£52.9 Million From Unite to Labour — Where Are the Union's Blacklisting Complicity & Cover-Up Inquiry Findings?

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 years before the Consulting Association was exposed by the Information Commissioner in 2009.

November 2012 – Parliament

On 6 November 2012, I gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee inquiry into blacklisting.

I raised the union’s handling of my evidence and supplied further material concerning alleged trade-union involvement.

During my evidence, Committee Chair Ian Davidson told me:

“If you have sent us anything in writing, then that goes on the website and is then public, unless it was specifically marked ‘Confidential’ or ‘Secret’...”

He then added:

“All the evidence we get goes out into the public domain.”

In March 2013 I submitted written evidence about the Union's potential cover-up and complicity in the blacklisting, along with two new blacklists of over 200 construction workers from the North West, along with a detailed account of how those blacklists were being circulated

The official record does not publish that written submission from me. My concern is more specific: additional material I supplied concerning alleged trade-union involvement did not, to my knowledge, appear in the published record.

I am not claiming that Parliament published none of my evidence. It plainly did. I am asking what happened to the additional material dealing with the union-complicity and new blacklists issues.

Sources: Scottish Affairs Committee oral evidence, 6 November 2012 | published written evidence

Much of this early history is covered in the first episode of my documentary series:

Bent Union Officials – Episode 1

January 2013 – Chuka Umunna

In January 2013, I met Chuka Umunna, then Shadow Business Secretary, and raised alleged trade-union complicity in blacklisting and the handling of the evidence with him.

I received no further engagement from him afterwards.

Possible union involvement was already part of the parliamentary debate. On 23 January 2013, Umunna told the House of Commons that there were allegations of cases in which trade-union officials had assisted in the blacklisting process.

John McDonnell participated in the same debate and referred to an “absolute silence and cover-up” across the industry during the earlier period.

Source: House of Commons debate, 23 January 2013

February 2013 – BBC Radio 4 investigates union involvement

On 14 February 2013, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 30-minute edition of The Report: Construction Industry Blacklisting.

A substantial section was devoted to my evidence and to my attempts to raise what I believed was trade-union complicity in blacklisting and a cover-up of that evidence.

The programme examined evidence suggesting that union representatives may have liaised with contractors in relation to blacklisting.

That matters to this chronology.

By early 2013, alleged trade-union involvement in construction blacklisting — and my attempts to expose it — had moved well beyond private correspondence. It had been raised in Parliament and investigated in a national BBC Radio 4 programme.

BBC Radio 4 – The Report: Construction Industry Blacklisting

£24.68 million to Labour

There is important context to this period.

Between 2010 and 2015 alone, Unite transferred £24.68 million to the Labour Party in affiliation fees and donations, according to figures presented to Parliament using Electoral Commission data.

This was the period in which I was giving evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee, raising alleged trade-union involvement with senior Labour figures, and appearing in a BBC Radio 4 investigation which devoted a substantial section to my attempts to expose alleged union complicity and the handling of that evidence.

I make no suggestion that Unite’s financial support determined how any individual politician responded to me.

But £24.68 million demonstrates the scale of the institutional relationship between Unite and the Labour Party during precisely the period in which I was trying to get these issues addressed.

Source: House of Lords Select Committee on Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding

2016 – John McDonnell

In 2016, I raised the same issues directly with John McDonnell.

There is a documentary correspondence trail. Again, I received no further engagement from him.

McDonnell did not need an introduction to the wider blacklisting issue. He had been one of Parliament’s prominent campaigners on it and had taken part in the January 2013 debate in which possible trade-union involvement was expressly mentioned.

2016 – Jeremy Corbyn

Also in 2016, I raised the issue personally with Jeremy Corbyn at the GMB Congress in Bournemouth.

This was immediately after I had been introduced as the whistleblower who exposed construction blacklisting and received a standing ovation.

The GMB subsequently published footage of that conference showing Corbyn and me on the same stage.

The distinction is important: I was not trying to persuade senior Labour politicians that construction blacklisting existed. They already knew about the wider scandal.

What I was raising was the much more uncomfortable question of alleged trade-union complicity and what had happened to evidence concerning it.

2016 – Andy Burnham

In 2016, Andy Burnham’s office was also provided with the same information. I retain the correspondence with his assistant.

