Unite's £1.5 Million Blacklisting Collusion Inquiry - Where's The Report?

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 developed than it is today, those efforts were made even harder by Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group, who repeatedly blocked or removed my posts from the Blacklist Support Group Facebook page. Even when subsequent attempts were made to post the same concerns under a separate pseudonymous account, those posts were also removed.

Dave Smith still has me blocked on social media today. I am not going to speculate about his motives, but blacklisted workers are entitled to ask why someone publicly committed to exposing blacklisting would continue to prevent me from raising evidence and concerns about trade-union complicity.

The documentary I put on hold

In 2021, I produced an eight-part documentary series about blacklisting and trade-union complicity. The first episode was published and can still be watched on the Bent Unions account on X. The remaining seven episodes were put on hold after Sharon Graham promised that Unite would get to the bottom of allegations that union officials had colluded in the blacklisting of their own members.

First episode: x.com/Bent_Unions

That promise carried particular weight with me. Sharon Graham was not an outsider to the issue. Before becoming General Secretary she had been a senior Unite official, headed its Organising and Leverage work and had been prominently involved in campaigning against blacklisting, including around Crossrail.

I did not abandon the documentary. I held it back to give the new inquiry the opportunity to establish and publish the truth first. Despite numerous promises over the last five years, that report has still not been published.

The work continued

Despite numerous setbacks, including financial ruin, my work to expose blacklisting and trade union complicity continued. This included legal action against major UK companies such as Marks & Spencer, which, in the course of those proceedings, acknowledged operating an online recruitment database that was being used to automatically reject certain workers regarded as "undesirables".

In 2023, as a Unite member, and with video evidence showing Marks & Spencer's online recruitment system immediately rejecting my job applications, I approached the union for legal assistance. I had uncovered, for the very first time, what I believed was an actual online blacklisting system being used by a major UK company. My request for legal representation, along with other applications I made for legal support, was refused.

It is important to add, however, that Unite's Director of Legal Services, Stephen Pinder, recognised the importance of the claim and did what he could to assist me personally. I remain grateful to him for that. But personal assistance was no substitute for having a lawyer in court. I ultimately had to present the case myself and, in my view, the claim failed at the hearing because I did not have the legal representation needed to properly present the evidence and the significance of what I had uncovered.

The M&S case was not the only time I had tried to alert Unite to fresh blacklisting evidence. In 2013, I submitted two further blacklists containing the names of more than 200 construction workers in the North West to the Scottish Affairs Committee inquiry into blacklisting. The evidence I submitted at the time was that the lists had been compiled and circulated by construction manager David Craggs and supplied to a recruitment agency to prevent listed workers being sent to his projects.

When I later published material about those lists, the response I received from Unite was not an offer to investigate them. On 4 October 2018, Regional Officer Mick Chalmers wrote to me on the instruction of North West Regional Secretary Ritchie James, following a complaint from Mr Craggs. I was asked to remove all references to Mr Craggs from my blog 'in order to avoid any further action by Mr Craggs or Unite the Union'. The same letter said that if I had evidence to support my allegations, I should present it to Assistant General Secretary Gail Cartmail.

I continued trying to get the issue investigated. In 2024 I raised the Craggs blacklists again with Sharon Graham, Stephen Pinder and members of Unite's Executive Council. On 28 November 2024 I went further: I attached redacted copies of the blacklists to my complaint to the General Secretary, Legal Director, Executive Council members and senior staff, and sent unredacted copies separately to Sharon Graham and Stephen Pinder. I received no substantive response to that evidence.

Why?

Why would a trade union refuse to support a member who had spent years exposing blacklisting, when he presented evidence of an actual online blacklisting system being operated by a major UK company?

Why would a trade union ignore evidence of actual blacklists being circulated by David Craggs to recruitment agencies, especially when some of those victims could have been members of the union.

And why, over those same years, were my efforts to expose trade union complicity in blacklisting repeatedly resisted, ignored or blocked?

Those are questions I have been asking for years. Unite's own accounting records, obtained this month, are now beginning to provide some answers.

