Paul Dacre: Watch out, BBC. The political class may come for you next

The below is an edited version of a speech given yesterday by Paul Dacre to the NewstrAid Benevolent Fund, a charity for those who sell and distribute newspapers and magazines.

Newspapers are all only too painfully aware of how we are having to adapt to survive in today’s modern, fast-paced, ever-changing digital media world. But the way I look at it, we have always had to fight to survive, ever since the birth of the mass media in the 1890s – the decade, if I may indulge in a little product placement, in which Alfred Harmsworth launched the Daily Mail.

In more than a century since then, we’ve grown and we’ve changed out of all recognition – more so in the last ten years than at any time in the previous century. But one thing has always been a constant – that this is an industry which is always having to fight, tooth and claw, against those who would destroy us.

In the 1980s we faced the battle with militant trade unionism which was slowly and surely throttling our industry.