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THE doors of Rupert Murdoch’s London headquarters were blockaded at the weekend as a week of protests by democracy campaigners reached a dramatic climax.
Occupy activists had camped outside the News UK offices for the previous seven days in protest against the billionaire’s monopoly of the media.
And a 50-strong group swooped into the lobby of the plush offices on Saturday night, occupying the entrance for more than six hours.
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/2026-01/19860406_a_wiard_0001.jpg.webp?itok=d2RMNwWw)
LAURA DAVISON traces how Murdoch’s mass sackings, political deals and legal loopholes shattered collective bargaining 40 years ago – and how persistent NUJ organising, landmark court victories and new employment rights legislation are finally challenging that legacy
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
On the 40th anniversary of the Wapping dispute, this Morning Star special supplement traces the long-planned conspiracy that led to the mass sackings of printworkers in 1986 – a struggle whose unresolved injustices still demand redress today, writes ANN FIELD