View all newsletters
Sign up for our free email newsletters

Fighting for quality news media in the digital age.

Last rites of the industrial correspondents club

COMMENT

Some had not been into Congress House for three decades, others had been more recently. Many had spent hours and days hanging around the TUC in the good old days when Britain had a labour movement and labour correspondents to report it.

Now they were gathered to perform the last rites for the Labour and Industrial Correspondents Group.They called it a reunion. In reality it was a wake. Ninety came to the debate “Labour Correspondents RIP – who cares” put on by the Media Society (and produced by me) last Wednesday.

The familiar faces were there but much much older. John Lloyd, formerly Labour editor of the Financial Times now of Oxford University; Geoffrey Goodman, the doyen from the Daily Mirror; Peter Mchugh from the Daily Mail and latterly GMTV; Paul Routledge from the Times, now on the Mirror; Nick Jones, Martin Adeney and John Fryer from the BBC. Plus those who had ‘gone across’: Sir Bernard Ingham who went from The Guardian to spinning for Margaret Thatcher, Peter Hitchens who moved from Trotskyism through the Daily Express to become the voice of the libertarian right on the Mail on Sunday. Ageing union general secretaries were present too like Rodney Bickerstaffe of NUPE and Fred Jarvis of the NUT. Very few women too, just like the old days.

It was a time to renew old friendships and old enmities. The slideshow on the plasma screens harked back to the days when the Labour corrs were the aristocrats of the newsroom. Front page news on many days as industrial action (or strife, you take your pick) gripped Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. At its zenith the LICG had 70 members, enough to have cricket matches at the TUC each year. Now it was down to history and the bowls green.

Reminiscences galore and speculation as to whether the reunion might be a renaissance. Might they come back from the dead? Paul Routledge thought definitely not. Martin Adeney said that “unions will never regain their power”. Peter Hitchens thought that “we are now a nation which sells cappuccinos and mobile phones to each other” so no need for industrial action or industrial corrs either. Lloyd called for new global labour corrs to cover the global affairs of multinational companies.

It was a time for laughter too. Lloyd confessed to being a party to a completely fabricated story of Royal Navy subs patrolling off the Brighton seashore to protect the brothers from IRA attack. It was printed and the Sun decided to follow up with a photo of the undersea protectors. They ended up using file photos.

Content from our partners
MHP Group's 30 To Watch awards for young journalists open for entries
How PA Media is helping newspapers make the digital transition
Publishing on the open web is broken, how generative AI could help fix it

As so often in the past with the corps of labour corrs, the night ended in the pub – this time with free drink courtesy of the FT and Thomsons the union solicitors. No requests for books of receipts here tonight. This group of experienced hacks are now out on their ears like so many of those in the industries they so closely reported in the past. Dinosaurs maybe, a lost tribe definitely.

Nicholas Jones has edited The Lost Tribe of Fleet Street;Whatever Happened to the Industrial Correspondents? Published by Biteback 2011 £5.00

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

Select and enter your email address Weekly insight into the big strategic issues affecting the future of the news industry. Essential reading for media leaders every Thursday. Your morning brew of news about the world of news from Press Gazette and elsewhere in the media. Sent at around 10am UK time. Our weekly does of strategic insight about the future of news media aimed at US readers. A fortnightly update from the front-line of news and advertising. Aimed at marketers and those involved in the advertising industry.
  • Business owner/co-owner
  • CEO
  • COO
  • CFO
  • CTO
  • Chairperson
  • Non-Exec Director
  • Other C-Suite
  • Managing Director
  • President/Partner
  • Senior Executive/SVP or Corporate VP or equivalent
  • Director or equivalent
  • Group or Senior Manager
  • Head of Department/Function
  • Manager
  • Non-manager
  • Retired
  • Other
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
Thank you

Thanks for subscribing.

Websites in our network