Liverpool was different

Throughout this period, I should make clear that I did receive support within Unite. Roy Bentham and members of the Liverpool Construction Branch consistently gave me a platform and supported my efforts to expose blacklisting.

That stood in stark contrast to my experiences with other parts of the union around the country, where attempts to raise the same evidence were often met with resistance or silence. My criticism has never been of ordinary Unite members, or of every official or branch. There have always been people inside the union who wanted the truth to come out.

August 2024: I wrote to Sharon Graham again

By August 2024, I had been raising my concerns with Sharon Graham about Unite's latest blacklisting inquiry for nearly three years. By this time, she was no longer responding to me, and that became impossible for me to ignore.

I therefore wrote again to her on 20 August 2024, setting out serious concerns about the inquiry, the people involved in it, the handling of my evidence and the continuing failure to publish findings from either this inquiry or those that had gone before it.

I copied that letter to the Liverpool Construction Branch. The branch therefore saw those concerns as I was raising them, in real time, before the later disclosure of what had happened to my emails.

October 2024: my emails were restricted

A later subject access disclosure in April 2025 revealed that, in October 2024, an internal request had been made for emails from my account to be blocked from all but one Unite email monitoring account.

I was completely unaware of this at the time and had assumed that the information I was sending to the union was simply being ignored.

Further correspondence with Unite has since confirmed that these arrangements are still in place.

January 2025: the evidence was put before Unite

On 8 January 2025, I submitted a detailed 31-page complaint to the Certification Officer, which I also copied to Sharon Graham, Stephen Pinder and members of Unite's Executive Council. It brought together the concerns I had repeatedly raised with them throughout 2024.

The key issues included:

• Repeated unpublished inquiries: Unite had reported a series of blacklisting investigations under successive leaderships, yet no findings had ever been published or provided to blacklisted members.
• Dave Smith, Tony Seaman and Frank Morris: I had repeatedly warned Sharon Graham that all three were, in my view, unsuitable to scope and oversee the current inquiry because of their previous conduct towards me and their involvement in matters I believed required investigation. My complaint included evidence that Seaman and Morris had accused me of being a blacklister, and that Smith had repeatedly removed or blocked my attempts to raise union-complicity concerns within the Blacklist Support Group.
• False allegations against me: I complained that false claims portraying me as a major blacklister had circulated among union figures and had even appeared in High Court blacklisting claims for workers on the Jubilee Line Extension project for Skanska, despite the fact that I had never worked for Skanska nor blacklisted anyone.
• David Craggs blacklists: The complaint also raised Unite's handling of the two blacklists containing more than 200 North West construction workers, including the 2018 letter warning me to remove references to Craggs. By November 2024 I had supplied the actual lists to senior Unite figures, including unredacted copies directly to Sharon Graham and Stephen Pinder, but received no substantive response.
• Inquiry independence: I raised concerns about the suitability of people and lawyers appointed to administer, conduct and oversee the inquiry, including individuals who had previously been involved in the High Court Blacklisting Litigation and discussions about excluding me as a witness because of the evidence I might give about trade-union complicity.
• Complaints not properly investigated: I complained that Sharon Graham, Stephen Pinder and others had failed to investigate or properly conclude complaints I had repeatedly raised since 2021, despite Unite's own Members' Complaints Procedure.
• Subject access material: I also complained that significant material had not been supplied following earlier subject access requests in 2013 and 2018, despite Sharon Graham having agreed in 2021 that the outstanding information should be provided.
• High Court litigation concerns: I raised concerns about the handling of the blacklisting litigation, including false allegations made about me and the decision by unions to discontinue claims against some Consulting Association companies.

In short, by January 2025 the General Secretary, Legal Director and Executive Council had been provided with a substantial documentary record of my concerns.

I was perhaps naive at the time about the extent of the Certification Officer's powers. I subsequently learned that much of what I had raised fell outside the relatively narrow scope of its statutory jurisdiction. That did not alter the evidence or concerns themselves, or the fact that they had been put squarely before Unite's senior leadership.

