Who Knew What? The Convenient Disappearance of the Trade Union Complicity from the Blacklisting Narrative

This article follows a documentary trail from Unite's Legal Department in 2009, through internal union inquiries, Westminster meetings, Parliamentary debates and High Court litigation, to the inquiries which followed.

It raises a straightforward question: what did people inside Unite, the wider trade-union movement and prominent Labour politicians already know about allegations of trade-union complicity in blacklisting, what did they do with that information — and why has there still been no transparent public accounting of what happened?

The present Unite inquiry is not simply an inquiry into whether construction workers were blacklisted. That has long been established. The issue it was tasked with examining concerns alleged conduct by trade-union officials — including collusion, the handling or suppression of blacklisting information and related official conduct.

I am not suggesting that everyone named below possessed the same information or reached the same conclusions. Nor do the documents by themselves establish why particular individuals acted as they did. The purpose of this article is to put the evidence into chronological order and ask questions which Unite and the lawyers conducting its current inquiry should now be capable of answering.

2009: Unite's Legal Department asks what happened to my 2005/06 evidence

On 29 May 2009, shortly after the Consulting Association had been exposed, Unite's then Director of Legal Services, Georgina Hirsch, circulated an internal email concerning material I had published about the union's earlier knowledge of blacklisting.

Hirsch wrote to Christian Matheson and Karen Fisher, drawing attention to my claim that letters had been sent to then General Secretary Derek Simpson in 2006 and that information had been “made available to the union” in 2005.

Her email stated:

“We will definitely have to answer press and EC queries on this so please check back re correspondence log and let me know whether we had the letters, and what happened to them.”

Hirsch then forwarded the issue to Derek Simpson and Les Bayliss, asking whether either recalled my correspondence or knew more about it.

This matters because it shows that, by May 2009, my allegation that Amicus/Unite had received blacklisting evidence in 2005/06 was not simply sitting unread on a website. It had reached Unite's Director of Legal Services, Christian Matheson, Derek Simpson and Les Bayliss, and the Legal Director was asking what had happened to the correspondence.

Matheson later told Parliament that he had worked as a Unite official for approximately 15 years. The important point here is not his subsequent political career or ordinary union support for Labour candidates. It is that Matheson was inside Unite and was specifically asked by its Director of Legal Services to help establish what had happened to my earlier blacklisting correspondence.

There is a further documentary problem which has become clearer with time.

When Unite supplied information to me in 2013, my own incoming letters to Derek Simpson were present, but Simpson's replies were not.

Those replies were again absent when I made a further Subject Access Request in 2018.

Yet in response to my 2025 Subject Access Request, Unite finally disclosed the missing Simpson replies.

That produces a series of very specific questions. Why were Derek Simpson's 2006 replies absent from both the 2013 disclosure and the 2018 Subject Access Request despite Unite retaining my incoming correspondence, yet available for disclosure in 2025? Where had those replies been held? Were they available to Hirsch, Matheson, Simpson or Bayliss when Unite Legal Services investigated the correspondence trail in 2009? Were they searched for in 2013 and 2018? Were they supplied to any of Unite's later inquiries?

Has the present inquiry established why documents central to the history of my blacklisting allegations were missing from two earlier disclosures but appeared in the third?

2011: had Unite already investigated union-official complicity?

There is another important part of the chronology which still requires clarification.

In my detailed 2017 report to Len McCluskey, I recorded that I had learned that Gail Cartmail had conducted an internal investigation into alleged trade-union-official complicity in blacklisting around 2011 and had found no evidence of such complicity.

I was not approached, interviewed or asked to supply evidence to that investigation, despite my longstanding public allegations concerning the handling of blacklisting evidence by union officials.

I do not present my 2017 account as independent proof of precisely what investigation took place in 2011 or what its formal terms of reference were. Those are matters Unite should be able to establish from its own records.

However, a Blacklist Support Group report published in March 2013 would subsequently state that both Unite and UCATT had carried out internal investigations into collusion by senior union officials and that neither union had taken action against an employee or former employee.

That makes the existence, scope and outcome of those earlier investigations an important issue in its own right.

What exactly did Unite investigate before 2012? Which officials were examined? What evidence was considered? Who was interviewed? What findings were made? And why was somebody who had been publicly raising evidence concerning union-official conduct since 2006 apparently never approached?

2012: I ask Gail Cartmail to investigate Unite

In 2012, I wrote directly to Gail Cartmail about what had happened to the blacklisting evidence supplied to Amicus/Unite in 2005/06.

I asked her to investigate and specifically raised the position of former General Secretary Derek Simpson.

Cartmail described the earlier handling of the evidence as a “wasted opportunity” and said:

“The union has no capacity to secure Mr Simpson's cooperation in an investigation.”

I replied that what I was alleging was considerably more serious than a missed opportunity. I also pointed out that Simpson's retirement did not prevent the union starting with people who remained available, including Micky Tuff, the official to whom I had originally supplied the evidence.

I also asked Cartmail for copies of Simpson's replies to my 2006 correspondence.

Her final response to me stated:

“I will pass your request for copies of the correspondence to the General Secretary's office.”

That was the last reply I received from Gail Cartmail.

I subsequently wrote to her again, including in 2013, and later gave her further opportunities to respond in connection with my documentary work. But the 2012 response above was the last substantive reply I received from her.

This becomes important because of what Cartmail herself would say only months later at a Westminster meeting convened by Labour's Shadow Business Secretary.

5 November 2012: Chuka Umunna is told about trade-union collusion

On 5 November 2012, Chuka Umunna, then Labour's Shadow Business Secretary, convened a blacklisting meeting at Westminster.

A contemporaneous GMB report-back lists those present as including Jim Kennedy of UCATT, Gail Cartmail of Unite, Frank Morris, Kamaljeet Jandu of the GMB, members of Umunna's team and Umunna himself.

The report records Umunna opening the meeting and discussing how blacklisting should be handled in Parliament and what the next steps should be.

Under the points attributed to Gail Cartmail, it records:

“There was trade union collusion where trade unionists were the source of the information for Blacklisting.”

That sentence is crucial.

A senior Unite official was not merely discussing employers blacklisting union members. She was recorded as telling a meeting chaired by the Shadow Business Secretary that there had been trade-union collusion and that trade unionists themselves had been sources of blacklisting information.

The report's author, Kamaljeet Jandu, concluded:

“My conclusion is that CU is positioning himself at the head of the campaign on Blacklisting.”

This does not establish that Umunna accepted Cartmail's statement as proven fact. It does establish that the issue of trade-union complicity was expressly raised at a blacklisting meeting which he had convened and attended.

It also raises a question for Unite which remains unanswered: what evidence was Cartmail referring to when she made that statement?

6 November 2012: I give evidence the following afternoon

The following afternoon, 6 November 2012, I gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee's investigation into blacklisting.

I explained that I had supplied blacklisting evidence to the union years earlier, had subsequently written to Derek Simpson, and had more recently asked Gail Cartmail to investigate what had happened and to provide copies of Simpson's correspondence.

At that point I did not know what Cartmail had said at Umunna's meeting the previous day.

So within approximately twenty-four hours, two separate things had happened at Westminster: Cartmail had been recorded telling Umunna's meeting that there had been trade-union collusion, while I was telling Parliament about the history of Unite receiving blacklisting evidence and my attempts to establish what had happened to it.

