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The Scottish Daily News (SDN) was a left-of-centre daily newspaper published in Glasgow, Scotland, from May 5 to November 8, 1975. It was hailed as Britain's first worker-controlled, mass-circulation daily, formed as a workers' cooperative by 500 of the 1,846 [1] journalists, photographers, engineers, and print workers who were made redundant in April 1974 by Beaverbrook Newspapers when the Scottish Daily Express closed its operation in Scotland and moved to Manchester. In politics, left-wing, the political left or simply The Left are terms that refer to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy or social liberalism, and defined in contradistinction to its polar opposite, the right. ...
For other uses, see Glasgow (disambiguation). ...
Motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (English: No one provokes me with impunity) Scotlands location within Europe Scotlands location within the United Kingdom Languages English, Gaelic, Scots Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow First Minister Jack McConnell Area - Total - % water Ranked 2nd UK 78,782 km² 1. ...
November 8 is the 312th day of the year (313th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 53 days remaining. ...
1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and operated by its worker-owners. There are no outside, or consumer owners, in a workers cooperative - only the workers own shares of the business. ...
In UK employment law, redundancy is the dismissal of an employee when his or her job becomes unnecessary. ...
William Maxwell Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, PC (May 25, 1879 – June 9, 1964) was a Canadian – British business tycoon and politician. ...
The Daily Express is a conservative, middle-market British tabloid newspaper. ...
Manchester is a city in the United Kingdom, famous for being the worlds first industrial city and considered by many to be UKs second city [1][2]. It is a centre of the arts, the media and big business. ...
The redundant workers, who set up a Scottish Daily News action committee, contributed £200,000 of their redundancy money to set up the newspaper, with the British government promising a loan of £1.2 million to enable them to buy the Scottish Daily Express building in Glasgow at 195 Albion Street — a replica of the Daily Express's iconic black-glass Art Deco offices, dubbed the Black Lubyanka, [2] in London's Fleet Street, — if the committee could raise another £275,000. Around £175,000 of this came from members of the public in shares of £25 each, and just over £100,000 from Robert Maxwell, the owner of Pergamon Press. Christ the Redeemer (1410s, by Andrei Rublev) For other senses of this word, see icon (disambiguation). ...
Asheville City Hall. ...
} London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England and is the most populous city in the European Union. ...
Fleet Street road sign Fleet Street in 1890 Fleet Street in 2005 Fleet Street is a famous London street, named after the River Fleet. ...
Robert Maxwell Ian Robert Maxwell MC (June 10, 1923 – November 5, 1991), British media proprietor, rose from poverty to build a large publishing empire. ...
Pergamon Press was a United Kingdom based publishing house, founded by Robert Maxwell, which published general science books. ...
The newspaper, which had as its slogan "Read the people's paper and keep 500 in jobs," [3] folded after six months with a deficit of £1.2 million, [4] but was published for another six months by a small group of employees who, led by journalist and future Member of the Scottish Parliament Dorothy-Grace Elder, staged the country's one and only newspaper work-in, writing and selling the paper themselves on the streets of Glasgow, taking no salaries, and refusing to leave the Albion Street building. Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) (Ball PÃ rlamaid na h-Alba (BPA) in Gaelic) is the title given to any one of the 129 individuals elected to serve in the Scottish Parliament. ...
Dorothy Grace-Elder is a journalist and a former Member of the Scottish Parliament. ...
Broadsheet
The first 16-page edition of the newspaper rolled off the presses as a broadsheet, as the Scottish Daily Express had been, at 9:50 p.m. on May 4, 1975, under the editorship of Fred Sillito, with Andrew McCallum as news editor, and 500 employee-shareholders. The journalists, based on the third floor of the Albion Street building, agreed to take a basic £69 a week salary and the editor £150 (McKay and Barr 1976, p.70). Dorothy-Grace Elder, who in 1999 became one of the first members (MSP) of the new Scottish Parliament, became the editor of the women's section. The first issue sold out at over 300,000 copies. Newspaper sizes in August 2005. ...
May 4 is the 124th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (125th in leap years). ...
1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...
Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) (Ball PÃ rlamaid na h-Alba (BPA) in Gaelic) is the title given to any one of the 129 individuals elected to serve in the Scottish Parliament. ...
For the national legislative body up to 1707, see Parliament of Scotland. ...
