The Press?
Socialist Press1977 1977-09-28Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 7 →
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been ineffective because the employer has been able to count on the support of a few people in each paper-most of them with one foot on the promotion ladder and many of them inside the strike breaking IOJ.
The print leaders of course pay lip service to the fact that the press is not free. But this is seen as a slight flaw on an otherwise perfect bloom.
At the slightest suggestion that print workers have refused to set an anti-trade union article the print union leaders outdo even the employer in their condemnation.
But despite the role of these union leaders, the capitalists understand the closed shop as a threat to their monopoly of the mass media.
PRESS FREEDOM
The clearest example of what the employers mean by 'press freedom' was given recently during the strike of engineers at the Daily Express, when the whole of the front page was given over to a statement from the management which specifically and openly identified the editorial line of the paper with every dot and comma of the employer's position.
The manipulation of the press to attack trade unionists, to agitate against revolutionaries and perpetrate racialist and sexist policies is not of course the result of individual ihods mronristare ment on the introduction of new technology.
There is little doubt that if the NUJ membership is defeated ove: the closed shop-as opposed to individual strikes being defeatedthen the way will be open for the employer to set about breaking us print union closed shops.
NO CONTACT The way forward for members is to take the campaigr into the labour movement-pressirg ior no contact to be made wit IOJ or other non-union journalists The refusal of the print unio leaders to fight for this relative.: simple trade union demand, is par: and parcel of their refusal to tig:: for wages or to defend jobs.
The campaign for the close: shop must therefore be bound is = a campaign for a new leadership = the print unions, a leadership rix: on the needs of the workers in i= industry and subject to instar: recall by it.
Above all the closed shop figh: must never be seen as a narrow question of wages and conditiors but as the fight to bring the media under workers' control: only cher will any meaningful freedom of he press' be established-since 0r.: this step can open up the nets: the voice of the overwhelme majority of society-the class
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