Writing in the Sunday Times, Nick Tomalin said that "rat-like cunning" is one of the prime qualifications for a journalist. If you're going to -make your living out of journalism in Britain, your money will come from capitalist newspapers, local, national, or both. And if you're a socialist, you'll need plenty of that cunning. local issues, like wage claims, as well as introducing broader political issues. If your branch's Conference delegate is one of the many who goes to Conference just for the booze, disturb him into resigning by asking him for a full report, going through the agenda with him and asking him how he is going to vote/has voted on each resolution etc. 5. If your main interest is in writing articles about overtly political subjects, you're liable to be thwarted, to put it mildly. But it's possible to write politically conscious articles and reviews which editors regard as "non-political" - TV, science, books, sport, architecture, films etc. If you avoid certain key-words - "bourgeois" and "Yankee pirates" for instance - you can get away with a lot. As a straight reporter, JUSTICE nalists are: (a) Wages. (b) Office conditions. (c) Hours of work. (d) Censorship and editorial policy. (e) Hiring and firing. (f) Conflicts between advertising creeps and the reporters.
Collate the facts and evidence on these subjects, relate them to the basic question of the ownership and control of your paper. Get together with the printers and incorporate their views at equal length in an anonymous mimeographed booklet calling for workers' control. When the next dispute breaks, see that everyone gets a copy. Adrian Mitchell