Although the broadsheet format was at the time believed by many employees to be a mistake, as reports had shown that the Scottish public preferred the tabloid format, the action committee, now called the executive council or works council, confidently expected circulation to fall to 220,000 within three weeks as the novelty of the newspaper wore off (ibid, p. 71). However, circulation dropped further and faster than expected, reaching 190,000 in the third week. After taking returns into account, this produced an actual sales figures of less than 180,000, which meant that the newspaper had started to lose money. Newspaper sizes in August 2005. ...
According to Christopher Hird in the New Internationalist, a feasibility study conducted by Strathclyde University before the paper started indicated that the average daily sale needed to be 200,000 to break even, and that the venture could not work given the costs and expected sales. [5] The University of Strathclyde in Scotland is a top research-led British University which originated as Andersons Institution in 1796. ...
After the capital costs were taken into account, writes Hird, the company had been started with just £950,000, a relatively small amount to launch a new paper. [6]
Relaunch By August 1975, losses were running at £30,000 a week with a daily circulation of just 80,000, and it was decided to relaunch the newspaper as a tabloid, the first issue of which was published on August 18 (ibid p. 122) with a print run of 240,000, priced at 5p.
None of the workers had experience of publishing a tabloid, which generally requires twice as many stories of half the length. By the end of August, losses were running at £17,000 a week with circulation down to 170,000.
Losses On September 15, 1975, 300 of the workers attended an emergency meeting set up by Robert Maxwell, who accused the management of the newspaper of playing politics with the workers' jobs, in part because, he said, they were refusing to allow managers to manage and were blocking a price rise that Maxwell felt might save the newspaper (ibid p. 132). The result of the meeting was that two of the managers were removed from the executive council and replaced by two of Maxwell's supporters, Dorothy-Grace Elder and Tommy Clarke. September 15 is the 258th day of the year (259th in leap years). ...
1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...
The losses continued, made worse on September 19 when Beaverbrook began legal action to recover £59,000 the company said was still owed on the sale of the building. The litigation destroyed what was left of the newspaper's financial credibility and credit was no longer available. Bills had to be paid immediately, journalists no longer had lines of credit for taxis and petrol, photographers had to pay up front for photographic supplies, and the accounts department became swamped with demands for payment from nervous creditors (ibid p. 142). A lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court in order to recover a right, obtain damages for an injury, obtain an injunction to prevent an injury, or obtain a declaratory judgment to prevent future legal disputes. ...
The term credit can have several meanings in different contexts. ...
Look up taxi in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Final days During the final days of the newspaper, its content became self-obsessed, with appeals to the Scottish people to save their own newspaper (ibid p. 148). The editor was forced out, and a new editor appointed, Nathan Goldberg, a communist and the newspaper's former night editor, who took over on October 6. When asked how he felt about this, he compared himself to the captain of the Titanic, thereafter becoming known as "Nathan Iceberg" (ibid). This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ...
RMS Titanic was the second of a trio of superliners intended to dominate the transatlantic travel business. ...
The government refused to extend any additional loans to save the newspaper, or to give up its secured creditor status on the loan for the building, which would have meant the newspaper could have raised money using the building as collateral. A creditor is a party (e. ...
Collateral is a word used for assets that secure a debt obligation. ...
During a workers' meeting on October 20, with circulation running at 150,000 a day, the company chairman Alistair Blyth announced that a provisional liquidator, James Whitton of Coopers Lybrand, had been appointed to take over the running of the newspaper, with the aim of saving it rather than continuing the liquidation process (ibid, p. 149). Whitton's options were to sell the newspaper as a going concern, find new investors, or split up and sell the assets. The advantage of having a liquidator sanctioned by the courts on board was that the newspaper's credit was guaranteed and salaries could be paid. Liquidation, or winding up, refers to a process whereby the assets of a business are converted to money. ...
The next day, October 21, members of the executive council met Prime Minister Harold Wilson to ask again, without success, that the government's loan conditions be relaxed. James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, PC (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was one of the most prominent and successful British politicians of the 20th Century. ...
On Saturday, November 1, the workers held a rally in at Custom House Quay attended by several hundred employees and members of the Scottish National Party (SNP), where speakers appealed to the government to save the newspaper and the 500 jobs. Those who addressed the rally included Teddy Taylor of the Conservative Party, Margo MacDonald of the SNP, Jimmy Reid of the Communist Party, and representatives of the Scottish Trades Union Congress as well as ministers of Catholic and Protestant churches. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is a centre-left political party which campaigns for Scottish independence. ...
