corrected the proof, of the packer tying the string, or the van-driver breaking the speed limit to catch the Paddington train!

It is all very well to talk of principles: the' freedont of the press, publish and be damned, all the news that's fit to print. These are war- cries which carry conviction everYwhere—even, in the Lord Chief Justice's court—except in the room where NPA meets unions: Every editor would prefer to publish, but every manager would prefer not to be damned. So it is that We `sithp1); do not read In the newspakri—the gallant and distinguished exception is the Guardian—the

whole truth about labour relations and efficiency in the newspaper industry. (There was stupefied silence in Fleet Street when Mr Michael Berry wrote on the front page of the Daily Telegraph an account of how the unions had tried to pre- vent its new coloured supplement from being printed in Germany better and more cheaply than it then could be in this country.) To be quite fair, the unions do-allow editors to attack other unions day in, day out. No one in the PKTF flinches at the Mirror's onslaughts on restrictive practices in the shipbuilding or motor industries; and I remember being congratulated by a senior compositor when the Sunday Telegraph exposed the treatment of Douglas Rookes by his union. Otherwise, say the men downstairs, charity begins at home.

Can this timid conspiracy of silence go on? Some people think so: for example, the Sunday paper manager who cancelled his undertaking. last week, to appear on Twenty-Four Hours; Mr Briginshaw, the union leader who twice changed his mind about appearing on ITV; those pro- prietors who took their industrial staffs off the press story andprinted bare communiques. These timidities may be excusable if a settlement is in sight; to agree to a cease-fire is not necessarily a

sign of cowardice. But what is quite inexcusable, a real thenace to the freedom of the press, is the attempt to bring pressure on individual journa- lists either through the union officials who give them their news or through the men who print and distribute their papers. There is, for example, the case of Mr Peter Jenkins of the Guardian, against whom the paper-workers have complained to the Press Council over his reporting of the• productivity dispute at the Evening Standard; and of other men under attack who have asked that their names should not be revealed lest their work be made impossible.

Surely the managers and editors could assert the freedom of the press by offering the unions • equal treatment with the proprietors whenever there is something to report about their affairs. Labour and industrial reporters can do a com- pletely objective and comprehensive job only if they are given :he space. Half a column to each side would be worth trying. Anything is better than the present silence, which denies to union members the pros and cons of the argument, de- prives the reader of essential facts, shelters the industry from public attention and humiliates every editor who sees the inconsistency of criticis- ing every industry except his own.