[3] As general secretary of SOGAT from 1985 until 1991, she was "the first woman elected to head a major industrial trade union.

[4] She began her career as a trade unionist as a teenager,[3] initially as a member of the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers.

[4] She recognised the threats to her members' jobs of impending changes in the print industry, and, it later became clear, held private meetings with Rupert Murdoch in secret to discuss his plans.

"[4] However, in her attempts to resolve the strike, "she was bitterly denounced by some people in the militant Fleet Street chapels (union branches) as a “Judas”, she was derided as “a film star” because of her blond good looks and her leadership was decried when she put the survival of the union, with 90% of its members in the provinces, ahead of what was essentially a London dispute.

Her autobiography, Hot Mettle, deals largely with her tenure as SOGAT General Secretary at the time of Rupert Murdoch's battles with her own and other trades unions, notably the Wapping dispute.