ABSTRACT
The main employers’ organisation for national newspaper production was the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association (NPA) which changed its name in 1968 to the Newspaper Publisher’s Association. It was formed in 1906 when the London Society of Compositors (LSC) threatened a ‘general strike’ in response to Hampton’s, a London firm, becoming non-union. Concerned at the industrial consequences of a ‘general strike’ of compositors, a group of daily newspaper owners approached the LSC and agreed to withdraw from the London Master Printers’ Association and to conduct separate negotiations, providing the union excluded daily newspapers from any general printing industry dispute. Daily newspaper publishers claimed their product was too perishable to risk a stoppage. As competition between national newspaper publishers increased in the 1960s and 1970s the NPA became less influential and in 1986 closed its Industrial Relations Department. The major employers had withdrawn from it for industrial relations purposes.