23 January 2013: Umunna tells Parliament union officials may have assisted blacklisting — and nobody follows it up

On 23 January 2013, Umunna led a full House of Commons debate on blacklisting.

During his explanation of how the Consulting Association operated, he made an extraordinary statement:

“there are allegations that there were some cases of trade union officials assisting in this process.”

The significance is easy to miss because of what happened next: the debate simply moved on.

No one asked which trade-union officials Umunna meant. No one asked which unions they represented. No one asked what form the alleged assistance had taken, what evidence supported the allegation, whether those officials had supplied workers' names or other information, or whether any union had investigated them.

A Shadow Business Secretary had just told the House of Commons that trade-union officials were alleged to have assisted the blacklisting process, yet that particular allegation received no substantive examination in the debate.

That is especially significant because, only weeks earlier, Gail Cartmail had been recorded telling the blacklisting meeting Umunna chaired that:

“There was trade union collusion where trade unionists were the source of the information for Blacklisting.”

Was Cartmail's 5 November statement the source, or one of the sources, for what Umunna told Parliament on 23 January?

If so, what happened to the information she had given his meeting? Who were the trade unionists concerned? What investigation followed?

The same Parliamentary debate contains another remarkable passage.

The Government's Business Secretary, Vince Cable, said that despite regularly meeting the General Secretary of the TUC and national officers of the GMB, Unite and UCATT,

“none of them has ever raised the issue of blacklisting.”

Cable said nobody had approached him on the subject during the previous two and a half years and questioned why blacklisting had suddenly surfaced in an Opposition Day debate.

That creates a striking documentary contrast.

By November 2012, Cartmail was recorded discussing trade-union collusion at Umunna's blacklisting meeting. By January 2013, Umunna was telling Parliament there were allegations of trade-union officials assisting the process. Yet the Government minister responsible for the policy area was telling the same debate that Unite, UCATT, GMB and the TUC had never raised blacklisting with him during their regular meetings.

That does not establish why the unions had not raised the issue with Cable. It does make the question unavoidable.

If Unite was sufficiently aware of the issue for one of its most senior officials to raise trade-union collusion at Umunna's November meeting, why had blacklisting apparently never been raised with the Business Secretary during Unite's regular meetings with him?

There was another contrast in Umunna's speech.

He praised the work of UCATT, Unite and the GMB in uncovering evidence of blacklisting. Labour MP Luciana Berger also praised UCATT's contribution, and Umunna agreed with her.

Yet embedded within the same speech was his brief acknowledgement that trade-union officials themselves were alleged to have assisted blacklisting.

One part of the story — the unions campaigning against employer blacklisting — received considerable attention. The other — allegations that union officials had assisted the process — was mentioned and then left hanging.

Six days later, I would meet Chuka Umunna myself.

29 January 2013: I meet Chuka Umunna

Six days after the Commons debate, on 29 January 2013, I met Chuka Umunna at Westminster.

At the time, I did not know that Gail Cartmail had already raised trade-union collusion at Umunna's November meeting. Nor did I appreciate the significance of Umunna's reference in Parliament six days earlier to allegations that trade-union officials had assisted in blacklisting.

I therefore entered the meeting believing that I was bringing Umunna new and specific evidence concerning Unite's own conduct. In fact, a contemporaneous record shows that a senior Unite official had already raised trade-union collusion at a meeting he chaired, and Umunna himself had just publicly acknowledged allegations of trade-union officials assisting in blacklisting.

During our meeting I raised my concerns about Unite's handling of the blacklisting evidence I had supplied in 2005/06. I discussed the Haden Young blacklist-checking sheets, what had happened to that evidence after it reached the union, and the developing High Court litigation.

My recollection is that Umunna instructed a member of his team to investigate the union issue with Gail Cartmail.

The meeting ended when the division bell rang and Umunna was called away to vote.

That account is not based solely on a recollection reconstructed years later. On 20 June 2013, while the events were still current, I wrote back to Umunna setting out what I recalled discussing with him. I recorded that he had asked what I believed should happen and that I had proposed an independent investigation into why Unite had failed to act on my earlier evidence.

I also recorded that the meeting had ended when he was called away to vote.

The question now is obvious:

When I raised specific allegations concerning Unite on 29 January, what did Umunna already know from Gail Cartmail's November meeting and from the allegations he had referred to in Parliament six days earlier?

1 February 2013: the High Court lawyers raise trade-union conduct

Only three days after my meeting with Umunna, the issue surfaced again — this time from the lawyers representing blacklisted construction workers.

On 1 February 2013, the Irish Post reported comments from Sean Curran of Guney, Clark & Ryan, the solicitors acting for a large group of workers pursuing High Court claims.

Curran said:

“Important questions must also be asked about the conduct of trade union representatives that acted against the interests of their members.”

The report also stated that Curran said it was alleged that Sir Robert McAlpine had conspired with trade-union representatives and employment agencies in conduct said to breach data-protection and employment legislation.

So within nine days of Umunna telling Parliament that there were allegations of trade-union officials assisting blacklisting, the solicitors conducting the principal High Court litigation were themselves publicly raising serious questions about the conduct of trade-union representatives.

The union-complicity issue was therefore not an allegation confined to me, nor was it something that existed only inside Unite.

14 February 2013: the BBC asks why unions had not pursued blacklisting

On 14 February 2013, BBC Radio 4's The Report examined the history of blacklisting and the earlier failure of both government and unions to act.

The BBC reported that I had met government officials in 2007 concerning blacklisting and that no action had followed.

Sarah Veale, then the TUC's Head of Equality and Employment Rights, publicly criticised the failure of government to act despite possessing a formal record of that meeting.

The programme also asked whether there could have been another reason why unions had previously failed to pursue blacklisting and examined the longstanding financial relationship between electrical employers and the union.

Unite regional officer Colin Campbell was interviewed about arrangements under which employers had paid money to the union and the potential influence such financial relationships could create.

This is particularly interesting when placed beside Vince Cable's statement in Parliament only three weeks earlier that the TUC, Unite, UCATT and GMB had never raised blacklisting with him during his regular meetings with them.

That same morning, I emailed Sarah Veale links to the BBC report, the 2009 Guardian article concerning my evidence and my own blacklisting website.

She acknowledged the email within minutes.

So by February 2013, the TUC's senior employment-rights official had been directly supplied with material concerning my evidence and the earlier history of the unions' response.

March 2013: the Blacklist Support Group calls for an independent investigation into union collusion

The issue became still more explicit in March 2013.

A Blacklist Support Group report contained an entire section headed:

“Union Collusion in blacklisting”

The report stated that disclosure of unredacted material in the High Court litigation had identified the names of some union officials recorded as sources of information on blacklist files.

It also referred to documents recording meetings in which union officials were said to have indicated that particular activists should not obtain work or become stewards on major projects.

The report distinguished between loose talk and deliberate wrongdoing, but stated that at its most serious the evidence could amount to:

“deliberate collusion by union officials in blacklisting.”

It also recorded that I had supplied information concerning union officers to Derek Simpson in 2006.

Most significantly, the Blacklist Support Group stated:

“Both UNITE and UCATT have carried out internal investigations into collusion by senior union officials.”

