News

It started in 1986 with protests, violence and an epoch-making industrial dispute witnessed by the entire world. On Saturday night, Wapping’s era as the UK’s most iconic print site ended with curry, Chinese and a few beers between two dozen staff.

The final printing at Wapping, a run of around 60,000 copies of The Sunday Times, was marked with a low-key, and for some emotional, celebration by a handful of staff. As the final copy rolled off the press at around 9.30pm, and production manager Brian Sims held it in the air like a paper World Cup, staff brought out digital cameras to record the moment that drew the curtain on the plant’s 22-year stint.

From Sunday, all of the newspapers previously printed at Wapping moved to News International’s supersite in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire. The Sun and The News of the World had already made the switch early this year, while the staged transfer of production of The Times and The Sunday Times is now complete. Moreover, The Telegraph and its Sunday sister title will move to the Broxbourne site – the biggest newspaper print plant on the planet – at some point in the coming months.

The end of printing at one of the UK’s most iconic manufacturing facilities could not have been more at odds with its beginnings in the mid-1980s, when News International’s proprietor Rupert Murdoch decided to move the company and its presses out of Fleet Street. The decision signalled the beginning of the end for the newspaper industry in the area; no major newspaper publishers are now left in what is nevertheless still the spiritual home of print.

It all started on 24 January 1986 when some 6,000 trade unionists went on strike in protest at the decision, and didn’t come to an end until 1987. After the strike was announced, News International served dismissal notices to all those that took part. The workforce was replaced by non-printers – a contentious move as most of Fleet Street’s print sites could only employ union members.

Regular marches and protests were organised in support of the printers; several turned violent. On 17 October 1986, a question was asked in the House of Lords about the violence. The House was informed that during the disputes to that date, 393 police officers had been injured, while 900 people had been convicted of offences connected with the protests.

In February 1987, the strike and the picket lines finally collapsed. Along with Margaret Thatcher’s culling of the mines, the episode is still seen as one of the major moves in breaking the unions’ stranglehold on British industry.

So when Rupert Murdoch decided a new £660m investment in presses was needed and PrintWeek revealed in October 2004 that the new site flagship site would be in Broxbourne, not Wapping, you could be forgiven for thinking that there would be outrage.

In fact, the move could hardly have gone any smoother. Staff seem to be happy, whether staying or going, and as PrintWeek’s correspondents left the east London complex late on Saturday night – walking past streets that 22 years beforehand were filled with police in riot gear – there was not a soul in sight.

For the staff, Saturday night was an emotional time, both on the presses and in the offices around the site. Many had been at Wapping since it opened in 1986, coming in from jobs as electricians and plumbers to replace the striking printers. And, until this weekend, many still commuted to work from places as far afield as Southampton and Ipswich, even though they had been working at the site for more than 20 years.

For these men, it is the start of a new life, and in some ways a step into the unknown. Brian Sims managed to snatch up the last copy of the Sunday Times as it came off the press. After 22 years in print, he is now looking forward to a period of semi-retirement.

He said: “I don’t think it will sink in until we switch the lights off. We have been talking about this for the past three years and it is finally here. When I first came up here [in 1986] we didn’t know what the job was, but now it’s a 24/7 job. I am constantly checking screens when I am at home – my wife keeps asking me what I am going to do when I can’t look at it all the time.”

You may have thought that making over 600 staff redundant, as the closure of Wapping has done, would cause uproar. But these staff have had three years to prepare themselves for life after Wapping; and NI has worked hard to help them retrain.

Mark Bridgewater, one of the printers on shift on the final night, said: “Some guys are going back to what they did before: being mechanics, electricians and so on. Some are heading off to Thailand to marry their Thai brides. Very few people have left unhappy.”

How long the printers stayed on enjoying their take­-a­way and beer is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they remained on site until the early hours of the morning in a nostalgic nod to their Saturday nights for the past 20 years, or perhaps they ate their food, drank their drinks and made the most of the fact that this week they could still catch the Tube home.

Whatever they did, let’s hope the last one out wasn’t too inebriated by drink or emotion to switch off the lights for the last time on UK print’s most iconic of sites.