Drink: Days of wine and unions

At Tory party conferences circa 1980, there would usually be a day when the Daily Telegraph team looked glum. One would enquire why. ‘Dunno why I’m bothering to write this. Word from London is that we won’t have a paper tomorrow. The inkies’ll stop the presses.’ In those days, the print workers’ unions would always use the Tory conference to remind the world who really ran Fleet Street. Then came Rupert Murdoch. His record may not be wholly angelic, but the victor of Wapping is entitled to the nation’s gratitude.

Even when I joined the Sunday Telegraph in 1986, a few pre-Wapping vestiges survived. The canteen, a necessary source of breakfast on Saturdays, was run by Inkies’ wives. Gloomy, boot-faced harridans, they looked as if they could not wait for the new roles they had been promised. Come the revolution, they would all become tricoteuses. In the meantime, they insisted on two queues, one for the normal eggs and b, which were lamentably sourced and cooked.