or years Fleet Street had been living with poor industrial relations – the so-called "Spanish practices" had put limits on the owners that they considered intolerable. On the other hand, the company management team led by Bill O'Neill,[1] was seeking to have the union accept terms that they considered unacceptable: flexible working, a no-strike clause, the adoption of new technology and the end of the closed shop.

Despite the widespread use of the offset litho printing process elsewhere, the Murdoch papers in common with the rest of Fleet Street continued to be produced by the hot-metal and labour-intensive Linotype method, rather than being composed electronically. Eddie Shah's Messenger group, in a long-running and bitter dispute at Warrington had benefited from the Thatcher government's trade union legislation to allow employers to de-recognise unions, enabling the company to use an alternative workforce and new technology in newspaper production.

Journalists could input copy directly, reducing the need for labour in the print halls, cutting costs and improving production time dramatically. Although individual journalists (many of whom were members of the National Union of Journalists) worked behind the wire, the NUJ opposed the move to Wapping and urged their members not to go without proper negotiations. Many members refused to go and became known during the dispute as "refuseniks". The NUJ was represented alongside the Print unions in the negotiations with News International which eventually led to a monetary settlement.

Start of dispute[edit]
Immediately after the strike was announced on 24 January 1986, dismissal notices were served on all those taking part in the industrial action, effectively sacking 6,000 employees. As part of a plan that had been developed over many months, the company replaced the workforce with members of the EETPU and transferred its four main titles (The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World) to the Wapping plant. Murdoch had led the print unions to think that the Wapping plant was to be used for a new evening newspaper, the London Post. This began what became known as the Wapping dispute.

In support of sacked members, the print unions organized regular demonstrations outside the company's premises in Pennington Street, with six pickets posted on Virginia Street and marches usually converging nearby on The Highway in Wapping. The unions and leading members of the Labour Party also called for a boycott of the four newspapers involved.

The demonstrations outside the Wapping plant were not always peaceful,[2] although the Trade Unions maintained that they were committed to pursuing peaceful means to resolve the dispute. Like the miners' strike, large demonstrations were mounted to dissuade workers - in this case journalists and operators of the new printing process - from entering the premises, and a large police operation used force to ensure they were not able to physically stop the movement of lorries distributing newspapers from the plant. More than 400 police officers and many members of the public were injured, and more than 1,000 arrests made during the dispute. A large-scale police operation was mounted throughout London to ensure the Wapping plant could operate effectively, and the movement of local residents was heavily restricted. To ensure their safety, workers at the plant were often taken to and from work in buses modified to withstand the attacks they came under.

The print unions had encouraged a national boycott of Murdoch's papers, and had been