Liverpool’s Lord Mayor to open News International Wapping dispute
exhibition – 19 September 2011
15 September 2011
When: Monday, 19 September at 11.00 am
Where: Unite, Jack Jones House, 2 Churchill Way, Liverpool L3
8EF
The exhibition ‘News International Wapping – 25 Years on’ will
be opened in Liverpool next Monday (19 September) at Unite, Jack
Jones House by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Frank Prendergast
to mark 25 years since the sacking of 5,500 newspaper print workers
during the bitter 1986 dispute between Rupert Murdoch and the print
unions.
The Wapping dispute occurred at a time of unrelenting attacks on
jobs, union rights and communities in the 1980’s starting with
Eddie Shah’s Stockport Messenger, the year long miners
strike and culminating with News International. Jobs,
conditions and union organisation were being undermined in
newspaper industry, together with intensifying concentration of
press and media ownership - something the people of Merseyside
understand with anger after Rupert Murdoch’s Sun coverage of the
Hillsborough tragedy.
It began after News International – owners of The Times, Sunday
Times, The Sun and the now closed News of the World - sacked
thousands of its staff when it moved production of his newspapers
overnight to Wapping in East London.
The exhibition highlighting the 13-month struggle that the
employees staged to save their jobs and protect trade union rights
will be held at Unite, Jack Jones House, 2 Churchill Way, Liverpool
L3 8EF. It will be open Monday – Friday 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
from 19 September until 30 September. A public meeting will be held
on 24 September in the same venue.
Dramatic images, photographs and accounts of the dispute – when
Rupert Murdoch used his vast wealth, aided by the Conservatives’
anti-union legislation to facilitate the dash to Wapping - will be
on display.
Unite regional secretary, Paul Finegan said: “We must be ever
mindful of the dramatic and negative impact on jobs that morally
corrupt newspaper tycoons, working together with a government that
are intent on reducing the rights of working people and their
unions can have.
“This anniversary ought to be a reminder to all political
parties – as they consider how to prevent the media abuses
we recently witnessed - that a new framework of
employment law and trade union rights is essential to rebalance
power in this country.
“We must stand together united to ensure that events like this
can never happen again.”
The multi-media exhibition has been organised by Unite, the
National Union of Journalists, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting
Freedom and the Marx Memorial Library.
Ends
For further information please contact Karen Viquerat on 07768 931
316.
