Blacklist was used unlawfully and funded by big firms to deny employment to trade unionists

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Scotland Yard has admitted that police officers are likely to have passed personal information to a covert blacklisting operation that was funded by major firms.

The blacklist was used unlawfully by the firms to deny employment to many trade unionists for long periods of time.

An internal police investigation found evidence that “revealed a potentially improper flow of information” from police to outside organisations which ultimately appeared on the blacklist.

In a letter outlining the conclusions of the investigation, a senior Metropolitan police officer wrote that the allegation that the police had supplied confidential information to the blacklist was “on the balance of probabilities ... proven”.

Richard Martin, a deputy assistant commissioner at the Met, added that police could have been prosecuted for unlawfully passing on information in at least one case.

The information was likely to have been supplied by the Met’s special branch, the secretive police division which monitored political campaigners, according to Martin.

The admissions have been hailed by blacklisted workers as a vindication of their long-standing suspicions and have followed a series of denials by the police.

Dave Smith, of the Blacklist Support Group, which represents the trade unionists, said: “We have waited six years for this. When we first talked about police collusion in blacklisting, people looked at us as if we were conspiracy theorists.”

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Scotland Yard has been sitting on the results of the internal investigation since it was completed two years ago. The report of its conclusions was submitted solely to the then Met commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, “due to its sensitivity”, said Martin.



The investigation had been started in 2012 after the blacklisted workers lodged a complaint.

Large firms are known to have funded the clandestine blacklist since at least the 1970s. Files were kept on thousands of workers logging details of their workplace activities such as their concerns over safety on sites, their disputes with managers, and support for their union.

Companies secretly checked the potential employees against these files and those deemed to be politically troublesome were barred from getting work, without them knowing why. Many said their lives had been ruined.

The blacklisting operation was found to be unlawful and closed down in 2009 by the Information Commissioner’s Office after publication of an article in the Guardian.

The privacy watchdog discovered that the blacklist, operating under the anodyne name of the Consulting Association since the early 1990s, had been financed by more than 40 construction firms. An investigator who maintained the files was fined £5,000.

In 2016, the firms apologised in court and paid about £75m to more than 700 blacklisted workers. An earlier incarnation of the blacklist, known as the Economic League, had been running since at least the 1970s, the firms admitted.

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In his letter to the Blacklist Support Group, Martin does not detail the evidence of the collusion between special branch and the blacklist, nor did he release a copy of the report of the investigation.

Martin said: “There appears to be a case to answer for unauthorised sharing of information under the Data Protection Act 1984.” He added that the incident happened before the act came into force, but “if the act had been in place there would have been a breach”.

He said that police throughout the UK had “both overt and covert contact” with outside organisations, including the Economic League.

He said the potentially improper flow of information from special branch did not “appear to be systematic … although there were established forms of contact and protocols in place with regard to the exchange of information, the possibility of officers passing on information without direct permission could not be discounted”.