Sir Edward MacMillan Taylor, usually Teddy Taylor (born April 18, 1937) was a British politician, and a Conservative Member of Parliament 1964-1979 and 1980-2005. ...
The Conservative Party is one of the two largest political parties in the United Kingdom and the most successful party in political history based on election victories. ...
Margo MacDonald was born in 1945 in Hamilton, Scotland and educated at Hamilton Academy, she trained as a teacher of physical education. ...
Jimmy Reid is a Govan born journalist and ex-trade union activist. ...
In modern usage, a communist party is a political party which promotes communism, the sociopolitical philosophy based on Marxism. ...
The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) is the co-ordinating body of trade unions in Scotland. ...
Chairman Alister Blyth told the rally:
[A]nyone in the newspaper industry will tell you ... that it takes at least a year for a newspaper to become established, get on its feet to settle its circulation. It became clear that we were under-financed from the start ... This was aggravated, of course, by the fact that we came out with the wrong size of newspaper. (ibid p.151) On November 6, the liquidator announced that he would be winding up the newspaper in two days' time.
Work-in At a workers' meeting on November 7, 1975, the remaining employees, led by Dorothy-Grace Elder, decided to stage a work-in by refusing to leave the building, and by writing and selling the newspaper themselves on the streets of Glasgow, with the printing handed over to an outside commercial printer because the Albion Street presses were no longer runnning. A small group of employees stood outside factories and stores at five o'clock every morning shaking tin cans and asking for donations, a situation that continued for six months until, needing to earn a living, workers began to leave, putting an end to Scotland's experiment in worker-controlled news production. Image File history File links DorothyGraceElder. ...
Image File history File links DorothyGraceElder. ...
Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) (Ball PÃ rlamaid na h-Alba (BPA) in Gaelic) is the title given to any one of the 129 individuals elected to serve in the Scottish Parliament. ...
Dorothy Grace-Elder is a journalist and a former Member of the Scottish Parliament. ...
November 7 is the 311th day of the year (312th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 54 days remaining. ...
1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...
Elder wrote on her Scottish National Party webpage: In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is a centre-left political party which campaigns for Scottish independence. ...
For six months, we held that building — technically, illegally. The old black glass Express building was worth millions. We were the first newspaper workers' co-operative and we worked for free for six months in the freezing and abandoned Albion Street plant, producing a rebel paper we wrote and sold ourselves on the streets. Throughout, I dreaded the day the phone would ring to tell us the police would be sent in to re-claim the building (then part owned by the Labour government and with a council interest also). The name Labour Party or Labor Party is used by several political parties around the world. ...
A call came one day from the Lord Provost, Peter McCann, who was also chief magistrate. The Lord Provost of Glasgow is the convener of the City of Glasgow local authority. ...
A magistrate is a judicial officer with limited authority to administer and enforce the law. ...
"Oh please don't send in the police. We can't risk violence. This is a peaceful work-in," I said before he had a chance to speak. "Police? We could — but we won't," replied McCann. "Councillors wouldn't do that to Glasgow folk who are protesting peacefully. I was just phoning to say I guess your work-in must be hungry since your canteen closed. "So you've all to come round to the Corporation canteen, get a cheap dinner and say I sent you if there's any bother". [7]
The Albion Street building The Grade-A listed building at 195 Albion Street was later used by the Glasgow Evening Times and from July 1980 by the Glasgow Herald, whereupon it became known as the Herald building. The nine-storey building, built by Beaverbrook in 1937 and extended in 1955, [8] was refurbished in 2004 at a cost of £25 million [9] and turned into an apartment block housing 149 apartments. [10] [11] The Lighthouse, Charles Mackintoshs Glasgow Herald building The Herald is a broadsheet newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow, Scotland. ...
See also List of newspapers in Scotland is a list of newspapers in Scotland. ...
References - McKay, Ron & Barr, Brian. The Story of the Scottish Daily News. Canongate 1976, ISBN 0903937247
- Slattery, Jon. "May 1975: Scotland daily launched", Press Gazette, May 26, 2005
- Former SNP webpage of Dorothy-Grace Elder, cached by Google January 23, 2005, retrieved March 27, 2006.
- "The Herald Building: Flats could be front page news", Evening News, November 23, 2004
- "The Herald Building", FM Developments, retrieved March 27, 2006.
- Artist's impression of the refurbished Herald Building
- Hird, Christopher. "The crippled giants", New Internationalist, December 1981
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