More bad news week this I’m afraid; even though it was unbeknown at the time, after 145 years Butler and Tanner printed its final sheet last Friday.
Although the closure was sudden, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise – the relationship between Unite (the union) and B&T chairman Mike Dolan was strained to say the least.
In fact, the way both parties tore chunks out of each other in the pages of PrintWeek (let’s be honest, the story was in danger of becoming the print industry’s answer to the McCartney/Mills divorce), it was becoming clear that any possibility of agreement was increasingly unlikely.
I would like to stress, I’m not being flippant here. I’m all too aware that almost 300 jobs have been lost and hundreds more lives have been adversely affected by the historic firm’s closure – and clearly, judging by the sheer number of comments online, feeling is running understandably high among the firm’s staff.
However, I can’t help but think that who’s to blame for the closure seems largely irrelevant now, although the mud slinging looks set to continue for a while yet, as I’m sure both Dolan and Unite could lay claim to being the wronged party. (That said, neither party comes out of it smelling of roses.) But we should try to ignore the specific claims and counterclaims of what the two parties did or didn’t want or would/wouldn’t agree to – after all, the talks went on behind closed doors, and I have no way of knowing the agendas of either party.
The reason for the closure is simple, the two sides could not agree and it became a battle of wills.
And the sad truth is that, as with any battle, it’s always the foot soldiers and rarely the generals that end up making the ultimate sacrifice.