There is also an irony worth recording. At the time I made that complaint, the Certification Officer's regulatory work was funded through a statutory levy paid by the trade unions and employers' associations it regulated, including Unite. I make no suggestion that this affected the Certification Officer's independence. It simply illustrates the unusual position I was in: turning to the statutory regulator because I could not obtain satisfactory answers from my own union.

April 2025: what the subject access disclosure revealed

Then, in April 2025, a further subject access disclosure produced internal Unite correspondence that I had never previously seen. Much of it had not been supplied following my earlier subject access requests in 2013 and 2018.

What emerged was not simply a series of insulting internal comments. The emails showed false allegations about me being circulated at the same time as decisions were being made about whether Unite and its regions should support my 2015-17 blacklisting claims.

• 21 April 2016 - the same day The Guardian reported that I was pursuing 54 legal claims against companies and employment agencies for continuing victimisation, Jim Kennedy wrote internally that I had asked Unite for help but that, because I was supposedly "a blacklister who got blacklisted", it had been decided to "give it a miss". In the same email he acknowledged that the cases I was running were "really important".

Guardian report: Building industry blacklist whistleblower sues for victimisation (21 April 2016)

• 19 April 2017 - when regional officials sought guidance about my appeal for financial help with the Balfour Beatty litigation, Gail Cartmail wrote that I "was a blacklister" and stated: "We do not support his appeal."
• 30 May 2017 - an internal communication recorded that Central Office had been asked for advice and had said very clearly that all correspondence from me should be ignored.
• 31 July 2017 - further correspondence advised officials not to engage and referred specifically to my allegations that named union officers had been corrupt or directly complicit in blacklisting.
• The consequence - the Liverpool Construction Branch raised £10,000 towards my Balfour Beatty claim and there were two further small donations, but no wider financial support followed and the claims (that had progressed to a full five day hearing) ultimately had to be withdrawn.
• October 2024 - the disclosure also revealed, for the first time to me, the request to block emails from my account from every Unite account apart from one monitoring account.

When I discovered the email blocking restriction in 2025, months of apparent silence from the union suddenly had a very different context. The earlier emails also gave me a documentary explanation for why attempts to obtain support for my legal claims had so often met a wall elsewhere in the union.

I should also make clear that I bear no grudge against many of the people who repeated claims that I had been involved in blacklisting. In many cases, they appear simply to have been relaying information conveyed to them by senior union officials.

From the internal material disclosed to me, Jim Kennedy and Gail Cartmail appear to have been key sources of at least some of those allegations. My concern is therefore not simply that people repeated the claims, but where the claims originated, why they were circulated and why they were never corrected.

Why did this material emerge only in 2025?

The April 2025 disclosure ultimately led me to bring libel proceedings against Unite. The claim was brought on a no-win, no-fee basis with the support of solicitor Mark Lewis, Beth Grossman and Jonathan Price KC, and I remain grateful for the work they did on my behalf. Those proceedings were later concluded without a court determination of the underlying allegations.

My purpose in bringing the claim was never financial compensation. I copied Roy Bentham into key documents I shared with the legal team which made that clear at the time. What I wanted was for those responsible for spreading the false allegations to be held to account, for the record to be corrected and for an apology to be made.

Libel is legally complex. In England and Wales, defamation claims are ordinarily subject to a one-year limitation period, although the court has a discretion in appropriate circumstances. By the time I was finally shown some of these internal emails in 2025, the original communications were many years old.

I cannot state why Unite disclosed this material when it did, and I do not suggest that the timing establishes any particular motive.

But the timing is a legitimate part of the chronology when asking why material missing from earlier subject access responses emerged only at that late stage.

The restriction was not confined to blacklisting

The email restriction also potentially affected matters entirely separate from blacklisting. In February 2025, while still unaware of it, I sent a Political Fund Exemption Notice to a Unite official asking for the Labour Party element of my political contribution to be removed. I received neither an acknowledgement nor a response.

When I discovered the restriction in 2025, I used a different email address to alert members of Unite's Executive Council and senior officials to what had happened. Again, I received no acknowledgement from any Unite recipient.

