[Had it been the NGA, NATSOPA or SLADE…]

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Had it been the NGA, NATSOPA or SLADE that was threatening to shut Times Newspapers from tomorrow (Thursday) until management agreed increase by 50% the workforce, every Labour Cabinet Minister still at liberty would have by now intervened' to save management's neck.

It is of course a fantasy beyond the wildest dreams that the leadership of the Fleet Street print unions would permit members to go onto the offensive. But the strike by management who intend to shut down the Sunday Times, Times, and the Literary and Educational Supplements, has given an opportunity for the press, whether owned by Lord Thomson or not, to demonstrate its objectivity, detachment, etc..

WI re now are all the hysterical shrieks about the public's right to know? About the freedom of the Press?

Socialist Press is of course not the least bit surprised by their absence. Those weapons are kept in the arsenal for use against the working class, not the capitalist. But. the false image of the press as playing an independent role between capital and labour is so carefully and endlessly peddled, not least by the press itself, that it still carries some weight among confused workers.

When machine room chapel closes the paper for one day: or one week, who writes the story about it? Certainly not the Father of the machine room chapel.

When the management shuts the whole group-indefinitely who then writes' the story? The answer, in the Sunday Times (November 26), is Denis Hamilton, Chairman and Editor-inChief.

The paper does carry a report of the negotiations written by a journalist, but the centre page is handed to the senior management for his own fareweil.

Hamilton : writes with nostalgia about the old Lord Thomson and gushing admiration for his present boss the 'young' Lord Thomson. He describes as 'malicious nonsense' statements • that Thomson is interested in the papers only to maximise his profits. He displays a lofty paternalistic charity for the workers he intends to throw out of work.

"It is very natural that those working in the old technology should be dismayed, even understandably outraged at the thought that they and their hard-learned craft should be swept away. In practice, of course, individuals cannot and should not be swept away! They must be dealt with most humanely"

Dispensing with 500 years of history and every change from feudalism to capitalism, Hamilton writes "They could no more resist the electronic advance than the monks writing books could resist hand-set type"

Last week Panorama attempted to portray in a