It said that, at that point, neither union had taken action against an employee or former employee.

The Blacklist Support Group then called for a genuinely independent investigation by a legal expert into union involvement in blacklisting — including not merely overt collusion, but how earlier allegations had been investigated, relationships between union officials and employers, and legal decisions surrounding blacklisting claims.

Its final list of demands called on unions to establish an independent investigation into:

“union collusion in blacklisting and how historic claims of blacklisting were handled.”

This was March 2013.

In other words, the central questions Unite is still supposedly investigating today were being publicly identified by the Blacklist Support Group more than thirteen years ago.

And the report raises another question for the present inquiry: what were the Unite and UCATT internal investigations into collusion which the Blacklist Support Group said had already taken place?

15 March 2013: I send further evidence to Parliament — and copy Umunna

On 15 March 2013, I wrote again concerning further evidence I wished to submit to the Scottish Affairs Committee.

I stated:

“I have further evidence that I would like to submit to the Select Committee.”

I explained that the material related to what I alleged was the cover-up of blacklisting evidence by Amicus/Unite in 2005/06.

Umunna was copied into that correspondence.

So by this point the documentary trail included:

Cartmail raising trade-union collusion at Umunna's November 2012 meeting;
my evidence to Parliament the following day concerning Unite's earlier possession of blacklisting material;
Umunna telling Parliament in January 2013 that trade-union officials were alleged to have assisted blacklisting;
my meeting with Umunna six days later concerning specific allegations about Unite;
Guney, Clark & Ryan publicly raising the conduct of trade-union representatives;
the BBC examining why unions may previously have failed to pursue blacklisting;
and the Blacklist Support Group publicly demanding an independent investigation into union collusion.

This was not a hidden or marginal issue by the spring of 2013.

I continue challenging Umunna

Following our January meeting, I continued writing to Umunna.

I challenged the Parliamentary presentation of the unions' role in exposing blacklisting and, in particular, the exchange between Umunna and Labour MP Luciana Berger.

On 19 February 2013, I reminded Umunna that he had initially been keen to meet me after I raised trade-union involvement in blacklisting, but that my subsequent specific questions were going unanswered.

By 12 June 2013, nineteen weeks had passed since our meeting.

On 20 June 2013, I wrote again setting out in detail what I recalled discussing with him in January, including my request for an independent investigation into Unite's earlier handling of the evidence.

I subsequently sought information from Umunna's office under data-protection legislation.

The disclosure revealed internal comments about me.

On 1 February 2013, adviser Anna Coffey had written:

“I don't think meeting him has made any difference. He's just as unreasonable as ever.”

On 19 February 2013, adviser Gabriel Huntley wrote:

“I think we should ignore”

When I wrote to Umunna on 8 August 2013, I identified the latter comment as relating to my reiterated challenge concerning Luciana Berger's comments in the January Parliamentary debate.

The significance is not whether one of Umunna's advisers considered me difficult or unreasonable.

The important question is what happened to the substantive evidence and allegations I was putting to the Shadow Business Secretary.

By then Umunna had been present when Cartmail raised trade-union collusion, had himself referred in Parliament to allegations of union officials assisting blacklisting, had met me while I raised specific Unite evidence and had received continuing correspondence about the issue.

2 July 2013: Gail Cartmail gives evidence to Parliament

On 2 July 2013, Gail Cartmail gave sworn evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee.

During her evidence, she referred to two known blacklists: the Consulting Association material exposed following the Information Commissioner's raid, and another list which she said had been published by me in 2006.

She told the Committee:

“We know of another list, which is in this bundle, which was published in 2006 by a whistleblower, Mr Alan Wainwright.”

This creates another important question.

When Cartmail told Parliament about the blacklist I had published in 2006, did she or Unite already know that the underlying blacklisting material had previously been supplied to the union?

If so, why was the earlier history of Unite receiving that material not explained to the Committee?

And how did that evidence relate to Cartmail's own statement at Umunna's November 2012 meeting that there had been trade-union collusion and that trade unionists had been sources of blacklisting information?

8 August 2013: I challenge Cartmail over Unite's missing records

Following a data-protection disclosure from Unite, I wrote directly to Cartmail on 8 August 2013.

I told her that important documents were missing.

In particular, Unite had supplied copies of my letters to Derek Simpson, officially stamped as received, but had not supplied Simpson's replies to me.

I also identified gaps in the correspondence involving Micky Tuff.

The disclosure contained a 2006 letter in which Tuff described the limited inquiry he said he had conducted into my blacklisting allegations and called me:

“a compulsive liar”.

I told Cartmail that I possessed other written evidence which I said contradicted Tuff's account and concerned what had happened to the blacklisting evidence.

I also drew her attention to my response to her recent evidence before the Scottish Affairs Committee and expressly offered to correct anything I had published if she could substantiate that it was wrong.

I asked her to revisit the disclosure and provide the missing material.

Cartmail did not reply.

Her last substantive response to me remained the correspondence from 2012.

The missing Simpson replies would also fail to appear in my 2018 Subject Access Request. Unite would finally disclose them in 2025.

22 August 2013: the TUC refers the issue back to Unite

I also continued corresponding with Sarah Veale at the TUC.

On 22 August 2013, I sent her further material concerning alleged trade-union involvement and Unite's response to my allegations.

Veale replied:

“I cannot intervene in the internal affairs of an affiliate and have no knowledge of what you are suggesting.”

But she did not simply dismiss the material. She continued:

“I will pass this on to the officer in Unite who is handling this – it is up to them how they respond.”

She asked whether I objected to her passing on my email address or forwarding my email to Unite.

I replied that Unite was already well aware of what I was saying and that I was keeping the TUC informed.

That exchange creates another important contrast.

In February 2013, Sarah Veale had publicly criticised the government for having received evidence concerning blacklisting and apparently failing to act on it. Yet when I subsequently supplied material concerning an affiliated union's own alleged failure to act, I was told that the TUC could not intervene in the internal affairs of an affiliate and the matter was referred back to Unite.

That raises two straightforward questions:

Why was government failure to act on blacklisting evidence properly a matter for public criticism by the TUC, while allegations concerning an affiliated union's own handling of blacklisting evidence were treated as an internal union matter?
Who was “the officer in Unite who is handling this” in August 2013?

Was that officer Gail Cartmail? Someone in Unite Legal Services? Someone else?

Has the present inquiry identified that person and established what happened to the information?

October–November 2013: the turning point — what happened to the union-complicity question?

By the autumn of 2013, the union-complicity issue had become still harder to ignore.

On 12 October 2013, Sean Curran of Guney, Clark & Ryan — by then representing scores of blacklisted workers in the High Court — publicly raised serious concerns about Unite and UCATT being involved in negotiations over the proposed industry compensation scheme.

Most significantly, Curran said that his legal team had seen evidence implicating Amicus/Unite and UCATT officials in supplying negative commentary about their own members.

He said that commentary had made its way onto the Consulting Association database and had contributed to workers being denied employment.

He also pointed out that Unite and UCATT had previously refused to support their members in bringing the High Court claims.

This was a significant escalation.

