Here is a series to commiserate more than congratulate these bastions of English history, figures who have in their own inimitable selfish style shaped the dirge we call English society today.
Sit back, read and then weep.
#1 - Eddy Shah
The Shah of I-Wrong
Eddy's business legacy is not one to be bowled over by, however his almost militant and rabid intransigence towards the print unions in the 1980s was unstoppable. He was owner of a gaggle of northern rags and the owner of the ill-fated and under-read Today newspaper.
His background was privileged of course, a world of fine education within the British establishment. Business was the blood he craved for and to get there he slaughtered a lot of bodies.
Under the Tories regime of smashing the Union movement he pioneered Thatcher's anti-union laws. This led to a confrontation, long and drawn out, with the print unions in Lancashire. If you take a look at Shah you immediately see the bulldog neck he hides underneath his collar. That of a retired ganster or back of a pub wrestler. He's not pretty, and so wasn't his politics.
The fight was taken to his front door and he used this as a cross to bear on his shoulders in what can only be seen as a sheer contempt for workers' rights. One man against the workforce he exploited.
Amazingly, later on in his career he wrote a glut of novellas. Perhaps if you were to analyze his pathology then he helped destroy the Union movement of this country so he could get these shitty yarns published.
His actions inspired later events which Murdoch used with aplomb in the Wapping disputes three years later. Men with privileged backgrounds could now indiscriminately use despotic government policies to their own ends. A workforce collapsed and wept.
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