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Linda Melvern’s second book, “The End of the Street”, was published in London, in 1986, (Methuen) and it exposed the secret planning by Rupert Murdoch to destroy the strangle-hold of the British print unions. The book was given prime time television advertising and was the subject of a major serialization in The Times.
'Bloody exciting ain't it? Bloody exciting.'
Rupert Murdoch
'We had given him an olive branch and he'd broken it in two and beaten us round the head with it.'
Tony Dubbins, General Secretary, NGA
'If you go to a casino and play the numbers game, as they did, and you lose, you don't go back to the casino the next day and ask for your money back.'
Bruce Matthews, Managing Director, News International
'You have become the mouthpiece for a ruthless and bullying management which regards all employees as cattle.'
Claire Tomalin, Former Literary Editor, Sunday Times, to Andrew Neil
'Perhaps there was a plot; but I tell you unequivocally that we had no part of it, no knowledge of it.'
Eric Hammond, General Secretary. EETPU
The End of the Street tells the inside story of the most historic upheaval in the British press and trade union movement for over a century - the true story of Rupert Murdoch, his coup against the unions and the Fleet Street revolution.
In the course of a single year, the war for Fleet Street was fought and won. With military-style planning and precision, Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants outmanoeuvred the unions, annihilated practices and traditions that had for decades been the pride of the unions and the bane of the proprietors, and sacked thousands of workers who had believed themselves indispensable and invulnerable.
- The account of this war is full of revelations of the crucial moments in each side's campaign.
- The packed and passionate meetings where the union chapels tore themselves apart.
- The strategic plotting at the nerve-centre of the Murdoch empire (including the assembly of the $10 million computer system in an anonymous South London warehouse by American computer experts staying in a safe house in Belgravia).
- The personal and professional dramas that developed as the saga unfolded.
- The web of misinformation that concealed the purpose behind the top-secret development of the Wapping plant.
But this book is more than the mere record of industrial relations in chaos; it is a gripping story of drama, tragedy, conspiracy and even fame.
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