In May 1979 when Margaret Thatcher won her first general election the print unions were in dispute with the management of The Times and The Sunday Times. The printers’ would was transformed a few years later; but in 1979 printers still had the power to prevent the publication of any newspaper for up to a year. During the election campaign Harold Evans, editor of The Sunday Times, expected that the dispute would be resolved before the election and invited me to write an article on the economic implications of the election, but he was unable to publish it because Times Newspapers failed to appear during the campaign.
