November 7th , 1975
The Scottish Daily News (SDN) was a left-of-centre daily newspaper published in Glasgow between 5 May and 8 November 1975. It was hailed as Britain’s first worker-controlled, mass-circulation daily, formed as a workers’ cooperative by 500 of the 1,846 journalists, photographers, engineers, and print workers who were made redundant in April 1974 by Beaverbrook Newspapers when the Scottish Daily Express closed its printing operations in Scotland and moved to Manchester.
The newspaper, which had as its slogan “Read the people’s paper and keep 500 in jobs”, folded after six months with a deficit of £1.2 million, but was published for another six months by a small group of employees who, led by journalist Dorothy-Grace Elder, staged the country’s one and only newspaper work-in, writing and selling the paper themselves on the streets of Glasgow, taking no salaries, and refusing to leave the Albion Street building.
