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MEDIA baron Rupert Murdoch’s threat to axe Sky News if his £11.7 billion bid to take over Sky is blocked is a “bluff,” media campaigners said yesterday.
In a submission to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Sky said the watchdog should not assume “the continued provision” of the TV news channel.
The broadcaster said it would be further pressed to act if shareholders reacted badly to a block on the merger.
Forty years on, TONY DUBBINS revisits the Wapping dispute to argue that Murdoch’s real aim was union-busting – enabled by Thatcherite laws, police violence, compliant unions and a complicit media
![[Pic: Andrew Wiard]](https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-01/19860406_a_wiard_0001.jpg.webp?itok=d2RMNwWw)
LAURA DAVISON traces how Murdoch’s mass sackings, political deals and legal loopholes shattered collective bargaining 40 years ago – and how persistent NUJ organising, landmark court victories and new employment rights legislation are finally challenging that legacy
![[Pic: Andrew Wiard]](https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-01/19860330_a_wiard_0001JPG.jpg.webp?itok=nkzZbinE)
As advertising drains away, newsrooms shrink and local papers disappear, MIKE WAYNE argues that the market model for news is broken – and that public-interest alternatives, rooted in democratic accountability, are more necessary than ever
Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today