Video: Blacklisted 2012

Article published: Sunday, March 4th 2012

Activist film collective Reel News have brought out a documentary covering the trade unionist blacklisting scandal which is raising questions over the country’s major construction firms, the police, and Britain’s security services.

The 20 minute film follows the ongoing fight of construction workers blacklisted by employers for their trade union activities. Three years ago files on 3,200 people were exposed following a raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on the Consulting Association, an organisation run by private investigator Ian Kerr, and many in the film have not worked for years after their details were secretly collected and passed on to construction firms.

Kerr was fined £5,000 for administering the database. No firms faced prosecution for colluding in the blacklist, although a class action by 100 victims against 39 companies is set to be pursued through the High Court over the next few months by Hugh Tomlinson QC. Tomlinson is also counsel to several claimants in the “phone hacking” controversy, which has exposed dubious and shadowy relations among the police, press and politicians.

Events recently took on an even more chilling turn following ICO investigations manager David Clancy’s admission before a related employment tribunal that “there is information on the Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services”.

Speaking to the Observer, Clancy said the relationship between the Consulting Association and the police and security services appears to date back to links developed between the government and building firms to monitor Irish construction workers as part of activities to counter the IRA.

Among those featured in the documentary is Steve Acheson, a blacklisted electrician who for months has mounted regular protests outside building works at Manchester’s Central Library.

 

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Comments

1. There is also blacklisting of people who try to expose wrongdoing at local councils. I was for exposing the shocking details of the toxic waste dump school:-

   http://www.sheilaoliver.org/toxic-waste-dump-school-.html

   And I still am. LibDems eh! They don’t actually believe in open and honest government, not when it exposes what they have been up to.

   Comment by Sheila Oliver on June 9, 2012 at 11:04 am

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