printing

Paper Boys: One Man’s Account of Picketing at Wapping

One man's very personal account of the often violent picketing during the News International strike at Wapping in 1985-6.

PREFACE
They said we were greedy printers but we showed them all.

Since the Winter of Discontent, when the Soft Cops were no longer able to control the workers their role for Capital has been on the decline and that of Hard Cop on the increase.

The Sun - spoof newspaper from the Wapping strike, 1986

Short spoof issue of The Sun newspaper produced by anarchists to support the News International printers strike at Wapping in 1986.

digitised by libcom.org

The Scum - comic about the Wapping strike, 1986

A contemporary spoof of The Sun newspaper containing a "Tintin" cartoon about the Wapping printers strike of 1986.

digitised by libcom.org

Wapping print works to close

The Wapping print works which was notoriously used to break the print workers' organisation is to close, with two-thirds of staff set to lose their jobs.

Around 400 jobs are expected to go when Wapping closes, with jobs across the industry potentially threatened as the Murdoch press looks to aggressively expand into the contract print market.

1986-1987: Wapping printers strike

A short history of a strike by printers in the London borough of Wapping which began in the winter of 1986 and ended just over a year later. The strike marked one of the last major confrontations of the 1980s between workers and employers.

The strike of newspaper workers that began on January 24, 1986, marked the beginning of a bitter year long dispute between the print workers of Wapping, a borough of East London, and their employers, the publishing company News International.