IF YOU ask trade unionists and, indeed, the general public today about the National Union of Journalists you will probably get a very different answer from the one you would have got 25 years ago when I was elected to the union’s national executive council.

During the 1970s the union had achieved strong organisation across the print media, not least of which was a pre-entry closed shop in a national magazine group.

But times “they were a-changing.” I joined the NUJ in 1979 — the same year that Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, an event that set the arena for our battles ahead.

The union has been a TUC affiliate since 1940, though it had had an earlier very short sojourn, leaving in 1922 in protest at the TUC’s decision to help bail out the Daily Herald — at that time the only diverse national paper available on the high street.

Looking back, as retirement looms, one of the most significant changes has, in my view, been the very different perception of the union in the wider movement. (Though, not everything changes, the union’s motion to its first Congress in 1920 was eventually remitted, as was our motion to my first Congress over 70 years later.)

It is a truism that no person is a prophet in their own land and that is maybe why NUJ stories are so very rarely reported.

Let me chart how the changed perception of the NUJ came about through the tenure of three general secretaries in office during my time on the NEC.

First, John Foster, who joined us from Equity as broadcasting organiser moving across to national newspapers when he established the Press for Union Rights Campaign in response to the Thatcher-led, Murdoch-assisted derecognition across the newspaper industry.

One aspect of this attack was the introduction of divisive individual contracts, often with cash incentives to leave unions.

One who refused to sign and who was victimised was Dave Wilson, the NUJ father of chapel at the Daily Mail. He took his case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights and, after a 12-year battle, won employment rights in a victory for workers throughout Europe.

In her testimony to the Leveson Inquiry, current general secretary Michelle Stanistreet described how the late Sir David English, former editor of the Mail, “famously once bragged that the purpose of Associated Newspapers’ move to personal contracts in 1989, and the company’s targeting of individuals who wanted to stick to union-negotiated salaries, was ‘to make the union wither on the vine’.”

The first targets for derecognition were newspaper industry unions, and it took time to convince other trade unions that they would be next and, as the NUJ was still seen by many sister unions as a bit of an anomaly, it took a struggle to win acknowledgement of the importance of Press for Union Rights and its basic demands — the right of workers to be accompanied and represented — as central to the aspirations of free and independent trade unions.

Foster was elected general secretary in 1992 and we worked very closely over the years. I was vice-president and president between 1993 and 1995 and then later treasurer.

Derecognition and anti-union legislation saw union membership decline. But strict budgeting and John’s ability to negotiate — even with bankers — saw us turn the corner and wipe out a deficit that nearly saw the union go under.

Jeremy Dear, who became general secretary in 2001, once described the union as “fiercely democratic, defiantly independent and proudly speaking out both for members and for their professional rights.” Rights that allow us freely to uphold the NUJ’s code of conduct which has set out the main principles of British and Irish journalism since 1936.

The code is part of our rules and all journalists joining the NUJ have to sign and agree to strive to adhere to its professional principles.

And maybe this approach to our profession explains why fellow trade unionists think that somehow the NUJ is not quite a proper trade union.

But is there really anything wrong with taking pride in your profession, in your craft or in your trade?

It was Jeremy who steered through rerecognition — first as newspaper organiser and then as general secretary.

One of the youngest general secretaries, Jeremy Dear had led the union’s first, and longest, dispute, against derecognition at the Essex Chronicle as a 21-year-old trainee journalist. 

This experience stood him in good stead and he ran a successful operation to win back union rights across national and local newspapers, magazines and books like a military campaign with wall charts and targets, to the extent that in the early 2000s we won recognition for more of our members, as a ratio of total membership, than any other TUC affiliate.

The Leveson Inquiry was too big a story for the media to ignore — Michelle made sure of that! — and our evidence and the sorry tales of bullying and harassment at the BBC exposed the extent and level of exploitation of journalists in the workplace and proved that journalists are no different from any other worker.

As our fourth female president — I was the third — Michelle brought new and different experiences to the union.

Elected as general secretary in 2011, she had worked full-time as a journalist, joining Express Newspapers in 1999 and working on the Sunday Express.

She worked in the City Department as an interviewer and feature writer, moving to the news desk as a feature writer and then as books editor.

“It was my experience,” she says, “as an NUJ chapel rep at the Express — where we operated a joint chapel between the Daily Express, Sunday Express and Daily Star titles — representing members individually and collectively in a range of issues that galvanised my activism within the NUJ and gave me a deep insight into the issues facing journalists.”

This expertise and experience immeasurably benefits our members.

So from Press for Union Rights through the rerecognition campaign to Leveson I think I have made the case why the NUJ deserves to be respected as a “proper” union.

And I hope that the fight over the years with John, Jeremy and Michelle for what I call NUJ “recognition” by sister unions, both on the floor of Congress and on the general council, has also enhanced our reputation.

Industries and workplaces have changed over the past 25 years and so have unions — some have grown or merged, while others have dwindled or disappeared.

The NUJ has had its own lows and highs but most significantly, as I look back, the NUJ is still here as one of the very few remaining specialist craft unions, punching well above its weight both nationally and internationally; big is not always best brothers (and sisters).