Shropshire Star

GMB demands information on police role in blacklisting scandal

The union said the blacklisting of building workers is the greatest employment scandal of the past 50 years.

Published
The blacklist mainly concerned construction workers (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

A leading trade union is stepping up calls for details of the role played by police in the secret blacklisting of thousands of construction workers and environmental campaigners.

The GMB said the secret file kept on more than 3,200 mainly building workers was the “greatest employment scandal” of the past 50 years.

It has recently been revealed that Special Branch officers passed information to a controversial network that blacklisted construction workers, although there is no evidence it had been systemic.

Scotland Yard said allegations about police involvement with the blacklist will be fully explored during a current public inquiry into undercover policing.

Lawyers Leigh Day, acting for the GMB, have filed a Freedom of Information request for the Metropolitan Police’s full internal report and emails and details of any meetings with blacklisting organisations.

Workers on the list say they were denied employment.

Justin Bowden, national officer of the GMB, said that “3,213 secretly blacklisted construction workers and environmentalists deserve to know exactly what role the police played in supplying information about them to the construction companies.

“They have a right to know who, what, where, when and why information was shared between the police and the construction companies.

“It is now time for Scotland Yard to make public everything that they did and come clean about their part in the greatest employment scandal of the past 50 years.”

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