Militants at the 'Telegraph'

Bill Grundy

Change and decay are all around I see, as the gloomy religious gentleman said. In times like these, when the only certainty is uncertainty, the natural thing to do is to look around for a landmark, and make a beeline for it

One such landmark is surely the Daily Telegraph. There it stands, its solid facade frowning on the rest of the flibbertigibbets of Fleet Street, a symbol of respectability, a sign that though the Times may be a-changing, the Telegraph certainly isn't. Throughout our recent troubles the Telegraph has spoken out against the extremists, the militants, those who would destroy our country through their lack of moderation, moderation usually being defined as thinking the way the Telegraph thinks.

It is therefore a trifle unfortunate that the opening paragraph of the paper's eve of poll leading article read "to our readers we must offer apologies for the small size of today's issue and for any defects therein as a result of a strike by members of the National Union of Journalists."

I invite you to read that again. Yes, quite right. You did see the word 'strike'. There has been one. Inside the Telegraph. Yes I know it sounds unbelievable, but it happened. How it happened is interesting. Why it happened is even more so.

The NUJ agreement with the Newspaper Publishers' Association expired on December 31. Since then negotiations have been going on, but the NPA recently said that even if the Pay Board agreed to a pay rise, none would be possible since there isn't enough in the kitty, due to increased newsprint costs, losses incurred during the rail dispute, and so on.

The gentlemen of the press who work at the Telegraph were less than convinced that this applied to their paper. After all, we constantly hear just how profitable a paper the Telegraph has been, even in times when others were struggling. So they asked for a meeting with the management to discuss a house agreement. The demand was flatly rejected.

It was at this point that the Telegraph journalists began to resemble the extremists their paper has attacked so frequently. They called a mandatory chapel meeting which an observer tells me was "very tough, very militant." There was a call for immediate strike action, a call

which was modified by the moderates into a resolution asking for "immediate and meaningful talks" with the management, otherwise strike action would be taken on Tuesday, February 26.

Lord Hartwell met the union on the Monday but the only thing he seemed to have achieved was the conversion of one moderate into a militant with a suddenness that suggests St Paul had better look to his laurels.

Tuesday, 26th, therefore, saw a strike meeting at which a variety of proposals were put. There were those who said that as responsible journalists they had a duty to keep bringing the paper out. There were others who dismissed that argument with Anglo-Saxon terseness. And there were even those who wanted to wreck all the very profitable preand post-election issues.

In the event, the vote went 119 to 52 for a twenty-four-hour strike to start immediately. The chapel was told that the print and other unions had agreed to support the NUJ, but something went wrong. At 1.30 am on Wednesday the ETU were persuaded to press the starting switch and a thin sixteen page edition was produced through the efforts of "a small number of editorial executives and other members of the staff who are not members of the NUJ" as the paper put it rather delicately. There are those who say the Telegraph management conned the ETU into doing this. There are others who do not believe the ETU is as green as all that, so some acrimonious questions about the compact with the other unions were asked at Wednesday's post-strike meeting. Most people at that meeting were uncertain whether they'd won or lost, but at least they were sure of one thing — that they had demonstrated strike solidarity for the first time ever in the Telegraph's history. But not for the last time, because fresh strike action is planned for March 5.

So why have the lambs turned into lions? There are various reeasons. The kindly paternalism that used to characterise the paper has begun to disappear under the reign of Mr Peter Eastwood, the managing editor, not the most popular man in the building. So a tendency not to argue about money as long as life was easy has begun to disappear too.

Secondly, the NUJ chaps do not entirely believe the figures they

have been supplied with, they do not believe that last year's profit of £2.8 million (£4 million on the Daily, £1 million loss on the Sunday) will shrink to the £200,000 profit forecast for this financial year. They point out that the Sunday Telegraph's circulation isn't all that different from the Observer which makes a. profit, so why can't the Telegraph's financial geniuses make ends meet?

They are unhappy about the division of overheads between the Daily and the Sunday Telegraph, and I've also heard rumblings about the amount of money which goes into something called the 135 Trust (the Telegraph offices are at 135 Fleet Street; the trustees are Lord Camrose, Lord Hartwell, Lady Hartwell and an aged retainer). Unkind employees say the trust does not seem to carry out any noticeable amount of charitable work.

They point out that the Hartwell family aren't exactly on the breadline, since they own the Telegraph and the land it stands on, worth £20 million according to a recent estimate. Further, being tender plants, the journalists are hurt by the belief, which they are sure general manager John Evans holds, that journalists are an unfortunately necessary pain in the neck. They were not much pleased by a reported remark of Mr Evans that the paper couldn't afford a pay rise for journalists, because they'd just settled a large claim from the print unions. And they noted sourly that whereas there's no money for journalists, the paper's telephonists had screwed a special payment out of the mangement for taking results on election night.

They had noticed that the DailyExpress, which is under the same sort of stresses, has agreed to open its books to the unions in the shape of an independent chartered accountant, and they'd like to see the Telegraph do the same. Whether that will happen or not I don't know. But what I do know is that unless something happens, any future comments by the paper about extremists and militants may not just refer to ASLEF and the NUM but could have "a local habitation and a name" as well.

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