Return of the Thunderer

The London Times settles a yearlong dispute

A cartoon in a London paper some months ago showed two Colonel Blimp characters chatting at their London club. ''Have you noticed,'' asked one, ''that no one's died since the Times stopped publishing?'' Clubmen and other notables can start expiring again, confident that their passing will not go unnoticed. The Times of London--founded in 1785, known fondly as ''the Thunderer'' for its once imperious editorials, and for years the bulletin board of the British Establishment--will reappear in mid-November along with its sister Sunday Times after the longest and costliest labor dispute in Fleet Street history.

The internationally respected newspapers came within a hairbreadth of dying themselves. Exasperated by chronic featherbedding and wildcat disruptions, the Toronto-based Thomson Organization, owner of the newspapers, suspended publication last Nov. 30. Thomson executives felt they could force the anarchic print unions into line within several months, at the outside, but they underestimated the complexity of the task and the resiliency of their adversaries. A final agreement was not reached until last week, just hours before the deadline Times Newspapers Ltd. Managing Director Marmaduke Hussey had implicitly set for closing the papers for good.

Management emerged from the rancorous showdown with significant manning reductions (an estimated 600 of 4,300 employees will be phased out), the right to introduce some laborsaving new technology, and a promised end to unauthorized work stoppages. Production was interrupted 74 times in 1978 alone, costing the papers $5.6 million. In return, the unions were given generous severance payments (an average of $26,000 per worker), better wages (up between 20% and 45% over two years), an extra week's vacation (for a total of six) and substantially improved pension and sick-pay formulas.

The National Graphical Association, which represents 600 compositors, machine managers and stereotypers, staved off management's centerpiece demand: that journalists and classified ad takers be allowed to operate the keyboards of computer typesetting equipment. That issue is to be discussed further over the next year, with no guarantee that the NGA will let anybody else use the new machines. Said NGA President Les Dixon: "Our boys will do it. They've been training to do it."

Much of Fleet Street felt the Times had taken a dreadful drubbing. The Daily Mail suggested that the final deal could have been secured without "this magnificent yet monumentally ill-thought-out charge of the Times management light brigade." Rivals were also concerned that the Times's largesse would lead to exorbitant demands by their own employees.

The Times newspapers put their pretax losses at better than $60 million but insisted that the lockout was the only way to ensure the future of the two publications. If the papers do survive, said Lord Thomson of Fleet, chairman of the parent company, "the cost staff-wise, money-wise and frustration-wise will have been worth it." As for Fleet Street's reaction, Times executives dismissed it as sniping by envious competitors. Said one Timesman: "They're in a position of being overmanned and using 19th century technology, and they see a slimmed-down Times striding into the 21st century."

During the long shutdown, the 400 or so Times journalists reported to the office twice a week, covered their beats as best they could and worked on long-term stories. Some two dozen Timesmen busied themselves writing books, others freelanced for magazines, but none completely escaped the ennui that afflicts a newspaperman suddenly without a newspaper. "I feel like a frog in the winter," Times Foreign Editor Charles Douglas-Home said at one point. "All horizons have contracted. Things continue to function, but at a tiny percent of efficiency."

Readers were similarly bereft. Cross word-puzzle skills grew rusty, the spring's first cuckoo went unrecorded, and almost no one knew the name of the new captain of fives at Eton. The Times's famous letters-to-the-editor column was missed perhaps most of all. There was simply no other place to debate, as Times readers once did, how to keep one's hand warm in bed while reading (a concerned citizen's suggestion: slits in the bedclothes). Commented an Observer contributor last winter: "For those who were hooked on the Times, there is clearly no substitute. There is quiet, uncomprehending, slow-bubbling rage about its disappearance."

Gaining circulation during the Times's absence were the other "quality" national newspapers: the Daily Telegraph (up 89,000, to 1.5 million), the Guardian (up 103,000, to 415,000) and the Sunday

Observer (up an impressive 572,961, to 1,278,819). But the returning papers are buoyed by reader surveys that predict a wholesale return of the faithful when the Times resumes on Nov. 13 and the Sunday Times on Nov. 18. To entice them, the Times is planning to spend between $2 million and $4 million on a promotional blitz. It also will publish special eight-page supplements on major issues of the past year, on developments in the arts and on books. For the record, there will be three eight-page obituary supplements. The Sunday Times, which bought serialization rights to Henry Kissinger's memoirs more than a year ago, will finally be able to print them. No other new wrinkles are contemplated, however. Says Times Editor William Rees-Mogg: ''What people want is the Times back. We'll produce the Times as it was, without change.''

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