Banging out

Particularly associated with the printing rooms of national newspapers in Fleet Street the "banging" is the noise made by colleagues hitting metal furniture or machinery and accompanies the former apprentice or retiree walking across the shop floor.

Despite the outsourcing of printing from newspaper offices the tradition for retirees continues in modern newsrooms, with the banging being provided by colleagues hitting their desks.

When a worker completed their apprenticeship they would walk through the print room and their colleagues would hit the metal furniture, machinery and racking with hammers and other objects to a slow beat.

[3][5] The ceremony continues to modern times in some companies, for example in 2012 a Reading print firm dressed an apprentice in women's clothes, covered him in ink and paper and paraded him down the town's High Street.

Banging out ceremonies were held to mark the closure of BAE Chadderton in Oldham in 2012 and the end of aircraft manufacture at Brough Aerodrome in December 2020.