The lawyers pursuing the litigation were no longer merely referring in general terms to allegations of trade-union involvement. They were publicly saying that they had seen evidence implicating officials from Amicus/Unite and UCATT.

Then something important happened.

During November 2013, Unite and UCATT launched their own High Court blacklisting claims.

A report of the High Court proceedings on 29 November 2013 records four claimant groups: the original claim brought by Guney, Clark & Ryan, together with newer claims backed separately by the GMB, UCATT and Unite.

The report specifically records that the Unite and UCATT claims had been launched earlier that month.

The chronology is therefore striking:

March 2013: the Blacklist Support Group publicly demands an independent investigation into union collusion and records that Unite and UCATT have already conducted internal investigations;
12 October 2013: Guney, Clark & Ryan publicly says it has seen evidence implicating Amicus/Unite and UCATT officials in supplying information which reached the Consulting Association database and criticises the unions for refusing to support their members' High Court claims;
November 2013: Unite and UCATT themselves enter the High Court litigation.

October–November 2013 is therefore a major turning point in this story.

Before Unite and UCATT entered the litigation, allegations of trade-union-official complicity were being discussed openly and repeatedly — by a senior Unite official, in Parliament, by the Blacklist Support Group and by the solicitors representing blacklisted workers.

Once Unite and UCATT became claimant organisations within the wider litigation, however, a separate question arises:

What happened to the investigation of the union officials themselves?

Which Amicus/Unite and UCATT officials had been implicated by the evidence Curran said his legal team had seen?

What information had they allegedly supplied?

Were those officials interviewed or disciplined?

What did the unions' earlier internal investigations actually establish?

What happened to the documentary evidence concerning union involvement once the unions themselves became participants in the High Court litigation?

And what became of the Blacklist Support Group's March 2013 demand for an independent legal investigation into “union collusion in blacklisting and how historic claims of blacklisting were handled”?

I make no allegation that Unite and UCATT entered the litigation in order to suppress those questions. The chronology alone does not establish motive.

But this is the point at which, in the documentary record set out here, the publicly discussed issue of union-official complicity becomes markedly less visible while the unions become part of the litigation campaign against the construction companies.

The separate union-complicity question did not cease to exist simply because Unite and UCATT had joined the claimant side.

Nor did the underlying evidence disappear.

Indeed, later internal correspondence between barristers in the High Court litigation would explicitly record Unite's concern about the possibility of me giving evidence and making “accusations about union activity”.

I return to that correspondence below.

But the central question begins here:

How did an issue serious enough for Gail Cartmail to raise trade-union collusion in November 2012, for Chuka Umunna to mention union officials assisting blacklisting in Parliament in January 2013, for the Blacklist Support Group to demand an independent investigation in March, and for High Court lawyers to say by October that they had seen evidence implicating Unite/UCATT officials, pass through 2013 — and all the years since — without any transparent public accounting of which officials were involved, what evidence existed, what investigations were carried out and what those investigations found?

One final 2013 contrast: Umunna publicly calls for an inquiry

Before moving beyond 2013, one further part of Umunna's public position belongs in the chronology.

On 23 September 2013, the Guardian reported Umunna calling for a full investigation into construction-industry blacklisting and saying that Labour would pursue an inquiry if the Government refused to do so.

There was nothing inconsistent about demanding an inquiry into employer blacklisting. But by then Umunna had also:

chaired the November 2012 meeting at which Gail Cartmail was recorded raising trade-union collusion;
told Parliament in January 2013 that there were allegations of trade-union officials assisting blacklisting;
met me six days later and heard specific allegations concerning Unite's handling of blacklisting evidence;
received months of subsequent correspondence from me; and
been copied into further evidence concerning what I alleged was Unite's earlier failure to act.

Yet the separate question of alleged trade-union-official complicity was not becoming a similarly prominent part of the public campaign for an inquiry.

Within weeks, Guney, Clark & Ryan would publicly say that it had seen evidence implicating Amicus/Unite and UCATT officials. Then Unite and UCATT entered the High Court litigation.

That is why the October–November 2013 turning point matters.

2014: a Scottish Affairs Committee member says he established union-official complicity

The union-complicity issue had not disappeared from the underlying evidence.

On 14 March 2014, Simon Reevell MP — a barrister and member of the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee which had investigated blacklisting — wrote to me following my continued challenge over the Committee's treatment of the union issue.

Reevell stated:

“The evidence that the Committee heard of trade union officials being complicit in blacklisting was of activity at a local level...”

He then added:

“I was the person who actually established that they were complicit at a local level.”

That is an important statement from a barrister who had actually sat on the Parliamentary inquiry.

The description “at a local level” does not resolve the issue. Blacklisting operated through individual workplaces, projects and companies, while information could subsequently be recorded or circulated through wider systems such as the Consulting Association.

The obvious questions were therefore:

Which trade-union officials was Reevell referring to?
What had those officials done?
What evidence had the Committee obtained?
Had any information supplied by those officials entered the Consulting Association database or another blacklisting system?
What did senior union officials know about that conduct?
Why was this evidence not investigated further by the Committee?
What subsequently happened to it?

A member of the Parliamentary inquiry was saying that he had actually established trade-union-official complicity. Yet there was still no transparent public investigation identifying the officials involved or explaining what had happened.

2016: Unite does not want me relied upon as a witness

The High Court litigation provides another important piece of evidence about what happened to the union-complicity issue after Unite joined the proceedings.

On 3 February 2016, barristers acting within the claimant litigation discussed whether I should be used as a witness.

Hugh Tomlinson QC asked Anthony Hudson QC:

“What if anything are we doing about evidence from Alan Wainwright?”

Tomlinson noted that my evidence could create issues concerning limitation because I had been talking about blacklisting and alerting some construction companies to it in 2006.

Hudson's response is particularly significant because he expressly recorded Unite's position:

“Unite are not convinced about the merits of relying / being seen to rely on him.”

“He is perceived as unpredictable.”

He then identified another risk:

“The risk of him giving damaging evidence on limitation and making accusations about union activity probably outweighs the potential benefits of serving a witness summary.”

That correspondence was circulated within the claimant legal teams. John Carl Townsend, who had been involved in the High Court litigation and would years later be appointed to lead Unite's current independent inquiry, was among those copied into the correspondence disclosed to me.

The wording matters.

It does not simply record concern that my evidence might cause technical difficulty on limitation.

It separately identifies the risk of me making “accusations about union activity” as part of the reason why Unite was not convinced about relying — or even “being seen to rely” — on me.

That takes us directly back to the October–November 2013 turning point.

Before Unite entered the litigation, its own Gail Cartmail had raised trade-union collusion, Umunna had acknowledged allegations of officials assisting blacklisting, the Blacklist Support Group had demanded an independent investigation, and Guney, Clark & Ryan had publicly said it had seen evidence implicating Amicus/Unite and UCATT officials.

By February 2016, an internal exchange within the claimant legal teams was expressly recording Unite's concern about a potential witness making “accusations about union activity”.

I do not suggest that this email, by itself, proves that the litigation parties agreed to suppress evidence of union complicity.

But it does provide documentary evidence that the potential effect of my evidence about union activity was being considered when deciding whether I should be used as a witness.

That creates questions which go directly to the remit of Unite's current inquiry:

What “union activity” was Anthony Hudson referring to?
What did Unite understand I was likely to say?
Which Unite officials were involved in deciding whether I should be relied upon as a witness?
Why did the possibility of me making allegations about union activity weigh against using my evidence?
Did any of the claimant legal teams independently investigate those allegations?
Did Hugh Tomlinson, Anthony Hudson or other lawyers possess evidence concerning alleged trade-union complicity which was never tested in the litigation?
Has the present Unite inquiry obtained the complete legal-team correspondence surrounding this decision?
Has it interviewed those involved?

And, crucially, has the present inquiry examined whether the treatment of evidence concerning union activity inside the High Court litigation forms part of the very collusion, suppression or cover-up allegations it was established to investigate?

2017: Len McCluskey announces another inquiry

The issue resurfaced publicly again in 2017.

During that year's Unite General Secretary election, Len McCluskey committed to an independent inquiry into allegations concerning trade-union officials and blacklisting.

On 29 May 2017, I sent McCluskey a detailed report headed:

“Independent Inquiry into Trade Union Officials Complicit in the Blacklisting Scandal”

I asked whether the inquiry was going ahead, who would conduct it and what its terms of reference would be.

The report set out the issues which I believed any genuine inquiry needed to examine, including:

the handling of my evidence by Micky Tuff in 2005/06;
my correspondence with Derek Simpson;
the delay between the exposure of the Consulting Association and union legal action;
the shortcomings in Unite's 2013 disclosure to me;
the reported earlier investigation associated with Gail Cartmail; and
the wider question of what officials and others had known about alleged union involvement in blacklisting.

I also specifically recorded what I had learned about the earlier Cartmail investigation and the fact that I had not been approached to provide evidence to it.

So by May 2017, Unite was being given another detailed opportunity to reconstruct the history going back to 2005 — including the same allegations about union-official conduct which had already surfaced repeatedly between 2012 and 2016.

5 September 2017: Umunna, Matheson and my evidence are back in Parliament

On 5 September 2017, Chuka Umunna again led a Parliamentary debate on blacklisting.

He told Parliament that he had originally taken up the issue after being alerted to the scandal by his:

“good friends at Unite”

During Umunna's contribution, my then MP David Hanson intervened.

Hanson told Parliament:

“One of my constituents, Alan Wainwright, is a victim of blacklisting, and was party to exposing it—he was a whistleblower.”

He told Umunna that I had submitted evidence to the Government and asked whether that material should be examined seriously as part of the case for an inquiry.

Umunna replied:

“I completely agree; I have met my right hon. Friend's constituent.”

He then said:

“we need the inquiry because we need to know who knew what was going on.”

That is a particularly important statement when read against the documentary chronology.

Christian Matheson also intervened during Umunna's contribution and later made his own speech at 1.55 pm, praising Umunna's persistence on blacklisting and addressing the continuing consequences for blacklisted workers.

Hanson spoke immediately afterwards at 1.57 pm.

In the wider debate, my detailed report and the new Unite inquiry were therefore part of the Parliamentary discussion surrounding blacklisting.

By this point:

Christian Matheson had been a Unite official when Georgina Hirsch asked him in 2009 to help establish what had happened to my earlier correspondence and evidence;
Gail Cartmail had been recorded raising trade-union collusion at Umunna's November 2012 meeting;
Umunna had himself told Parliament in January 2013 that there were allegations of trade-union officials assisting blacklisting;
I had subsequently met Umunna and raised specific evidence concerning Unite;
Guney, Clark & Ryan had publicly said it had seen evidence implicating Amicus/Unite and UCATT officials;
Simon Reevell had said that he personally established trade-union-official complicity “at a local level”;
the High Court claimant legal teams had discussed the risk of me making “accusations about union activity” if I were relied upon as a witness; and
I had now supplied Len McCluskey with a detailed report asking Unite to investigate that history.

I make no allegation that Matheson and Umunna coordinated their actions or that either possessed every document described in this article.

The point is much simpler: by September 2017, there was already an extensive documentary trail showing that allegations of trade-union-official involvement had repeatedly reached Unite, lawyers, campaigners and Parliament.

Umunna's words therefore provide an appropriate question with which to judge every Unite inquiry that followed:

“we need to know who knew what was going on.”

Eight years after Unite's Legal Director had first asked what had happened to my earlier evidence, that question was still unanswered.

2019: another inquiry promises to be “full and transparent”

The 2017 inquiry did not produce a published report resolving these questions.

Then, in 2019, another Unite investigation followed.

Richard Arthur of Thompsons Solicitors contacted me on behalf of Unite. He said Thompsons had been instructed to gather evidence which might suggest involvement by union officers or officials in the operation of construction-industry blacklists and to send that evidence to an independent Queen's Counsel for a report.

I pressed Arthur on whether the investigation would examine not merely officials actively supplying blacklist information, but the wider allegation that union officers had suppressed or failed to act upon blacklisting evidence.

He subsequently confirmed:

“the scope of the investigation extends to any evidence of any suppression of any information relating to the identified blacklists by union officer or officials, past or present.”

That was important. The issue was no longer framed simply as whether a union official had personally supplied a name to a blacklist. Suppression of information concerning blacklisting was expressly within scope.

Arthur also confirmed that the circumstances surrounding Unite's treatment of the David Craggs material in 2018 would be investigated.

That material concerned separate blacklists which I had exposed and which had circulated to recruitment-agency suppliers.

On 2 October 2018, Craggs had complained to Unite about my publication of material concerning those lists.

Two days later, on 4 October 2018, Unite wrote asking me to remove references to Craggs in order to avoid possible further action.

I had questioned why the union had acted promptly following a complaint by the person associated with those lists while I could identify no comparable action on behalf of the workers whose names appeared on them.

Arthur expressly confirmed that the circumstances surrounding that 4 October letter would be investigated.

Then, on 12 November 2019, after increasingly difficult exchanges about the process, Arthur assured me:

“The investigation will be full and transparent...”

He said his role was to ensure that all potentially relevant evidence was supplied to Counsel.

So where is that report?

What did the 2019 investigation establish about suppression of blacklisting information by union officers?

What did it establish about the Craggs material?

Which officials were interviewed?

What evidence was obtained?

Were its files and conclusions handed to the inquiry which followed?

And if a “full and transparent” investigation took place, why have blacklisted workers still not been given a transparent account of its findings?

2021: Sharon Graham promises another inquiry

The issue resurfaced again when Sharon Graham became Unite General Secretary in 2021.

I raised my concerns directly with her.

On 4 October 2021, I wrote about matters involving figures including Dave Smith, Frank Morris and Tony Seaman and concerns I believed were relevant to any investigation of alleged trade-union complicity and cover-up.

Sharon indicated that she would speak to relevant people and come back to me.

I did not receive the substantive response I had expected.

In December 2021 she told me:

“My leading construction members have scoped the inquiry... I have full confidence in them doing this in the proper manner.”

That statement raises a governance question which remains important.

Who exactly were the “leading construction members” who scoped the inquiry, what role did each of them play, what information were they given, and what safeguards existed where concerns had already been raised about individuals connected with the blacklisting campaign?

This mattered because the present inquiry was supposed to examine alleged conduct on the union side of the blacklisting scandal — not merely what construction companies had done.

