Latest editorial
JOHN MAJOR’S Tory government worried about how to handle Rupert Murdoch’s growing media empire, newly released government papers reveal.
Downing Street began to compile a confidential briefing on the “financial performance, market share, [and] plans for expansion” of News Corporation, ahead of the PM meeting the media tycoon in August 1993.
The meeting came after a torrent of bad publicity in the Murdoch press, with one Sun leader saying Mr Major was “a nice guy but not up to [the] job.”
JOHN LANG recalls how Murdoch used scabbing electricians and even devised a fake newspaper to force a confrontation with printers – then sacked them all
Forty years on, TONY DUBBINS revisits the Wapping dispute to argue that Murdoch’s real aim was union-busting – enabled by Thatcherite laws, police violence, compliant unions and a complicit media
![[Pic: Andrew Wiard]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-01/19860503_a_wiard_0003.jpg.webp?itok=mR5zV0nE)
The once beating heart of British journalism was undone by technological change, union battles and Murdoch’s 1986 Wapping coup – leaving London the only major capital without a press club, says TIM GOPSILL
Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today