Inside Story: Politics, Intrigue and Treachery from Thatcher to Brexit. Philip Webster

had grown after Thatcher revealed in the Commons that a critical leak during the Westland affair had been personally authorized by him. At a private meeting of the back-bench 1922 Committee – the committee of all Tory back-benchers (formed after the 1922 general election) that meets weekly when Parliament is sitting – well over half of the twenty speakers called for him to go. Ministers do not survive that kind of mauling and on that Friday afternoon, Brittan went in to see Thatcher and offered his resignation because, he said later, it had become clear he no longer had the confidence of his colleagues. Before his departure was announced, I agreed with the news desk that I should get on the same train as Brittan as he headed to his constituency of Richmond in Yorkshire for the weekend. I would try to get a one-to-one interview with him.

      These were the days before the mobile phone and as I waited with my ticket at King’s Cross for Brittan to arrive, I thought to give the news desk one more call from a telephone kiosk to grab the latest news from Westminster. It was at this point I was instructed: ‘Phil, don’t go to Yorkshire; come to the office. There’s no paper tomorrow.’ Forgetting to cash back the ticket, I ran the short distance from the station to the office to find out what was going on.

      Soon after, Wilson, who had taken over as editor after the death of Charles Douglas-Home, clambered on top of the rickety table. The upshot was that we had seen the last of hot-metal production of our newspapers. The company was in dispute with the main print unions, the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades and the National Graphical Association, and, thanks to months of secret planning, we would be moving premises immediately. Some 6,000 workers had gone on strike following the collapse of the talks and were served with notices of dismissal. Members of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union would be brought in to produce the newspapers.

      Wilson asked those of us who were on duty on Sunday to report to the new premises. Anticipating picket lines, he said that buses would be laid on to help journalists get into work. The next editions of News International’s four papers – The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World – would be produced electronically without print union labour.

      It was a momentous event and produced shockwaves through the office. Friendships were to be strained and loyalties tested over the next few months and years. I had to make an immediate decision. The National Union of Journalists, of which I was a member, told Times journalists that they should not be crossing picket lines, and over Saturday I came under pressure from colleagues not to go in. Although many in the print unions at Gray’s Inn Road were people I knew and liked – one of my duties during my years as a gallery reporter was to travel to the office each evening to oversee the composition of the parliamentary pages in the paper – I had little sympathy with the leadership of their unions, whom I felt had brought them to this crisis point. As a veteran of the 1978–9 closure, I believed that the print unions had far too much power and I was privately pleased that they were being taken on.

      Many of my colleagues felt the opposite and some – dubbed the refuseniks – never went to Wapping, ending up a few months later on The Independent when it was launched. Those of us working on that Sunday felt particular pressure. I had no doubt that it was my duty to turn up and continue reporting the Westland story for the paper. I did not like the fact that friends who were not due to be on that day were ringing to tell me I should not work.

      I woke on the Sunday to news that The Sunday Times and the News of the World had been published overnight despite massive protests around the Wapping plant. Sunday, in those days, was the only day we went into the head office. During the rest of the week we were based at the Commons. I decided this was not a day for the car, and took the Tube to Tower Hill. The offices, which of course I had never seen, were easy to find because of the mass of pickets and television cameras around the Pennington Street entrance. I walked in, trying and failing to avoid familiar faces in the picket lines. I got a ‘Shame on you, Phil’ from one of the compositors with whom I had worked for years.

      That, in fact, was the easiest part of the day. Like many of my colleagues – and it seems hard to believe now – I had never used a computer in my life. Only a very select handful of Times staff knew in advance about the secret plans to shift locations and there was no opportunity for training. Wilson and Tony Norbury, the production editor, had been closely involved, shifting back and forth between offices without anyone knowing.

      News International had flown in a team of brilliant technical experts from America and, at our desks that Sunday morning, they gave us our first lesson in computer usage. They were to stand over us all day as we learnt the mysteries of electronic production and tried to forget our beloved typewriters, never to be seen in the office again.

      I could not really see how we were going to get a paper out. At that moment none of the phones were working, or even connected. Mobiles were years away. I wanted to talk to Downing Street to find out the latest on Westland, but there was no way. So I concentrated on learning computers fast. They were trying to get us connected to the Press Association and Reuters newswires, but without success at this stage.

      My one hope for contact with the outside world was a solitary television set in the corner of the newsroom. I knew that Douglas Hurd, the home secretary, was due to appear for a lunchtime interview. The news desk had told me they would want me to write a splash, a page-two lead, and probably a spread inside the paper. I was watching Hurd, avidly taking down every word in the belief that it might be all that I would have at the end of the day, when I realized that I was not alone.

      ‘Who’s this? He’s good.’

      It was Rupert Murdoch. It was my first meeting with the chairman of News International. I told him it was Hurd. My desire to be polite towards the ultimate boss was balanced by the need not to miss a word of what Hurd was saying. After a very brief chat he moved on, with me assuring him that Hurd had already said enough to give the paper a splash for the morning.

      As it happened, Thatcher herself gave an interview later to the Channel 4 programme Face the Press. Thatcher, looking apprehensive, had tried to unite her troops behind her by putting the blame on Heseltine. With the phones cranking into life later in the afternoon, there was now every chance we were going to get a paper out, provided nothing went wrong with the new technology. And so it came to pass that by around 7.30 p.m. I had given the news desk what it wanted.

      Having written the last splash out of Gray’s Inn Road, I now wrote the first out of Wapping. It told of how Thatcher would try to restore the Government’s credibility after the biggest crisis since she became leader by giving the Commons answers to questions about the role of Government in the Westland leak. For me that was Day One at Wapping. The Times appeared the next morning with a splash headline over my story saying ‘Ministers rally to Thatcher on Westland leak’. Also on the front page was a story in which Rupert Murdoch said he was delighted with the success of the operation to transfer production to Wapping. ‘I’m not quite sure how we managed to keep it a secret,’ he added.

      For me and others who had gone into work, the day was far from over. We went on to Red Lion Square, where the Times chapel of the NUJ had been meeting for much of the day. There was a frosty atmosphere as we walked in. Nobody called us ‘scabs’ but you wondered if that was in their minds. Perhaps that was understandable. But we had got the paper out, and the newspaper business was never to be quite the same again.

      It was only the start of the dispute, and our place of work justly earned the description Fortress Wapping, as police battled for months to contain demonstrations and allow people to get to work. As Jon Henley recorded in The Guardian on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the move:

      Just over a year later, the strikers were exhausted and demoralised, and the unions were facing bankruptcy and court action. Some 1,262 people had been arrested and 410 police injured. News International had not lost one day of production, and the balance in British industrial relations had shifted.

      For some, Wapping planted a decisive nail in the coffin of what Andrew Neil, a former Murdoch editor, has described as ‘all that was wrong with British industry: