Blacklisting – it’s state collusion, not just rogue police officers, say campaigners
Anti-blacklisting campaigners have repeated calls for a Leveson-style inquiry into the practice, following claims that undercover police gathered evidence on trade union activists on behalf of major construction companies.
It comes after a police whistle-blower said he had collected intelligence which later appeared on the files of the now-defunct Consulting Association.
The agency, which was closed down in 2009, has been at the centre of a year-long parliamentary investigation into more than a decade of anti-union surveillance funded by more than 40 construction companies.
A number of individuals who were kept under surveillance by the Association have suspected for some time that detailed information about their activities outside work and at the weekends could only have been supplied by the police.
Dave Smith, the secretary of the Blacklist Support Group, who was himself blacklisted by the Consulting Association, said: “The mountain of evidence about the police and security services spying on trade union activists is now damning.
“We even know the names of the undercover cops who spied on us.
“This is not about a couple of rogue officers: this is deliberate state collusion with big business.”
According to The Guardian, a former police officer, Peter Francis, said he had personally collected some of the intelligence that later appeared in the Consulting Association’s files.
Peter Francis told the paper he had been assigned to monitor the anti-fascist organisation Youth Against Racism in Europe during the 1990s and had gathered information on a bricklayer named Frank Smith.
According to The Guardian, the Consulting Association’s records state that Frank Smith was “under constant watch (officially) and seen as politically dangerous”.
Much of the information held by the Association on hundreds of health and safety reps and union activists has been dismissed by MPs as “little more than gossip”, however campaigners say these latest claims provide key evidence of involvement by the police and security services in blacklisting.
As part of evidence to the investigation by the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, three central figures – Stan Hardy and Jack Winder, who both worked for the anti-union Economic League in the 1970s and 80s, and the former director of the Consulting Association, Ian Kerr – told MPs there had been a regular “two-way exchange” of information with the police about union activists.
Paul Kenny, GMB General Secretary, said: “Ian Kerr from the Consulting Association told the press late last year that a senior police officer attended meetings of the blacklisting body. Now we have this further report on police input to the blacklist.
“There is a clear need for a Leveson-style inquiry into blacklisting and the involvement of state forces in it.
“This also points to the need for it to become a criminal offence for anyone to interfere with the civil rights of any worker to be represented by a trade union in their workplace.
“This is because under existing laws the employers and the police systematically interfered with these civil rights for decades with impunity.”
Lawyers for the GMB lodged claims at the High Court in London last June seeking compensation for members blacklisted by the construction and services giant, Carillion, and a number of other employers.
The claims include defamation, because of the damage to workers’ reputation from being on the blacklist.
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