THE RUPERT Murdoch-controlled News International is to sell its Wapping headquarters in London, the scene of some of the most bitter industrial conflicts of the 1980s when Mr Murdoch broke the printing unions.
News International has not used the famous Wapping printing presses since 2008, when it moved printing operations to Hertfordshire, but it had planned that journalists and other staff working for its titles would return to the east London site after a major refurbishment.
Now, however, management has decided to keep News International staff working in offices elsewhere in the area and to abandon plans to house it and all of its parent company News Corporation’s UK operations under one roof at the 25-acre site.
Wapping will now be put on the market for £150 million. It was almost sold in 2008 just before the property market crashed for £200 million, although getting that price now will be difficult.
Last night, Mr Murdoch’s son James, who heads News Corporations in the UK, said: “Wapping is not only important as a physical site, but also it is a symbol of how bold individuals, working together, can advance the world of media and thereby contribute to life in Britain.”
Rupert Murdoch, encouraged by Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, secretly built modern printing presses in Wapping before moving all of his operation from Fleet Street in one stunning move in 1986.
A total of 5,000 printers in Fleet Street were sacked and replaced by just 400 new ones, although the Wapping move led to a year of pitched battles between police and pickets at Wapping, who nightly tried and failed to stop lorries distributing newspapers.
The decision to sell Wapping, which was never regarded by its inhabitants as a pleasant place in which to work, was taken after a review of the company’s property portfolio, News International said.
However, the decision to sell should not be interpreted as a signal that the Murdochs are readying to quit the British newspaper trade entirely, although stock analysts have repeatedly urged them to do so, even before the News of the World scandal erupted.
That scandal still embroils the company. In August, Linklater solicitors were hired to carry out a review of e-mails from journalists on its titles. Senior editors and management will be called in coming months before an independent inquiry into the issue.