I was then on the parliamentary staff of The Times, and Callaghan’s TUC speech was one of my last jobs before the paper’s closure. The industrial climate in the country was worsening and at The Times it was becoming critical. The unions were militant and the print unions more militant than most. They had tremendous power: stopping a paper to show your muscle was a simple business. If the printers walked out, no one else could do their job. Managements felt impotent.
In April 1978, Marmaduke Hussey, then chief executive of Times Newspapers, had told the unions he was prepared to close the papers if he did not get an agreement to install computer typesetting. This was a forerunner of the war of Wapping, which was to end so differently. The date for closure if talks failed was set for 30 November. Nothing came from the talks in the end and the papers were duly shut down on 1 December. They were subject to what we knew was an uncertain future, even though Lord Thomson of Fleet, the proprietor, insisted there was no question of selling the papers or permanently closing them.
It was a deeply unsettling experience and took some getting used to. In his final article before the paper went to sleep, Paul Routledge, our labour editor (so important were the unions in those days that most of the broadsheets had two, three or even four labour correspondents to cover their dealings), quoted management sources as expecting a suspension of two to three months.
That would get us through Christmas. Those of us working at Westminster had the Commons to entertain us. We retained our passes and went along whenever anything interesting was happening. There was plenty at this time as Callaghan’s decision began to look less and less clever. But it was strange being unable to report.
As the New Year dawned it was obvious that we would not be going to work any time soon. Our National Union of Journalists (NUJ) meetings were things to look forward to, giving us the chance to meet up and tell each other how we were spending our time. I raced through a long-planned book on the recent history of my beloved Norwich City FC, as seen through the eyes of Kevin Keelan (a goalkeeper who still holds the appearance record for the club, and who by then – late in his career – was playing for Norwich in the winter and the New England Teamen in Boston in the off-season).
I worked for various magazines. I even followed a colleague who was making good money working for a major car-rental company delivering cars – at speed – from one depot to another. It was when I was working with eight others to deliver brand-new Volvos from a Buckinghamshire factory to Heathrow Airport and my machine broke down just a few miles from the factory – prompting cries of anguish from drivers for whom this was the main source of revenue – that I decided it was not for me.
I worked for a few exciting weeks as a subeditor on The Guardian, handling political stories written by the likes of Ian Aitken, Julia Langdon and Michael White, and taking orders from a long-haired genius chief sub called Roger Alton. He was to resurface in my life later, on the ski slopes and the cricket pitch and at The Times after spells as editor of The Observer and The Independent.
They were strange days indeed because great stories were happening and we had nowhere to write them. The consolation was a year on full pay while at the same time being encouraged to write for other organs to keep our hands in.
The whole parliamentary team – all of us – went to a pub near the Commons on the night of 28 March and then went to watch the last rites of Old Labour in government. Thatcher, as Opposition leader, had tabled a motion of no confidence in the Government and won it by one vote, 311 to 310, amid scenes of pandemonium as the Tories cheered and Labour sang ‘The Red Flag’. Labour would not return to power for eighteen years: a political lifetime.
Worst of all for us political writers was to miss the historic election night on 9 May 1979, when Thatcher swept to power and promised to bring harmony where there was discord. I and many other reporters could not bear to be at home and spent our evening trailing round party headquarters pretending we were working.
Meanwhile, NUJ meetings rolled irrelevantly on amid deadlock between management and the unions that mattered. It was a dispute that the management was not going to win, and by the autumn of 1979, all sides were looking for a way out.
In his obituary of Duke Hussey in 2007, William Rees-Mogg, editor of The Times for fourteen years, admitted that the papers had reopened on 13 November 1979 (nearly a year after closing) on what he called unsatisfactory terms. This led first to Hussey being replaced as chief executive and eventually to the sale of Times Newspapers by the Thomson family. Rees-Mogg wrote: ‘If his struggle at The Times proved a failure – and it was a policy I supported from beginning to end – it had much more positive long-term consequences. It led to the next struggle against the militant chapels when Times Newspapers moved to Wapping, and that battle was won under Rupert Murdoch.’
When the paper came back, the BBC reported the dispute was estimated to have cost the Thomson organization £30m. Thatcher welcomed the reappearance of The Times ‘with enthusiasm’. She said: ‘The absence of The Times has been tragic and overlong.’ Although we had found interesting ways of spending our time, the journalists agreed with every word of that.
Some 200,000 more copies of The Times were published on the day it came back than on its last print run, while readers announced births and deaths spanning the period of its absence. The Times also published three special obituary supplements to cover the period. It was an event that showed again the loyalty of Times readers and it paved the way for Murdoch’s eventual victory, which led to other newspapers adopting new technology and moving to cheaper premises in east London.
The Thunderer had risen again and within days it was business as normal.
The Iron Lady: Early Lobby Years
I had been in the Lobby for only a few months when, on 2 April 1982, Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands.
I was doing Friday duty on my own when the news came through, and we were told that the Commons would meet next day – it remains the only Saturday sitting in my career – to debate what seemed like a national humiliation and the Government’s likely response to it.
It was to be the turning point of Margaret Thatcher’s career as she ignored the voices of caution and sent a task force to reclaim the islands, anchoring in the public mind the idea of an uncompromising leader who would always stand up for Britain’s interests. But on that Friday night she could not have expected this. The Government had been caught napping and its apparent lack of commitment to the islands during years of negotiations about their future had convinced Galtieri’s junta, under pressure at home, that it could get away with it. UK defence cuts in the 1981 recession Budget had also sent the wrong kind of signal to Argentina.
In my Saturday morning front-page story, I said that in a political and military crisis without parallel since the Suez operation of 1956, Thatcher would face a hostile Commons demanding to know why British interests had not been protected. I said there was a sense of humiliation among Tory MPs that a government that had come to power promising to strengthen the nation’s defences had not been able to prevent the invasion of one of our few remaining overseas territories.
Within the Government there was a feeling of panic. On that Friday, as the news started to reach Whitehall that the invasion had indeed started, ministers and officials blustered, waiting for the Commons to rise for the day to avoid being called to explain something they did not yet understand.
Only months earlier Thatcher had looked beaten and battered as the ‘wets’, the name she and her allies gave to the liberal-minded patrician Tories who opposed her, openly conspired against her. It is often forgotten that Thatcher’s early years in office after defeating James Callaghan in the 1979 general election were far from easy.
She became leader in February 1975, after surprisingly challenging Edward Heath, who had lost two general