UK blacklist of whistleblowing construction workers

[Jan Klimkowski]

List of companies

Bankers, builders, blue chip multinationals and McAlpines.

The reality of capitalism.

Aided and abetted by Special Branch and the intelligence services.

The issue first came to light in January 2012 when David Clancy (head of investigations at the ICO and himself an ex-police officer) gave evidence to an Employment Tribunal that "information on some of the blacklist files could only have come from the police or the security services". Mr. Clancy repeated the assertion when giving evidence to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee investigation into blacklisting.
The involvement of police or security services in the blacklisting of trade unionists has been raised in parliament by shadow Employment Minister Ian Murray MP. Labour's John McDonnell MP and Michael Meacher MP have both demanded a full Leveson-style Public Inquiry, a call which is supported by the TUC and all the major trade unions.
In addition, Ian Kerr (the deceased Chief Executive of the Consulting Association) told The Times about a meeting in 2008 where eight construction industry directors were addressed by a "key officer" of a police organization the National Extremism Tactical Co-Ordination Unit (NETCU) and agreed a two-way sharing of information. Also, it was disclosed that the names of over 200 environmental activists appeared on the Consulting Association blacklist so making claims about the involvement of undercover police officers even more credible.
Dave Smith, from the Blacklist Support Group added…"There are entries on some blacklist files that are detailed surveillance reports about anti-racism demonstrations that took place nowhere near a building site. We already have other evidence to suggest that this information was compiled by undercover police officers. There are entries on other blacklist files that contain private sensitive information that has never been in the public domain and that no manager or Director of a building firm would ever have access to. It is difficult to conceive of any possible way this information could appear on the construction blacklist without the police, security services or some other arm of the state being the original source. Undercover police and big business spying on trade unionists and anti-racism campaigners where are we living: Nazi Germany? Apartheid South Africa? We want to know why information collected by the police has ended up on a secret blacklist of trade unionists operated by multinational companies. If police collusion is proven, at best it is individual corruption. At worst it is systematic state involvement in a major human rights conspiracy."
In another article in the Guardian Dave Smith emphasised, further, how police collusion in blacklisting goes way beyond industrial matters. "Blacklisting is no longer an industrial relations issue; it is a conspiracy between multinational construction firms, the police and the security services. The parallels with phone hacking are obvious. While that led to a once-in-a-generation opportunity to clean up the worst excesses of the press, blacklisted workers are still asking: "Where is our Leveson?" There is, however, a significant difference from phone hacking, where the police involvement was supposedly due to individual corruption. The police collusion in blacklisting is not one or two rogue officers, but standard operating procedure by the state to target campaigners under the guise of "domestic extremism", routinely sharing information with big business."