Linda Fagan

Like most people in those years, my computing career began with an aptitude test. I had joined Lever Brothers as a clerk in 1969 and took that test in the following year. I scored well, moved into the computer department and became the only operator for its ICL 1901A. ICL had leased, not sold, this system to the company, which meant that every minute of machine use had to be accounted for. The big rule we had to follow was not to waste a single minute of processing time.

I became fascinated by the idea of computer programming when I worked as an operator, but none of the three programmers looked likely to leave the company. I therefore answered an advertisement in the Irish Independent for a trainee programmer inside the publishing group itself. I got the job and started work at Independent Newspapers in the week of my 21st birthday.

Independent Newspapers hired me on the back of another good aptitude test result. Like Lever Brothers, the company was an ICL user and had introduced an ICL 1901 in 1968. On the very first day of my new job, I was sent to the ICL office in Dublin for four weeks of training. The shock hit me when I joined this course and realised that I knew nothing about programming – I was ready to resign straight away!

After four weeks of training, however, the shock had worn off. I returned to the Independent and started doing maintenance on existing PLAN software, working with systems analyst Harry McCarthy and programmers John Ryan, Ciaran Bracken and Pat Harney. After six months I was given a pay rise and became a fully-fledged programmer.

As the only woman programmer, however, I was paid less than the men. The Independent had male and female pay scales, so that women received about 25 per cent less for doing the same work. New legislation to eliminate this practice came into force in 1973, but the company fought against implementing it. I, like all the women in the Independent, had to fight to get onto the same pay scale as my male colleagues and this didn’t happen until 1975.

This was also a time when women were expected to leave employment when they had given birth. The company and the unions conspired in this area. Their standard practice was to force women with permanent jobs to resign as soon as they married. They could then be re-employed to do the same work (or even different work), but only on a temporary basis. This made them the first candidates for redundancy when the company wanted to do a productivity deal with the union and trim its headcount.

When I married, I refused to resign or to accept temporary status. In fact, I was already engaged to be married when I applied to work at the Independent, but never disclosed this. Some years later the managing director told me that he would not have employed me if he had known.

In the 1970s my job was all about the PLAN assembly language. We later switched to Cobol, which was more logical and easier to work with, although I preferred the more logical, machine-oriented aspect of PLAN. Programming in Cobol was much more like writing in English. It was always hard for us programmers to get computer time to test our code on the ICL 1901 or on the ICL 2903 that replaced it in 1977. Shift work was implemented in the computer room around 1978, which made it easier to get testing time.

Most of our time was spent revising the financial management applications that the company had developed in-house. The payroll system always needed amendments. The circulation system also needed a lot of work. It had started as a billing program and then we kept adding more information about individual customers. Our advertising system kept growing bigger as well. It began as an invoice/statement printing function and then expanded to support credit control and cash management. We also had a system to produce share prices for printing in the newspaper.

In 1982 Independent Newspapers devised a plan that would not only update its existing administrative systems but would also introduce computer-based publishing technologies. One of the first steps in this strategy was an increase in the number of programmers. Jack Waters, James Carr and Breda Grenham joined our group and I was no longer the only female programmer.

The Independent chose newspaper publishing software from System Integrators Inc. This ran on a Tandem machine, but the computer department was not given responsibility for operating it. The company set up a second IT department to manage the system and Breda joined the new unit.

At around the same time the payroll system changed over to a McKeown Software package on a Digital Equipment VAX. Relay Software in Belfast wrote and supported a new circulation system, running on a a Unix-based ICL DRS 6000.

ICL, where Tony McIntyre was the account manager for Independent Newspapers, was still our principal computer vendor. It recommended that we upgrade to a ICL ME29  – the successor to the 2903 – and adopt packaged software for financial applications for the first time. A product called Ledgersolve would replace our homegrown systems, giving us a wider range of reporting options.

I knew that software packages were good, but felt that they would tie me down in contrast with the in-house applications. I always wanted to get back to the source code.

The new ME29 arrived in 1983, but it was left sitting in its boxes for the next two years. Our union, the FWUI, believed that the introduction of more computing would mean fewer people working in the company. When the FWUI learned that the ME29 could run ten jobs simultaneously, it insisted that the computer should only do one job at a time. This led to an impasse that lasted until 1985.

The FWUI resisted personal computers as well, but a deal was done so that we could begin to install them in 1984. One of the new programmers, Jack Waters, became our PC specialist.

Progressive Systems Enterprise (Prose) became our main financial systems technology partner in 1989. Its founders, Des Warren and Peter Cahill, had previously worked in ICL. So had Sheila Vance, who became our primary contact there. Prose adapted the Unix-based OpenAccounts suite to fit our needs and installed it on an ICL Series 39, replacing Ledgersolve and the ME29. I took a course on the structure and layers of OpenAccounts, which remained in use for the rest of my time at the Independent.

We weren’t doing much programming for ourselves any longer. My work was more about assisting users and analysing their wants and needs. In 2004 the Independent outsourced its commercial IT operations and I moved over to the editorial systems group for the rest of my time with the company.

Last edit: April 2022

© Linda Fagan 2022