To be fair to Andy, his assistant Pippa told me that he was keen to pick the issue up, but he moved on to his mayoral role shortly afterwards.

April 2017 – An election commitment from Len McCluskey

Then came the inquiries.

On 4 April 2017, the Guardian’s Rob Evans reported allegations that trade-union officials had supplied information used in construction blacklisting.

The timing is important. Voting was under way in the election for Unite General Secretary, with the ballot due to close on 19 April.

Len McCluskey said that, if re-elected, he would:

“set up an independent union inquiry to investigate all evidence made available to him about any officer collusion.”

McCluskey was subsequently re-elected.

Source: The Guardian, 4 April 2017

August 2017 – A barrister and a report

Four months later, on 29 August 2017, the Guardian reported that McCluskey had instructed a barrister to examine the allegations and documentary evidence.

Importantly, the barrister was instructed to compile a report.

The article also recorded that I had been highlighting alleged union collusion for more than a decade.

So where is that report?

Source: The Guardian, 29 August 2017

July 2019 – Another Unite inquiry

On 14 July 2019, the Guardian reported that Unite had launched another inquiry into longstanding allegations that union officials had colluded with the construction blacklist.

The inquiry was commissioned by Len McCluskey. A team of lawyers was to examine the allegations, and Unite said publicly that it was committed to transparency.

The article also recorded that I had told Amicus officials about the blacklist as early as 2005 but that my evidence had been ignored.

Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group said the group had received assurances that the process would be independent and transparent and that it intended to hold Unite to that commitment.

What happened to that inquiry?

What were its findings?

Source: The Guardian, 14 July 2019

2021/22 – Another General Secretary election, another commitment

In 2021, Sharon Graham campaigned to become Unite General Secretary with a commitment to investigate alleged union collusion with blacklisting.

Graham was not new to Unite when she made that commitment. She had worked in the trade-union movement for around two decades and, under Len McCluskey’s leadership, was a senior Unite official heading the union’s Organising and Leverage department.

That is relevant to this chronology because the allegations, the 2017 investigation and the further 2019 inquiry all pre-dated her election as General Secretary.

Graham was elected in August 2021.

In April 2022, Unite established the present Independent Blacklisting Collusion Inquiry.

Graham’s campaign site now places the inquiry under “Project Clean Up: Investigating the past” and describes it as:

“A promise made. A promise kept.”

There is an important sense in which that is correct: an independent inquiry was established.

But establishing an inquiry and delivering its findings are not the same thing.

Sources: Sharon Graham campaign – Sharon’s Plan | Independent Blacklisting Collusion Inquiry

Two General Secretaries, nearly ten years, two election commitments — where are the findings?

In April 2017, Len McCluskey made an election commitment to establish an independent inquiry into alleged officer collusion with construction blacklisting.

He was re-elected. An investigation followed. A barrister was instructed to compile a report.

No findings from that process have been published.

Four years later, Sharon Graham made her own election commitment to investigate alleged union collusion.

She was elected. The present independent inquiry followed.

The narrow point is not that either General Secretary failed to commission an investigation. Both can point to an inquiry being established following their commitments.

The unanswered question is whether the purpose of those commitments has yet been fulfilled.

Surely the purpose was not simply to commission inquiries. It was to establish the truth about whether union officials had been involved in blacklisting their own members — and to report the findings.

Nearly ten years after McCluskey’s 2017 election commitment, where are the findings?

More than five years after Graham’s 2021 commitment, where are the findings?

And if Unite members were asked to place their trust in successive candidates promising investigations into this issue, when do those members and the blacklisted workers finally get the answers those inquiries were intended to provide?

2026 – £1,555,024.56 and still no report

The accounting records subsequently supplied to me disclose £1,555,024.56 of inquiry-related expenditure.

My examination of those records raises two further questions.

I could identify no inquiry-related transactions before May 2022, despite the earlier investigations announced in 2017 and 2019.

I could also identify no inquiry-related work or expenditure after December 2025 in the records supplied to me.

Then, on 31 July 2026, the independent inquiry legal team announced that a “significant line of inquiry” had recently emerged and required careful examination.

It said the report was in its final stages, that the new line of inquiry had caused further delay, that the unfinished report had not been shared with Unite, the Blacklist Support Group, the Oversight Committee or any other party, and that there was “no intention to suppress the report”.