Is a pattern emerging?

By this stage I had begun to notice a recurring feature in the way important information emerged. It was not being volunteered lightly.

The pattern I am asking members to consider is this:

• Material not supplied in my 2013 and 2018 subject access requests later appeared in a 2025 disclosure.
• The October 2024 email restriction was never notified to me at the time; I learned about it only through that later disclosure.
• The accounting records discussed below were provided only after I invoked a specific statutory right under Section 30.

That does not prove a deliberate strategy of withholding information until the last possible moment. But it does raise a fair question: are significant facts only emerging when formal legal or statutory processes leave Unite with little practical alternative but to address them?

Section 30: what I actually asked for

On 9 August 2026, I used Section 30 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 to request access to accounting records relating to the current Independent Blacklisting Collusion Inquiry and earlier Unite-commissioned blacklisting inquiries.

This was not a request to inspect Unite's published annual accounts. Section 30 concerns the union's accounting records - the underlying records which explain its transactions and are kept available for inspection.

My request was aimed at the records capable of showing what money had actually been spent on the inquiries, when it was spent and who was paid. In practical terms, I was seeking the underlying transaction records, ledgers, cost-centre records and related accounting material, not a headline figure in an annual report.

I also asked Unite to address what had happened if relevant records no longer existed or had been destroyed. That was part of my request, even though Section 30 itself is principally a right to inspect records that are required to be kept available.

I also provided Roy Bentham with a draft Section 30 request letter for circulation to other members if needed, so that they could exercise the same statutory right.

There was important recent context. In Moosa v Unite and Casey v Unite, the Certification Officer had already upheld complaints that Unite failed to comply properly with members' Section 30 rights. In Moosa, an enforcement order granting access was made and a financial penalty followed. In Casey, the complaint was upheld because arrangements had not been made within the statutory 28-day period.

Those decisions did not determine my request. But by 2026 Unite was plainly on notice that Section 30 was an enforceable statutory right.

What Unite supplied

Stephen Pinder subsequently supplied a spreadsheet and said it represented Unite's accounting record in relation to my request and satisfied that request. He also said that some records from the earlier failed inquiry started by the previous leadership were included.

Documents: Stephen Pinder's letter  |  Accounting records supplied by Unite

The dates in the spreadsheet are important. They allow us to see when expenditure was posted and, in many cases, what period of work an invoice related to.

The picture is striking:

• Total disclosed: the entries supplied total £1,555,024.56 including VAT.
• First entry: the first posting is dated 17 May 2022 - immediately after the current Independent Blacklisting Collusion Inquiry was established in April 2022.
• Last entry: the final posting is dated 26 January 2026 and relates to work undertaken in December 2025.
• Billing pattern: the run of entries is consistent with regular professional billing, apparently often on a monthly basis.
• No pre-2022 postings: there are no entries dated 2019 or 2020, despite the earlier inquiry being described as running from 2019 to 2021.
• 2017 inquiry: there are also no entries for the inquiry announced in 2017 and reported in the Guardian.

On the face of those dates, the more than £1.5 million disclosed appears to relate to the current inquiry rather than expenditure incurred during previously reported inquiries.

That creates a further question. If, as Stephen Pinder said, the spreadsheet also contains records arising from the earlier failed inquiry, which entries are they? Nothing in the posting dates obviously identifies expenditure incurred in 2017, 2019 or 2020.

The 2026 gap

The end of the billing sequence is even more significant. The records run regularly through work undertaken in December 2025 and then stop. They contain no identifiable expenditure for inquiry work undertaken during 2026.

Yet on 31 July 2026, the inquiry legal team said that a significant new line of inquiry had recently emerged, that it required careful examination and that this work had caused further unavoidable delay. The team said the report was in its final stages but could not be completed until that current line of inquiry had concluded.

The same statement also said that the inquiry had taken evidence from more than 100 witnesses, reviewed many thousands of pages of material, had operated independently and that the unfinished report had not been shared with Unite, the Blacklist Support Group or the Oversight Committee. It expressly said there was no intention to suppress the report.

