[Military beds in the emergency centres; starving animals…]
Socialist Press1979 1979-01-17Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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Military beds in the emergency centres; starving animals on the farms; rotting food at the ports; waves of panic buying in the shops; owner drivers turned back at the picket lines:-with a carefully selected parade of images the press continues to mount the atmosphere of crisis and impending doom.
The front pages seem to be written , as much for posterity as for current consumption. Headlines are extended; the sub editors search for a new expression of calamity; Labour rats are dragged i out of the woodwork to denounce the pickets.
It is at times like this that the capitalist press comes into its own.
Radio 4 brought back Robin Day and turned over its news programmes almost exclusively to increasingly reactionary demands for curbs on the right to strike and the right to picket.
Even as. the press harangues the transport drivers, the newspaper owners keep their fingers crossed that the picket lines will make an exception for newsprint. The papers grow smaller and shriller by the day. • Yet despite the confident tones in which the newspaper editors print their editorials they seem unable to keep up with events. The demands by Tories for repressive measures against strikers are overshadowed by the fact that the government is forced to turn to the TGWU bureaucracy to make deals over supplies.
That in turn is overshadowed by the action committee decisions in many cases to ignore Evans' dictates and decide for themselves which lorries will be allowed to pass and what constitutes an emergency.
*This strength of class comes in end to be realised by press.
The Daily Express ended last week with a "Charter for Moderates" which sung the praises of the Tory front bench, but which recognises the facts of life-that such measures are more likely from the Labour government and the labour bureaucracy.
"Obviously the idea of picketing as peaceful persuasion' has become a sick joke in many cases.
"Obviously the TUC should be asked to crack down on intimidatory picketing. But if not the law should be defined more tightly and precisely, and the police ordered CLU intervene when things get out of hand...
«Meanwhile, judging from Chancellor Healey's remarks, it could be that the Labour government will come up with its own solution-if the party machine will allow it."