A video report on a 1985 journalists union dispute at Birmingham’s first commercial local radio station, BRMB. An introductory caption calls for our support for ten radio journalists locked out by BRMB management.

With National Union of Journalists (NUJ) pickets outside BRMB’s studios, the Deputy Mother of Chapel for the NUJ, Nicole Pullman, explains the background to the dispute. When the management claimed they were losing money and were looking for economies four journalists said they would resign, suggesting that economies could be made by natural wastage, but this was one third of the newsroom and was likely to result in considerable changes to the quality and breadth of the station’s news coverage.

BRMB had been on the air for 10 years and had carried locally produced news bulletins on the hour - 24 hours a day - throughout that time. There were now plans to take Independent Radio News bulletins from London for 12 hours of each day.

The NUJ put the matter into dispute but claimed the employers had broken their national agreement by pushing ahead with the changes anyway.

Pickets claim the dispute is about standards in local broadcasting and breadth of coverage, and BRMB journalist Adrian Brittan stresses that the dispute reflects on Independent Local Radio as a whole: “It is called Independent Local Radio because of the local news service. It is only the stuff between the records that makes the station local.”

Nicole Pullman says the dispute highlights the importance of union organisation, saying it was only support from other chapels, and from members of other unions, which made their stand possible. This video recording lasts 7 minutes and 4 seconds.