The timing is also notable. The statement was issued on 31 July 2026, in the immediate run-up to Unite's General Secretary election; the result was announced less than two weeks later, on 12 August. The statement reassured those waiting for the report that it was in its final stages, while explaining that a significant new line of inquiry had recently emerged and required further investigation.

That statement must be treated fairly. The absence of a 2026 entry does not, by itself, prove that no work was done. Invoices may be delayed, work may not yet have been billed, or there may be another accounting explanation.

But the regular billing pattern through December 2025 makes the absence of later entries a legitimate and important question. If the Section 30 records are complete, they appear difficult to reconcile with the impression given on 31 July that substantial new investigative work was actively continuing in 2026. Why was that statement made at that point, in the immediate run-up to the General Secretary election, and what accounting evidence exists for the work it described?

What about Unite's historic accounting problems?

Unite may point to the serious weaknesses identified in its historic accounting systems as an explanation for the absence of older records connected with the previous inquiry.

That is a relevant point and should not be ignored. But Unite has subsequently undertaken work to reconstruct, correct or restate historic financial information. That does not mean every historic transaction can necessarily be recovered.

The question is therefore narrower: if money was in fact paid for work on the earlier blacklisting inquiry, what underlying accounting evidence of that expenditure now exists?

Poor historic accounting might explain why a record is difficult to locate. It cannot, by itself, answer whether paid inquiry work actually occurred or where the accounting evidence for it now is.

A question for the current leadership

This is where Sharon Graham's position becomes particularly important. She was a prominent campaigner against blacklisting before becoming General Secretary and had been a senior Unite official under the previous leadership. She commissioned the current independent inquiry after becoming General Secretary and has said that the truth about union collusion must come out.

I am not alleging that Sharon Graham is suppressing or "sitting on" the report. The inquiry legal team expressly says it has not shared the unfinished report with Unite and that there is no intention to suppress it.

But if Unite cannot provide an adequate accounting explanation for the apparent absence of 2026 expenditure while the inquiry says a significant new line of investigation is delaying completion, blacklisted workers are entitled to ask what, in practical terms, is preventing the report from being completed and published.

There is also a basic question of accountability. On 6 July 2026, I reminded Unite's Director of Legal Services, Stephen Pinder, that he had previously promised to make inquiries about when the blacklisting report would be published. In his response of 10 July, he said he was 'not involved in dealing with the process linked to the preparation of the blacklisting report'. He said he believed it would be published 'in the near future', while acknowledging the lack of certainty.

I subsequently raised the wider issue of transparency and accountability with Simon Dubbins, who was then campaigning to become General Secretary. I sent him Pinder's response and asked that, if elected, he consider bringing the outstanding work to a proper conclusion. I also asked that, if no report had been completed or publication was not possible, Unite provide a clear explanation of the current position and intended way forward.

That leaves a remarkably simple question: who within Unite is actually accountable for ensuring that an inquiry commissioned and funded by the union is brought to a conclusion?

Indeed, separate correspondence supplied with my 2025 subject access response identified December 2025 as the anticipated end date for the current inquiry. That is also the final month of work identified in the Section 30 accounting records, with the last entry posted on 26 January 2026 for work undertaken in December 2025.

That alignment of dates does not prove why the billing sequence stops there. But it makes the absence of identifiable expenditure for work undertaken in 2026 even more important to explain.

Time matters

Many of the workers who were blacklisted are now elderly. Some have already died without ever learning the full truth about what happened to them, including the extent to which people within their own trade unions may have been involved.

Every further year of delay means more blacklisted workers risk going to their graves without those answers.

At the same time, a separate criminal investigation into allegations concerning Unite matters originating under the previous administration has remained ongoing. I make no connection between that investigation and blacklisting, and the existence of an investigation does not establish wrongdoing by any particular individual. But it is another reminder that the passage of time matters when trying to establish what happened inside a large organisation years ago.

How long am I expected to wait?

