[The Daily Express was in some ways the…]
Socialist Press1980 1980-05-21Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
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The Daily Express was in some ways the most eloquent of all the Fleet Street papers in its assessment on the Day of Action. It failed to appear not just on the day itself, but the following day also.
The press, that had soared so high on the wings of dis tortion as to christen Murray 'Lenin' Murray, was justly the employers' body that took the biggest hammering on the Day of Action-with the whole of Fleet Street closed.
The main purpose of the witch-hunt has not actually been the day of action itselfit has been the growing call from workers in struggle for direct political strikes to bring down the Thatcher Government.
The Day of Action did not promise this and did not deliver it. While we draw the lessons from the TUC's half hearted call and its determined efforts to bottle up the anger of workers against the Tories, the Tory press saw the day as an opportunity to attack the concept of political strikes.
The number of workers who struck during the day of action was as high or higher than can have been expected, given that no major union really fought for strike action on that day and that several instructed their members to stay at work.
The Daily Mail tagged it "TUC's Day of Disaster" and the Sun declared "Its a flop"
The Mirror, a paper in open support of the Labour bureaucracy, tried to mitigate its criticism.
"It was the wrong strike at the wrong time for the wrong reasons ... Union leaders may be out of touch with their 12 million members, but they are the only leaders the members have got. The unions are an essential part of our society. There's no profit in seeing them