2022: the present inquiry is established — and I approach its lawyers myself

By March 2022, the present inquiry structure was taking shape.

Its legal team included John Carl Townsend, Nicholas Randall and Paul Heron of the Public Interest Law Centre.

An important fact needs to be made clear from the outset:

I did not wait for this inquiry to find me.

On 27 March 2022, I contacted Townsend myself.

I specifically wrote in connection with his appointment to the new inquiry and told him that my documentary work concerned alleged trade-union-official complicity, the earlier handling of my blacklisting evidence and events surrounding the High Court litigation.

I also explained that much of my evidence had subsequently come from Subject Access Requests to trade unions and lawyers involved in that litigation.

Townsend's clerk replied the same day confirming that my email had been passed to him.

On 29 March 2022, I wrote again, this time addressing Townsend and Randall.

I drew their attention to the history of previous Unite inquiries, including those announced in 2017 and 2019, and made clear that I had serious concerns about whether this latest process would be any different.

I also raised concerns about the structure surrounding the inquiry and people involved in filtering or overseeing information before it reached the lawyers.

Then, on 6 April 2022, I forwarded the correspondence directly to the Public Interest Law Centre, addressing it to Paul Heron.

PILC's later Subject Access disclosure confirms that this email was internally forwarded to Heron.

So by the opening weeks of the present inquiry:

I had contacted Townsend directly;
his chambers had acknowledged receipt;
I had written directly to Townsend and Randall;
I had identified the nature of the evidence I possessed;
I had specifically raised alleged trade-union-official complicity and the High Court litigation; and
I had sent the material to Paul Heron at PILC.

The inquiry team therefore did not need to discover years later that I existed or that I might possess relevant evidence. I had approached them myself at the outset.

February 2023: I telephone PILC asking to speak to Paul Heron

Nor did my attempt to engage end in 2022.

A Subject Access Request I later made to the Public Interest Law Centre produced its own internal attendance note concerning a telephone call from me in February 2023.

The note records:

“Telephone call with Alan Wainwright.”

It records that I telephoned the Public Interest Law Centre and requested to speak with Paul Heron.

I was told that Heron was unavailable.

PILC took my telephone number and recorded that I would be available to speak after 1pm on 2 February 2023.

The SAR disclosure contains no subsequent record of Heron returning that call.

This is significant because it provides an independent internal record of another attempt by me to make contact with the inquiry team.

By this point, almost a year had passed since I had first contacted Townsend and Randall myself.

“Four previous internal investigations” — and still no answers

There was another revealing development in early 2023.

Material circulated by Unite Executive Council members Tony Seaman and Frank Morris in connection with the blacklisting campaign stated:

“There have been four previous internal investigations, but none of them got anywhere near the truth.”

That statement is remarkable in the context of the history set out above.

If correct, it means that even people closely involved with the blacklisting campaign were acknowledging that Unite had already conducted four internal investigations without getting “anywhere near the truth”.

That generates obvious questions:

What were those four investigations?
When did each begin and end?
Who conducted them?
What evidence did they collect?
Which union officials were interviewed?
What findings were made?
Where are the reports?
Was all of their underlying evidence supplied to the present inquiry?

And if four earlier investigations had already failed to get “anywhere near the truth”, what safeguards were put in place to ensure the fifth process would be different?

February 2024: almost two years after I approached them, the inquiry finally asks me for evidence

On 6 February 2024, John Carl Townsend finally contacted me directly about providing evidence.

His opening sentence was:

“Firstly, may I apologise that it has taken so long to contact you in order to ask if you would be willing to provide evidence to the inquiry.”

Townsend also expressly acknowledged the contents of my email of 29 March 2022.

He and Randall stated that the inquiry was being conducted independently of Unite and that Unite had not sought to interfere with their investigation.

They said:

“We understand that you may be in a position to provide us with evidence of the type of conduct that we have been tasked with investigating...”

That sentence is central to this chronology.

The inquiry itself was now acknowledging that I might possess evidence of precisely the type of conduct it had been tasked to investigate.

But this was February 2024.

I had first contacted Townsend in March 2022.

I had written again to Townsend and Randall two days later.

I had sent the correspondence directly to Paul Heron and PILC in April 2022.

I had telephoned PILC in February 2023 specifically asking to speak to Heron.

And only then, almost two years after my original approach, did the inquiry formally ask me to provide evidence.

By then I had lost confidence in the process

By February 2024, I no longer had the confidence in the inquiry that I might have had two years earlier.

That is important context for what happened next.

I responded angrily and declined to provide further evidence.

But my refusal did not come at the beginning of the process.

It came after I had spent almost two years trying to engage with the inquiry myself.

There was also another reason why I was deeply concerned about the process.

John Carl Townsend was not encountering the history surrounding my evidence for the first time in 2024.

Townsend had been copied into the February 2016 correspondence between Hugh Tomlinson QC and Unite's barrister Anthony Hudson QC concerning whether I should be relied upon as a witness in the High Court litigation.

In that exchange, Hudson recorded Unite's position:

“Unite are not convinced about the merits of relying / being seen to rely on him.”

He then identified:

“The risk of him giving damaging evidence on limitation and making accusations about union activity...”

Townsend was among the lawyers copied into that exchange.

I do not suggest that being copied into an email means that Townsend agreed with Hudson's assessment or was responsible for Unite's position.

But it does mean that, years before he was appointed to investigate alleged union collusion, Townsend had been included in legal-team correspondence in which the potential consequences of my evidence about “union activity” were being expressly discussed.

That was directly relevant to my concern about being asked to place the same evidence into another Unite-commissioned process.

By February 2024 I had also seen a succession of previous Unite investigations announced without any transparent published findings resolving the allegations.

I had approached the present inquiry's barristers at the outset.

I had contacted its solicitors.

I had telephoned PILC asking to speak directly to Paul Heron.

And throughout that period I had growing concerns about the structure, personnel and history surrounding the process.

My position by February 2024 was therefore straightforward: I had lost faith that this would be anything other than another Unite blacklisting inquiry which would run for years without producing a transparent public account of what it had found.

Townsend responded that evening:

“We will proceed on the basis that you will not be providing evidence.”

That response records the final outcome — but not the history which produced it.

It would therefore be misleading to reduce this sequence to the proposition that the inquiry asked me for evidence and I refused.

The documented chronology is that I approached the inquiry first, repeatedly attempted to engage with members of its legal team, received no substantive engagement for almost two years, and then declined when the inquiry eventually came back to me after my confidence in the process had collapsed.

There is now a further point which cannot be ignored.

More than two and a half years after Townsend finally approached me in February 2024, there is still no published inquiry report.

On 31 July 2026, the inquiry legal team said the report was in its final stages but that a newly emerged “significant line of inquiry” required further investigation.

As of October 2026, the report has still not appeared.

That does not prove every concern I had about the inquiry in February 2024 was correct. But my specific concern that I could become involved in yet another Unite blacklisting inquiry which would continue for years without producing a report has, so far, been borne out by events.

So why did it take almost two years?

The question for the inquiry is simple:

Why did an inquiry established to investigate alleged conduct by trade-union officials wait almost two years to approach me for evidence when I had approached its barristers myself in March 2022, specifically drawing their attention to evidence concerning alleged trade-union-official complicity and the High Court litigation?

