Eric Gordon, Howard Hannah and Jean Gray on the picket line at the print works

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THE element of surprise is an old favourite among newspaper proprietors shutting down titles and Courier Press Holdings – the Midlands owners of the  Camden Journal – deployed it with a vengeance back in 1980.

On December 18 that year, just a week before Christmas, Eric Gordon – editor of the Journal and I, deputy editor and father of the National Union of Journalists North London News Chapel, were summoned to our union headquarters in Gray’s Inn Road and told by our national organiser that the paper was being shut down with immediate effect and all of its nine staff sacked.

We then had to head up to an Indian restaurant in Turnpike Lane to tell colleagues at the office Christmas dinner the grim news.

The Journal was the smallest of the three papers in the North London News group. The biggest circulation was the Islington Gazette and then the Hornsey Journal.

But under Eric’s editorship the Camden Journal had a very strong and loyal network of readers in the borough of Camden.

A documentary made on the work of the old Camden Journal, before the owners moved to close it down

We gained that by being committed to challenging injustice and campaigning for a better life for all.

We called out racism at a time when the authorities denied it existed.

Staff of all three papers met the next morning and decided unanimously and bravely to strike until management agreed to withdraw the closure.

In 1980 the once-unrivalled UK local newspaper network was shrinking.

Our concern as union members was of course the loss of jobs but also the loss of local newspapers to communities that still relied on them for information, for campaigns and for a platform for their voices to be heard.

Mergers saw the demise of hundreds of titles. Owners of the press increasingly lost their commitment to their particular areas in a scramble for bigger profits derived from ever larger media companies.

Over that first weekend before Christmas 1980, we were determined to keep the Camden Journal alive.

So we contacted not only readers from all sections of the community but also journalists on local papers throughout London.

Local MPs – Frank Dobson in particular – local councillors from all parties, tenants’ leaders, and trade union branches rallied to the call of “Save the Camden Journal”.

Journalists throughout London who shared our concerns about lost outlets for news pledged their support and the NUJ nationally backed our campaign.

It gathered momentum.

In all, hundreds of journalists joined in: the entire NUJ membership on suburban London newspapers took token action and journalists throughout our company’s newspapers in the Midlands and West Wales were called out on indefinite strike.

For the 18 members of the North London News NUJ chapel at the centre of the action, these were days and nights of immense hard work.

Organising meetings, demonstrations and fundraising events not just in London but countrywide. And throughout we wrote and published our weekly paper.

The Save the Camden Journal came out on a Thursday and then had to be sold in pubs, at stations and in bingo halls throughout the borough.

Tenants’ leaders, councillors and Camden trade unionists appeared on picket lines in the Midlands and Wales.

It was an exhausting and exhilarating time – and it lasted for around 15 months. But ultimately the times were against us.

New laws had limited the ability of fellow trade unions to give us support. Arbitration dragged on for months. So in the end the fight to save jobs and stem the tide of closures was lost.

The great sacrifices made by countless colleagues and supporters, including those journalists who laid their livelihoods on the line in Leamington, Rugby, Nuneaton, Ammanford, Haverfordwest and throughout the London suburban area had been in vain – but for a small clause in the dispute settlement agreement.

Management offered to sell the title of the paper for £1 – Eric Gordon took up the challenge as did his Camden Journal colleague Angela Cobbinah.
Others of us helped out on a part-time voluntary basis – and looked for paying jobs elsewhere.

In the days when there were still employer blacklists, some struggled and went into higher education as students in their 30s and 40s. Journalists with university degrees were a minority on local papers back then.

To be honest, none of us thought the odds of the new paper surviving were much good. Many others had attempted to set up papers after they had been abandoned by proprietors. None had succeeded.

And true to his strange, idiosyncratic self, Eric immediately changed the title he and Angela had bought to the “Camden New Journal”.

“That’s awkward, it’s in the wrong order,” I remember saying to him. “Shouldn’t it be the New Camden Journal?” He shrugged.

Forty years on, as we survey the local press, we see so very many once-mighty titles have sadly disappeared.

Or they have been reduced to soulless slip editions when at one time they were the hubs of their communities – an essential glue that helped make things work.

Without them, can there really be an informed democracy?

But it’s not all bleak out there.

In parts of the capital abandoned by the handful of remaining big money press conglomerates, bold new titles are springing up. We wish them well.

Meanwhile for us, life begins at 40.