“After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not.”

Jack London.

24th January 1986, print workers at Rupert Murdoch’s News International went on strike against the company who had opened a new no-strike plant at Wapping in London. The strikers were all quickly sacked and replaced by scabs provided by the EETPU union. Despite holding out for over a year, the printers lost, and the dispute marked the effective death of another previously powerful group of organised workers in the UK.

For all its use of powers from the police to the law courts and even the Ministry of Defence, the capitalist state on its own could not take on the printers or the miners two years earlier and beat them. It relied on the vile treachery of Labour politicians and once again, the cowardly leadership of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) – and specifically in the case of the print workers, the active connivance of the engineering union the EETPU and its right-wing leader, Eric Hammond.

The collective memory of our class will never forget the brutality of the police in their protection of big-business – they were and are, a private army in the service of the rich.

Printworkers vs. News International – Wapping Dispute, 1986. 26mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm9IL2Qd-2w&ab_channel=Tannhauser108

Violence During the Wapping Dispute, 1986 | Thames News Archive Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPLQZjSkcZw&ab_channel=ThamesNews

This is a short history of the dispute: https://libcom.org/history/1986-1987-wapping-printers-strike