Why was my March 2022 correspondence not followed up at the time?

Why did my April 2022 approach to Paul Heron not result in substantive contact?

What happened to the telephone message PILC recorded for Heron in February 2023?

Why, after all of those approaches, was it not until February 2024 that Townsend wrote acknowledging that I might possess evidence:

“of the type of conduct that we have been tasked with investigating”?

And what effect did that delay have on the inquiry's ability to investigate evidence going back to 2005, 2009, 2012, the High Court litigation and the previous Unite inquiries?

The issue is not simply that the inquiry took a long time to contact a witness. It is that the potential witness had been knocking on its door from the beginning.

Questions about the independence and oversight of the present inquiry

My concerns about the present inquiry did not end with the delay in approaching me for evidence.

There were also questions about the structure surrounding the inquiry itself.

When the current inquiry was established in March/April 2022, its legal team included:

John Carl Townsend
Nick Randall KC
Paul Heron of the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC)

The inquiry was publicly presented as independent of Unite.

However, I subsequently identified a relationship which I believed required explanation.

Paul Heron was the founder and lead solicitor at PILC.

He resigned as a director of the previous PILC company on 11 September 2020. On the same day, Suzanne Muna became a director.

Muna subsequently became a Unite Executive Council member and later a trustee of the new PILC charity.

PILC's own reporting also described an oversight structure involving two Unite Executive Committee members from the construction sector and the chair of the Blacklist Support Group.

Those facts do not establish wrongdoing.

They do, however, raise legitimate questions about disclosure, independence and safeguards — particularly given my earlier concerns about who had scoped and overseen the inquiry.

On 15 January 2025, I sent a detailed communication raising those issues directly with Sharon Graham, Stephen Pinder, Suzanne Muna and a wider group of Unite recipients.

The questions remain:

Was the relationship between Muna and PILC considered when the inquiry arrangements were established?
Was it disclosed to those participating in the inquiry?
What safeguards were put in place?
Who were the construction-sector Executive Council members involved in oversight?
What role did they perform?
What information flowed between the oversight structure, Unite and the supposedly independent legal team?

October 2024: Unite secretly restricts and diverts my emails

There is another development which directly affected my attempts to continue raising these issues.

In October 2024, without telling me, Unite took steps to restrict my communications across the union.

I did not discover this until receiving material under a Subject Access Request in April 2025.

An internal communication dated 14 October 2024 stated:

“This member circulates a lot of long abusive and defamatory emails about other members, and about colleagues... It has reached the point when it has to stop.”

It then requested:

“I would like this email account to be blocked from every Unite account apart from that of [redacted].”

The same person stated:

“I review the emails received from time to time...”

The following day, Unite's internal IT correspondence discussed how the restriction should operate.

An IT message explained how a similar arrangement had previously worked:

“What we did for [redacted] is create an internal mailbox, that we diverted all mail to – we them [sic] granted your colleague access to this internal mailbox...”

The IT employee then asked:

“do you want the same setup for alanwainwright1963@gmail.com?”

The response was:

“Thanks and yes.”

Unite's own records therefore describe more than simply an ordinary spam filter.

They describe an internal mailbox, diversion of communications and access being given to selected personnel.

This matters because many of the communications affected concerned the very blacklisting and governance issues examined in this article.

The questions are straightforward:

Who requested the restriction?
Who authorised it?
Who was permitted to continue receiving my emails?
Who was given access to the internal mailbox?
Who reviewed my communications “from time to time”?
Which communications were diverted?
Were emails addressed to Sharon Graham, Stephen Pinder, Executive Council members or the inquiry team affected?
Why was I never told that this exceptional arrangement had been imposed?
Why was no allegation put to me before it happened?

January 2025: what happened to my complaints while the email system was operating?

The chronology becomes particularly important in January 2025.

On 8 January 2025, I submitted a complaint to the Certification Officer concerning Unite and a series of blacklisting-related governance matters.

Sharon Graham and Stephen Pinder were among those copied.

On 10 January 2025, the complaint was being discussed internally within Unite.

An internal email referred to the fact that more than 100 people had received material concerning my complaint and stated:

“I have not acknowledged receipt of the email and do not propose any action.”

Whatever the precise technical operation of the email restriction, the material had therefore plainly been received, read and discussed internally.

Five days later, on 15 January 2025, I sent my separate detailed communication concerning Suzanne Muna, PILC and the independence of the inquiry.

At that stage I still had no idea that my emails had been restricted three months earlier.

That raises further questions:

Who received and read my January 2025 communications?
Were their contents reported to Sharon Graham and Stephen Pinder?
Was my 15 January communication concerning PILC and the inquiry diverted into the internal mailbox?
Was it supplied to the inquiry legal team?
What action, if any, followed?

£1,555,024.56 — what has the present inquiry cost?

I subsequently exercised my statutory rights as a Unite member to inspect accounting information relating to the inquiry.

The records supplied identify expenditure totalling:

£1,555,024.56 including VAT.

The first identifiable posting in the records supplied is dated 17 May 2022.

The final posting is dated 26 January 2026 and relates to work undertaken in December 2025.

The records show a substantial and sustained programme of professional expenditure on the present inquiry.

They also produce two important questions.

First, I can identify no obvious accounting trail in the material supplied for the earlier blacklisting inquiries announced in 2017 and 2019.

Second, I can identify no transaction in the supplied records for inquiry work undertaken during 2026.

That does not prove that no inquiry work occurred in 2026.

There may be delayed invoices, work which had not yet been billed, expenditure recorded under another code or another accounting explanation.

But that is precisely why an explanation is required.

What did Unite receive for more than £1.5 million?

What work was undertaken?

Which lawyers, investigators and other professionals were paid?

What evidence was collected?

What reports, analyses or other work product were produced?

And what accounting evidence exists for work which the inquiry says continued into 2026?

31 July 2026: a “significant line of inquiry” suddenly emerges

On 31 July 2026, the inquiry legal team issued an important public statement.

It said that the inquiry had taken evidence from more than 100 witnesses and reviewed many thousands of pages of material.

It also stated that:

“a significant line of inquiry has recently emerged that requires careful examination.”

The legal team said the report was in its final stages but could not be completed until that new line of inquiry had been concluded.

It also stated that the unfinished report had not been shared with Unite, the Blacklist Support Group, the Oversight Committee or any other party and said:

“There is no intention to suppress the report.”

Those assurances should be recorded fairly.

But the announcement raises obvious questions when placed alongside the accounting records.

If a significant new line of investigation was actively being examined during 2026, where is the corresponding expenditure in the accounting records supplied to me?

Again, there may be a straightforward accounting explanation. But none has yet been provided to me.

The timing also forms part of the chronology.

The statement was issued while Unite members were voting in the union's 2026 General Secretary election. The election result was announced on 12 August 2026.

I make no allegation that the 31 July announcement was made because of the General Secretary election.

But after earlier inquiries and earlier commitments concerning blacklisting, the timing is a legitimate matter to record.

