Wapping strike

Dev (or someone else) - refresh my memory. Which came first, Wapping or Eddie Shah's Today newspaper? I remember them being roughly around the same time (and both having a big impact on union organisation in the print industry), but I can't remember which came first.

I believe Toady came first.

From Wiki:

It is age, Serge. It gets to us all.

Devrim

It's lucky we're not Trots, because I think the "memory of the Party" would be a bit fucked.

Extract from Serge's memoirs:

"Um... I remember Libcom when it was all trees."

Picket was the more "anarchisty" one.

Sorry... memory's gone again.

No fear, libcom comes to the rescue. It was the Fleet Street Support Unit. Discussion about the two bulletins here:
http://libcom.org/node/7418

Devrim is right to say that Wapping was not the pivot. Wapping was used to reinforce the disorientation caused by the defeat of the miners. However, the defeat of the miners did not mark a historic defeat or the end of important struggles in Britain. The defeat of the miners struggle posed many vital lessons to the working class in Britain and internationally;
- the long strike meant defeat;
- the unions no matter how radical they sounded were the spearhead of the ruling class's defeat of the miners. It was the NUM that isolated the strike and the whole union structure that worked flat out to stop any form of solidarity action,
- that solidarity through the extending of the struggle was the only effective form of solidarity.
It was these questions that the working class wrestled with in the period after the end of the miners strike and the collapse of the Berlin wall, which marked the end of waves of struggle following 1968, but were unable to answer
Looked at in this context, the Wapping strike was used as means of reinforcing the disorientation created by the end of the miners strike. The union pushed all of the ideological poison that had enabled the ruling class to crush the miners;
- that it is possible to win if you stay out long enough'
- that solidarity = giving money or joining the twice weekly demonstrations
- or that the violent confrontations expressed the radical nature of the struggle.
Tens of thousands of workers were drawn into the ideological defeat. Workers from all over the country joined the demonstrations or followed it closely. Thus week after week this crushing of the printers was played out on the TV and in the papers.
Wapping did not represent a defeat for the unions but a strengthening, as did the miners strike. The unions were able to present themselves as the defender of the workers, as the only force that would stand up to Thatcher etc etc.
Despite the weight of the crushing of the miners' and printers, the BT workers' struggle expressed an important drawing of the lessons of these two strike. At the end of the first week of the strike, the workers voted to go back to work rather than be dragged into a long strike, a long strike that the unions were calling for.
This was an important event but in the course of the 3 years of struggle that followed Wapping, the struggles that took place were unable to take up the central question of solidarity through extending the strike. At one point railway workers and local government workers (I think) were out at the same time but were unable to join up their struggles.
Thus the solidarity we have seen in recent struggles is very important;
- that between Gate Gourmant and Heathrow workers
- that between the power workers and workers from Hungary at power station at Coldham
- that massive taking to the streets of France in the Spring of 2006 by workers in support of the students and the students going to the workers
- the struggles in Vigo Spain last May when metal workers from the local factories united together in struggle and held their mass assemblies in the city's central square so that others could join in.
These are struggles that are taking up one of the central lessons of the struggles between 1968 and 89 internationally.