Making the News: The Wapping Dispute

Kemp, Sam and Mohanan, Amil (2025) Making the News: The Wapping Dispute. In: Raising Class Consciousness. Palgrave. (In Press)

Abstract

The Wapping Dispute was a year-long industrial battle between Rupert Murdoch’s News International and London’s powerful print unions. It’s an influential and well-documented strike which proved the effectiveness of Margret Thatcher’s government’s sweeping new employment laws, which severely restricted union powers. The dispute remains a pivotal moment in British industrial relations and is often approached from a legal or political framework. Very little attention has been given to the strike literature produced during the year long dispute, namely The Wapping Post and Picket. These publications represent some of the last major literary efforts of printworkers in dispute, and emerge from a long and rich heritage of workers’ strike literature. Using interviews with printworkers and union staff, this chapter examines the role these papers played in the wider dispute.

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