More importantly, the legal team's statement prompts some very specific questions:

What was the “significant line of inquiry”?
When did it first emerge?
Who identified it?
When did the inquiry receive the underlying evidence?
Did it concern alleged conduct, collusion, suppression of evidence or cover-up by any current or former union official?
Was it connected with the Craggs material supplied in December 2024?
Was it connected with evidence from the High Court litigation?
Was it connected with any matter I had raised in 2022, 2023 or January 2025?
Who carried out the subsequent investigative work?
When was that work undertaken?
Where is the corresponding accounting record?
Has that line of inquiry now concluded?
What is now preventing publication of the report?

September 2026: the email restriction is still preventing Unite's Legal Director reading my correspondence

The effect of the October 2024 email restriction continued long after I discovered it.

By 2026, much of my substantive correspondence with Unite Legal Director Stephen Pinder was being conducted by physical letter.

In a letter dated 10 July 2026, Pinder described parts of earlier correspondence as:

“at the least as being unreasonable”

Then, on 14 September 2026, he went considerably further.

He referred to:

“the highly abusive and unreasonable content of your emails”

and said my approach had become:

“increasingly personalised and abusive.”

He then stated that my conduct:

“would have amounted to unlawful harassment”

I responded by physical letter that same day.

I pointed out that no allegation of harassment had ever been put to me at the time, either formally or informally, and that I had never been given an opportunity to respond to such an allegation.

I asked Pinder to identify the specific communications and evidence upon which that serious assertion was based.

His email also revealed something practically important.

Pinder said he had received notification that I had sent another email concerning blacklisting but:

“I am unable to see the text without the system being altered.”

Almost two years after the email restriction had been imposed, it was therefore still preventing Unite's own Legal Director from reading a member's communication concerning the blacklisting issue.

That raises another series of questions:

Which communications are said to have amounted to harassment?
Who was allegedly harassed?
Was any complaint made at the time?
Was it investigated?
Why was the allegation never put to me?
What legal or factual basis supported the September 2026 assertion?
Why was the restriction still preventing Unite's Legal Director from reading relevant correspondence almost two years after it had been imposed?

Twenty years of notice — through multiple routes

It is easy to lose sight of the central issue among the number of inquiries, lawyers, politicians and internal communications involved.

So the chronology should be reduced to its essentials.

Unite and its predecessor union were not told about these concerns once.

They were told repeatedly, through multiple separate routes, over many years.

2005/06: I supplied evidence directly to Amicus officials and wrote to General Secretary Derek Simpson.
2009: Unite's Director of Legal Services asked Christian Matheson and others to establish whether the union had my correspondence and “what happened to them”.
2012: I asked Gail Cartmail to investigate; months later she was recorded telling Umunna's meeting there had been trade-union collusion.
2013: Umunna told Parliament there were allegations of trade-union officials assisting blacklisting; High Court lawyers, the BBC and the Blacklist Support Group separately raised the union-complicity issue.
October 2013: Guney, Clark & Ryan publicly said it had seen evidence implicating Amicus/Unite and UCATT officials.
November 2013: Unite and UCATT entered the High Court litigation.
2014: Simon Reevell said he had personally established trade-union-official complicity at local level.
2016: claimant barristers recorded Unite's concern about using me as a witness because I might make “accusations about union activity”.
2017: I submitted a detailed report to Len McCluskey and another inquiry was announced.
2019: another investigation promised to examine suppression of blacklisting information and to be “full and transparent”.
2022: I approached the present inquiry's barristers myself at the outset.
2023: I telephoned PILC specifically asking to speak to Paul Heron.
2024: the inquiry finally approached me for evidence almost two years after I had approached it.
2025: my Subject Access Request revealed that Unite had secretly restricted and diverted my communications.
2026: after more than £1.5 million of disclosed inquiry expenditure, the report remains unpublished.

The recurring question throughout is the same: who inside Unite received the information, what did they do with it, and has the present inquiry finally reconstructed that chain of knowledge?

Questions for Unite and its £1.5 million inquiry

The evidence set out above now permits some direct questions.

Has the inquiry reconstructed the complete chain of knowledge within Amicus and Unite from 2005 onwards?
Has it established what Christian Matheson did after Unite's Legal Director asked him in 2009 to investigate what had happened to my correspondence?
Has it established why Derek Simpson's replies were missing from my 2013 and 2018 disclosures but were finally produced in 2025?
Has it identified the investigation into union-official complicity which Gail Cartmail was reported to have conducted around 2011, its terms of reference and its findings?
Has Cartmail been asked what evidence lay behind her November 2012 statement that there was “trade union collusion”?
Has the inquiry established whether that evidence was connected with Umunna's Parliamentary statement in January 2013 that trade-union officials were alleged to have assisted blacklisting?
Has it obtained the evidence relied upon by Simon Reevell when he said he had established trade-union-official complicity?
Has it established what happened to the evidence of union complicity after Unite and UCATT joined the High Court litigation in November 2013?
Has it obtained and examined the complete 2016 legal-team correspondence concerning the risk of me making “accusations about union activity”?
Has it identified which Unite officials were involved in the decision not to rely on me as a witness?
Has it established what happened to the findings of the 2017 and 2019 investigations?
Has it obtained all evidence gathered during those investigations?
Has it established what happened to the David Craggs material and why Unite acted promptly on Craggs's complaint about me while no comparable public account exists of action taken for the workers named on those lists?
Why did the current inquiry wait almost two years to approach me after I had contacted its lawyers myself?
What happened to my February 2023 telephone message asking Paul Heron to contact me?
Has the inquiry investigated the effect of Unite's October 2024 email restriction on the flow of relevant evidence and complaints?
Was material I sent in January 2025 supplied to the inquiry?
What was the significant new line of inquiry announced on 31 July 2026?
What work was undertaken on that issue during 2026?
How is that work reflected in the accounting records?
And after £1,555,024.56 of disclosed expenditure, what has the inquiry actually established?

The central question

I have assembled much of the documentary chronology in this article myself.

I have done so without an investigative budget, without compulsory powers and without access to Unite's complete internal records.

Yet the documents already reveal a substantial history of senior union officials, lawyers, campaigners and politicians being told about alleged trade-union involvement in blacklisting.

The question is not whether I can continue finding evidence. The question is whether Unite's £1.5 million inquiry has been looking for the same evidence — and, if so, what it found.

Blacklisted workers have waited long enough.

Right of reply — forthcoming feature documentary

This article forms part of the continuing right-of-reply process for my forthcoming feature documentary:

BLACKLISTING IN THE UK
One man's twenty-year investigation into how our employment blacklists operate.

The film develops the eight-part documentary series I produced in 2021 and includes events which have taken place since then.

This article should therefore be regarded as a fluid document. It will be corrected or updated where further contemporaneous records provide material evidence, context or clarification.

I invite Unite, Sharon Graham, Stephen Pinder, the current inquiry legal team, Christian Matheson, Chuka Umunna, Gail Cartmail and anyone else named in this article to provide any evidence or explanation which they believe materially alters the chronology set out above.

Because of the continuing uncertainty surrounding Unite's email restrictions, I also ask the inquiry legal team — including Nick Randall KC — to ensure that Sharon Graham and Stephen Pinder personally receive the questions and evidence set out in this article.

Any substantive response will be considered fairly and, where relevant, reflected in this article and in the forthcoming documentary.

If Unite's present inquiry has already examined these matters, there is a straightforward way to resolve many of the questions.

Publish what it found.