The Construction Industry Blacklists

Twenty years of evidence, inquiries and unanswered questions about alleged trade-union complicity in construction blacklisting. Ahead of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, I thought it might be useful to put one part of the construction blacklisting story into a single chronology. This history goes back much further than Unite’s present blacklisting inquiry. It begins with evidence I supplied to the union more than twenty years ago. 2005/06 – Amicus had the evidence In 2005/06, Amicus had documentary blacklisting evidence I had uncovered. That evidence included blacklist-checking sheets being sent from a Balfour Beatty subsidiary to the Consulting Association and a blacklist containing more than 500 workers supplied by the HR Director of EMCOR plc. In June 2006, I wrote three times to Amicus General Secretary Derek Simpson , asking why nothing was being done with the evidence. In my view, that evidence was buried. The important point is the date. This was year...

For fifteen years, blacklisted workers have been asked for their votes and their trust on promises that the truth would finally come out about Unite's complicity in blacklisting and the cover-up of evidence I first presented to the union in 2005 and 2006. That key evidence about the Consulting Association and a separate blacklist containing the names of more than 500 workers went to Unite regional official Mick Tuff and the then General Secretary, Derek Simpson. We now know that evidence was buried. It then took Steve Acheson and me another three years of pain and persistence before the Consulting Association was finally exposed. When information began to emerge that senior union officials had themselves been involved in blacklisting members, I continued working to expose that part of the scandal. I published numerous "Bent Union Officials" posts on this website, setting out the evidence I had uncovered. At a time when access to information online was far less devel...