Eddy Shah obituary

Fri, 06 Feb 2026

Newspaper owner who took on the print unions and in 1986 launched Today, Britain’s first full-colour daily

When the modern history of newspapers in Britain comes to be written, the name of Eddy Shah will deserve at least a footnote, as the man who started a revolution in the industry by freeing the press from the print unions and introducing new computer-based technology to the nationals.

Shah, who has died aged 81, owned a group of small, free newspapers based in Warrington, Cheshire, but launched two national newspapers in quick succession, Today in 1986 and the Post in 1988, after winning a strike battle against the previously all-powerful National Graphical Association (NGA) print union. He quickly lost control of the first and the second closed in just a month.