Journalism: Roy Greenslade is a former editor of the Mirror, a senior journalist on the Sun and the Sunday Times and worked as a sub on a number of other British national newspapers, so one could be forgiven for approaching this book with some trepidation; might it not be another book of anecdotes by one of Fleet Street's good ol' boys?
But fear not. This book is a masterly and wonderful history; press history as it should be written.
Press Gang opens in the post-second World War period that was dominated by Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Camrose, Lord Kemsley, Roy Thomson, the legendary Hugh Cudlipp and Cecil King at the Mirror and David Astor at the Observer. All have now gone, and with them their empires, to be replaced by Rupert Murdoch, Conrad Black, and Richard Desmond, who made his money publishing pornography and now owns the Express group. If ownership has changed and is in fewer hands, so have the titles. In the post-war years, in which the story in this book begins, there was a plethora of titles that are no more, the News Chronicle, Reynolds News, Empire News, Picture Post, the Daily Herald. All have gone.
Unlike so many press histories Press Gang is not simply a list of titles and the names of media owners and their eccentricities, it is ultimately about journalism and the role of the press in society. Greenslade revisits a number of major stories and examines the impact of the press. He delights in debunking myths, such as that which says newspapers critical of British military exploits automatically suffer a fall in circulation. It was not true at the time of Suez and is not true today, but the myth persists and still colours newspaper policy towards wars that involve British troops.
Another of the stories Greenslade examines is that of Northern Ireland, not the 30 years of the Troubles, but the story of how the Fleet Street press became aware of Northern Ireland's existence with the rise of the civil rights movement and the opening salvos of the political violence.
Northern Ireland was only covered when there was a royal visit, which was followed by naive editorials praising the loyalty of the people. He pays tribute to the few journalists who brought the attention of the rest of the UK to the reality of Northern Ireland. Foremost amongst them was Mary Holland, then of the Observer, and Cal McCrystal in the Sunday Times.
Press Gang is an unusual history in that its author appears with increasing regularity. This is no bad thing, nor does it make this book a memoir. Press Gang combines the rigour of scholarship with the excitement and engagement that good journalism should be about. In Greenslade, who is now professor of journalism at London's City University, we have a combination of scholar and hack (hack being the self-depreciative term journalists apply to themselves). It is Greenslade's often subjective opinions, his understanding of journalism practice, the combination of research and first-hand knowledge - of life on the Street - that makes this work not just a great, if big, read, but an important contribution to journalism studies.
Central to this story is Wapping and that secret flight out of Fleet Street to London's Docklands by Murdoch's News International titles. This broke the power and influence of the print unions, the closed shops and much else. Greenslade was then features editor on the Sun, but he had also been a National Union of Journalists (NUJ) militant, Father of the Chapel and a former Communist. Greenslade tells how his colleagues agonised about going to Wapping, but despite his militancy and union activity Greenslade seems to have suffered no doubts at all; he was one of the first into Wapping and describes listening to Chapel (office union) meetings down a telephone line from Wapping to Fleet Street. The relationship between journalists and the print unions had sunk to such a low level, with printers passing NUJ pickets at the Sun on at least one occasion, it meant Greenslade and soon most of his colleagues passed the printers' pickets outside what became known as "Fortress Wapping". For many, of course, the decision to go to Wapping was not easy and some, known as the refusniks, did not go at all.
The so called Wapping revolution separates two worlds, the world of old Fleet Street, with its bizarre industrial relations, crowded and cramped news-rooms, great pubs, El Vinos, the Tipperary, the King and Keys, and big egos and the new world of computer-driven newsrooms, with fewer journalists producing larger newspapers, less drink and dominated by a handful of media owners, who combine business interests with the political. Of Murdoch, he says that he regularly used his political muscle to further his business interests while using his business - his newspapers - to espouse his politics.
As for quibbles, well, a round-up chapter with Greenslade suggesting where the British press is going would have been interesting, but as I said, that is only a quibble. He concludes with a newspaper story maintaining that Murdoch's companies pay almost no tax - a story that did not appear in any of Murdoch's own newspapers, but in the Independent. That, he suggests, shows the importance of diversity of ownership, not only in Britain but in Ireland and elsewhere, as the trend towards concentration of media ownership is probably the biggest threat facing a free press today.
Michael Foley is a lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology and a former Irish Times media correspondentMichael Foley
- Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda By Roy Greenslade Macmillan , 787pp. £40