I produced my eight-part documentary in 2021. The first episode can still be watched on the Bent Unions account on X; I held back the remaining seven because Sharon Graham's August 2021 election pledge stated that Unite would now finally get to the bottom of union involvement in blacklisting, and I wanted the independent inquiry to have the opportunity to do that work first.

Watch the first episode: x.com/Bent_Unions

I also had serious concerns about handing my information to the inquiry. Those concerns have, at the very least, been vindicated in one important respect: it is now September 2026, more than five years after Sharon Graham's August 2021 election pledge, and there is still no report.

How long am I reasonably expected to wait before publishing the evidence I have gathered?

And how am I supposed to get that evidence and these questions in front of Unite members when the restrictions on my emails are still in place?

I did not put the documentary on hold forever. I put it on hold because a new General Secretary promised an independent process that would get to the truth. More than five years after that election pledge, blacklisted workers are still waiting for the report.

The key questions

For me, the evidence now reduces to a series of straightforward questions. They are questions that Unite, the inquiry and those who have represented blacklisted workers should be able to answer:

• What happened to the evidence about the Consulting Association and the separate list of more than 500 workers that I presented to Unite officials in 2005 and 2006?
• Why did Unite fail to act on the David Craggs blacklists after I supplied evidence involving more than 200 North West construction workers, including redacted copies to senior Unite figures and unredacted copies directly to Sharon Graham and Stephen Pinder?
• Where did the false claims that I was a blacklister originate, why were they circulated, and why were they never corrected - including the claims concerning workers on the Jubilee Line Extension for Skanska when I had never worked for Skanska and had never blacklisted anyone?
• Who decided in 2016 and 2017 that Unite and its regions should not support my blacklisting claims, to what extent were those decisions influenced by the false allegation that I was myself a blacklister, and what will Unite now do to correct the record with the branches and officials to whom those allegations were circulated?
• Who authorised the October 2024 restriction on my emails, on what basis was that decision made, and why are those arrangements still in place today?
• Why did significant material missing from my 2013 and 2018 subject access requests emerge only in 2025?
• Why does Dave Smith still block me from raising these matters on the Blacklist Support Group Facebook page, and why were people whose own conduct I had raised concerns about given roles in scoping or overseeing the inquiry?
• Did Dave Smith, the Blacklist Support Group or others representing blacklisted workers ever use members' Section 30 rights to inspect Unite's underlying accounting records relating to these inquiries? If they did, what did they discover - and why were blacklisted workers not updated about it?
• If Stephen Pinder says the spreadsheet also contains records arising from the earlier failed inquiry, which entries are they? If money was spent on those inquiries in 2017, 2019, 2020 or 2021, what underlying accounting records now show that expenditure?
• What exactly was bought for the £1,555,024.56 of expenditure disclosed in the accounting records supplied under Section 30, who was paid, and what did blacklisted workers receive for that expenditure?
• Who within Unite is ultimately accountable for bringing the current inquiry to a conclusion? If the Legal Director says he is not involved in preparing the report and cannot provide a publication date, who is responsible for ensuring that an inquiry funded by Unite members does not simply continue indefinitely?
• Why did the inquiry issue its 31 July 2026 statement in the immediate run-up to the General Secretary election saying that a significant new line of inquiry was actively causing further delay, when the accounting records supplied to me stop with work undertaken in December 2025? Who carried out the 2026 work, when was it carried out, and where is the corresponding accounting record?
• What, precisely, is now preventing publication? Will the final inquiry report be published in full, with enough supporting material for blacklisted workers to understand how its conclusions were reached?
• If the inquiry establishes that Unite officials were complicit in blacklisting union members, could Unite itself bear legal liability and could affected workers have claims for compensation? If so, what redress - including correction of records, apology and, where legally appropriate, compensation - will Unite offer those workers?
• How much longer should elderly blacklisted workers be expected to wait for answers - and how many more will die without ever receiving them?

Those are the questions I intend to keep asking. Unless satisfactory answers are forthcoming, I also have to decide how much longer I can justify keeping the remaining documentary evidence unpublished.