#wapping

Day 2373, 21 December 2024

The Prospect of Whitby pub, Wapping, London

400 year old stone floor at The Prospect of Whitby , Wapping, England.

Photo: Maggie McBeagle

The Prospect of Whitby is a historic public house on the banks of the Thames at Wapping in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It lays claim to being the site of the oldest riverside tavern, dating from around 1520.

For fans of the old London/curious as to how the area round the old Sun Hill station in Wapping (Pennington street/Artichoke Hill) looked in 1985, Hostage (02x05) had this rather nice little view from Roy as he drove in.

These two below are the cobbles at the back of the old station on Pennington Street (both directions) that the 'walking feet' credits were filmed walking along. This is how they looked in 2008 (the furthest back that Google Maps go)

At the end of this series (series 2) the station then moved to Kensington.

Within a year of the end of the Miners’ Strike, another major UK industrial action had dramatic implications for an entire industry’s workforce. This time the disruption involved printers working for Rupert Murdoch’s News International, at that time publisher of The Times, Sun and News of the World.

On February 15th, 1986, BBC News reported;

“…Eight police officers have been injured and 58 people arrested in the worst outbreak of violence yet outside the News International printing plant in Wapping, east London…Police estimated 5,000 demonstrators gathered near the printing works for a mass demonstration…Similar mass protests have taken place regularly outside the Wapping plant ever since the start of a strike three weeks ago over new working conditions and the move from Fleet Street to cheaper premises in East London…”

New computer-based production technologies meant that a significantly reduced workforce would be required to operate the new plant. News International management had secretly secured the cooperation of the EETPU (electricians’ union) and created a parallel workforce. Around 6 000 Fleet Street printworkers were summarily dismissed immediately upon striking, and production began at the new plant with virtually no delay.

Rupert Murdoch said of his dealings with the print unions;

“…For 17 years there, I lay down and had these people run over me. Day after day, week after week, month after month, with bad, idle wasteful practices in all our plants…”

In response to a reporter’s question he denied that he was out to break the printers’ unions, but to preserve his newspapers ‘for the people that do work for them’.

The General Secretary of SOGAT 82 (Society of Graphical and Allied Trades), Brenda (later Baroness) Dean (1943-2018), described the behavior of Murdoch and his company as a ‘conspiracy of deceit’ over secretly recruiting strike-breaking labour while negotiations between her union and News International management were ongoing. Having discussed with police plans for orderly and peaceful picketing, she blamed extreme left and right agitators, a destructive minority ‘rent-a-mob’, for the picket line violence that ensued.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer concurred;

“..We saw the classic example of honest well-intentioned union members supporting their cause being joined by diverse elements whose only interest was in causing as much trouble as possible…”

News International did not lose a single night of production during the thirteen months of industrial action, which resulted in over 1200 arrests and 410 police officers being injured. With echoes of the Miners' Strike, police were accused of aggressive and heavy handed tactics against picketers and also local residents, many of whom were sympathetic to the strikers.