Printers at the three Dublin newspapers and some 46 commercial printing companies went on strike on July 2nd, 1965 in support of a 33 per cent pay increase. The dispute closed the newspapers for 10 weeks and was eventually settled by Labour Court intervention after several attempts at mediation by other groups.
- JOE JOYCE
The losses suffered by the printing industry were not quantified but reported to be "very great". On the day the newspapers returned The Irish Timesran this editorial, by the editor Douglas Gageby, under the headline "The Secret History of The Irish Times". –
‘The madman shouted in the market-place. No one stopped to answer him. Thus it was confirmed that his theses were incontrovertible.”
When the newspapers went out, rumour proliferated. It is ironic in an age of television and radio that there is still a broad spectrum of intelligence which in the absence of newspapers cannot be covered by these media. There was a cruel and vicious attempt to alarm the television authorities into announcing that the President was dead. Mr de Valera has since been informed of this, so we do not hesitate to mention it.
There were other, mindless, idle tales going the rounds. Anyone who has lived in a barracks knows how rumours multiply; a simple remark in the battalion can have a thousand men poised in imagination to entrain before nightfall for Cluais, Co Galway (that last outpost for the emergency man), for Chittagong or Chemnitz.
The newspaper world is not unlike that semi-enclosed world of the barrack soldier; it breeds its own rumours with a reckless promiscuity and is then surprised when they are given wide credence.
Idle speculation in public-houses has variously had at least two of the Irish morning newspapers as unlikely to return after the strike. The Irish Timeswas one of the newspapers which figured in many a coloured story. In to us came reports that this newspaper had appeared for the last time; that it had been bought by Lord Thompson or the Beaverbrook press. A suggestion that the buyer might be Bing Crosby even went the rounds.
Nor was that famous brewing family neglected; they were said to have added a newspaper (this one) to their programme of diversification.
We have appeared again. Like other newspapers we have suffered heavily through the strike, but we are in good fettle, not bought out by anyone, not going to be bought out by anyone.
We are here again to say what we have to say and to encourage other people to do the same – to remind Government that it is their job to govern, Opposition that it is theirs to oppose, educators that it is up to them to educate – but here above all to inform. We are glad to be at work again, making the news known and commenting on it as we please, answerable for our opinions only to ourselves.
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