That is important and should be recorded.

Equally, the absence of identifiable 2026 expenditure in the accounting records supplied to me does not prove that no work took place in 2026.

It does, however, leave a straightforward accounting question:

If substantive inquiry work continued in 2026 — including examination of a recently emerged significant line of inquiry — how is that work accounted for in the records supplied to me?

Sources: Independent inquiry statement, 31 July 2026 | £1.5 Million – Where’s the Report?

31 July 2026 – Another Unite General Secretary election

There is one further date worth recording.

The inquiry’s 31 July statement was issued while Unite was again electing its General Secretary.

Sharon Graham’s re-election was announced on 12 August 2026, twelve days later.

I make no claim about why those dates coincide.

But after successive election commitments and successive inquiries, the timing is part of the documented chronology.

Source: Unite – General Secretary election result, 12 August 2026

Twenty years later

The unanswered questions now stretch back two decades.

What happened to the blacklisting evidence supplied to Amicus in 2005/06?

What happened to the additional material concerning alleged trade-union involvement that I supplied during the parliamentary inquiry?

What became of the investigation promised during the 2017 Unite General Secretary election?

Where is the report the barrister was instructed to compile?

What happened to the further inquiry announced in 2019?

If those earlier investigations incurred expenditure, why can I identify no corresponding inquiry-related transactions before May 2022 in the accounting records supplied to me?

If substantive work continued in 2026, how is it reflected in those records?

And after £1,555,024.56 of disclosed expenditure on the present inquiry, when will Unite members, blacklisted workers and the wider public finally see the findings?

After twenty years, journalists trying to get to the truth of all this have a bit of a job on their hands.

The difficulty is not that the people concerned did not know about construction blacklisting. Many were publicly campaigning against it.

Evidence and allegations concerning trade-union complicity and the handling of that evidence within the unions were repeatedly put before people and organisations who already knew the wider blacklisting story.

In my experience, that was the part they ignored.

Does transparency apply to everyone?

There is a wider question arising from this history.

Politicians and trade unions associated with the labour movement have often called for truth, disclosure and institutional accountability when powerful organisations have failed people.

We have seen those principles invoked in public debate around Grenfell, the Post Office Horizon scandal and the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

I am not suggesting that those scandals are equivalent to construction blacklisting. They involve very different events, victims and consequences.

The common principle is accountability.

And the Undercover Policing Inquiry comparison is particularly difficult to ignore because it intersects with the same construction blacklisting scandal.

In April 2026, trade-union leaders and John McDonnell publicly demanded that the Undercover Policing Inquiry hear further evidence concerning police involvement in construction blacklisting.

Sharon Graham said the facts concerning police blacklisting collusion:

“must be brought into the open.”

She added:

“To block evidence in this area would be nothing short of shameful.”

I agree with that principle completely.

But surely it cannot apply only when the institution under scrutiny is the police, the state, the Post Office or a private company.

For twenty years I have been raising evidence and allegations concerning trade-union involvement in the same construction blacklisting system and the subsequent handling of that evidence.

Amicus had my evidence in 2005/06.

Parliament heard about the union issue.

BBC Radio 4 investigated it and broadcast it nationally.

Senior Labour politicians were subsequently approached.

An independent Unite inquiry was promised during the 2017 General Secretary election.

A barrister was instructed to compile a report.

Another Unite inquiry was announced in 2019.

The present independent inquiry followed in 2022 and has now incurred more than £1.5 million of disclosed expenditure.

And still there are no published findings from those Unite investigations.

So there is a straightforward question of consistency:

If transparency, disclosure and institutional accountability are principles worth defending when uncomfortable evidence concerns other powerful institutions, why should those principles be any different when uncomfortable evidence concerns the trade-union movement itself?

Readers can decide for themselves whether the same standard has been applied.

Source: Sharon Graham and union leaders on blacklisting evidence — Morning Star, 24 April 2026

The evidence is there

I retain original correspondence, parliamentary material, accounting records and video supporting this chronology.

Some of it is already publicly available. More will be published where appropriate.

Readers and journalists should not have to take my interpretation of this history on trust.

They should be able to examine the underlying evidence, establish who knew what and when, and reach their own conclusions.

After twenty years, I think that is the very least the blacklisted workers deserve.