Breaking the Press: A Brief History of The Wapping Printers Dispute

In the UK, graphic design education more often presents the transition from hot metal typesetting to (cold) offset lithography and early desktop publishing as an inevitable triumph of new technology over outdated processes. Yet this technological shift was not simply a matter of progress; it was violently enforced through the collusion of state and corporate power, leading to one of the most significant industrial disputes in British working-class history.

Taking a historical materialist approach, this paper positions The Wapping Dispute as a critical moment in graphic design history, unpacking the socio-political conditions that enabled both the transformation of the sector and the resistance to incoming technologies. Particular attention is paid to the solidarity networks that emerged, specifically the Lesbian and Gays Support the Printworkers. Their role not only highlights the presence of a vibrant queer activist network in 1980s London – partly enabled by the progressive policies of the Greater London Council – but also marks an important step in advancing LGBTQ+ influence within the trade union movement.

By foregrounding what was lost – not just a mode of production, but a set of social relations – this paper interrogates how history itself is designed; edited and presented in ways that tend to obscure conflict and political struggle. Exploring histories of automation also opens-up conversation around current ‘progress’ within the design sector. The slow, contested, logistical and visible mechanical changes of the past have today become fast, monopolistic, exponential and intangible. As a sector we celebrate speed, and the language of inevitability and improvement once again frames transition. As atomised workers with diminishing agency, we subscribe to our cloud-based tools which are forever updated and optimised.