The Blacklisting Scandal: How Construction Industry Spied on Workers

The Covert Operation of the Consulting Association

One Monday morning in February 2009, four investigators from the Information Commissioner’s office knocked on a door in an alley in Droitwich, West Midlands. It was opened by 66-year-old Ian Kerr. David Clancy, head of investigations at the ICO, had spent months hunting for the Consulting Association, which had no nameplate above its green door and didn’t appear on official records. But this was the epicentre of a 30-year covert operation involving the country’s top construction firms and security services. Eventually the repercussions from this raid would be felt in boardrooms and parliaments around the world.

For 16 years the Consulting Association compiled a secret database on thousands of construction workers. The files in this shabby two-room office had names, addresses and National Insurance numbers, comments by managers, newspaper clippings. The organisation acted as a covert vetting service funded by the industry. When people applied for work on building sites, senior employees at Carillion, Balfour Beatty, Skanska, Kier, Costain, McAlpine and more than 30 other companies would fax their names to the Consulting Association, where Kerr would check his files to see if they matched.

The effect was devastating. The worker had no idea their details were being checked and no way of seeing if the information was accurate. Blacklisting was a secret tool used by companies to keep out people they didn’t like. Those with files were often union members who had raised health-and-safety concerns. There had always been rumours about blacklisting but the files provided evidence.

The official position was that blacklisting didn’t happen. Working on a story for this newspaper in 2008, journalist Phil Chamberlain followed a trail that led him to Manchester, where three electricians sacked from the Royal Infirmary building project successfully argued at an employment tribunal that they had been wrongly dismissed.

There, a former manager gave evidence that blacklisting of union members had occurred. A few days after the Guardian article was published, a member of Clancy’s staff dropped a copy on his desk and the investigation began.

A month after the raid on Consulting Association, the ICO issued enforcement notices against 14 companies, and announced it had seized the covert database of construction industry workers. The files included phrases such as “will cause trouble, strong TU [trade union]”, “ex-shop steward, definite problems” and “Irish ex-army, bad egg”. Some bordered on the ridiculous: “talks like a young Alf Garnett”; “wearsanti-Nazi League badges and insignia”. While it was claimed the system was meant to identify people who might steal or had poor workmanship, the files suggested union membership was the overwhelming criterion for inclusion.

The Devastating Effect of Blacklisting on Workers

But there was also information in the files that could only have come from the security services. Two that raised suspicions were on Frank Smith and his girlfriend,Lisa Teuscher. Frank, a bricklayer, was a political activist who had been involved in anumber of actions calling for better wages and conditions. When in 2012 the Consulting Association’s Kerr appeared before a select committee of MPs that wasinvestigating the practice, he said he had no links with the police, and when Pamela Nash challenged him about a line referring to an individual’s “security clearance”, he asked if he could answer in private. But this wasn’t followed up – and then, two weeks later, Kerr died, reportedly from heart failure.

However, in a posthumously published newspaper interview, Kerr recalled a meeting in 2008 at which construction industry directors were addressed by an officer from the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (Netcu). Kerr said a two-way information exchange began, and disclosed that codes were used to indicate those who were of interest to Special Branch and that “Irish ex-army, bad egg” was an example of this. The information commissioner seized evidence of this meeting and showed it to MPs but has refused Freedom of Information requests.

The involvement of the security services was the most closely guarded secret of the blacklisting scandal. Mark Jenner went by the name Mark Cassidy as an undercover spy for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which was set up in 1968 toinfiltrate protest groups. He turned up at the Colin Roach Centre in north London in1994 posing as a joiner. The centre was home to trade-union campaigns and Jennerferried workers to demonstrations.

Jenner also spied on anti-racism campaigners and some of this information appears to have made its way on to blacklist files. Frank Smith came into contact with the police at an anti-BNP event in 1999 but was not arrested. Yet the incident is recorded in his Consulting Association file, which also describes him as “Under constant watch (officially) and seen as politically dangerous”.

Police spy Peter Francis, who subsequently blew the whistle on SDS activities, which included spying on the family of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, was asked to monitor Smith because of his anti-fascist activities. Yet Smith’s blacklist file describes him as a “leading light” in a group known as the Away Team, which sought to protect anti-fascist activists from attacks. How a manager on a building site would know this is difficult to explain, and Smith and others believe information on their anti-racist activities originated from undercover police Smith’s girlfriend, Teuscher, who is an American citizen, had her own file. Teuscher fought a seven-year battle with the British government against deportation. Now back in the US, she has received a copy of her blacklist file from the ICO and says: “I was shocked when I first read my file. It made me feel physically sick. It’s absurd. I don’t see any reason why my name should be linked with the building industry. I had no professional involvement whatsoever. The only reason I am on the list is because of Frank. And that is not a legitimate reason for the police following me or anybody else making notes on me.”

The Revelation of Blacklisting Scandals

Who could have known private information about Teuscher, who never worked in construction, other than a police source? Scottish politicians Tommy Sheridan and  Colin Fox also had blacklist files despite not working in construction. Kerr told MPs that he held around 200 files on environmental activists that the ICO never seized because they did not open the filing cabinet. Kerr later burned them.

The SDS is notorious for having spied on environmentalists but it was not unusual for its officers to be on picket lines. While its existence was a secret even within Special Branch, its files could have been available to other desks, such as the industrial section, whose sole purpose was to spy on trade unions.

When people applied for work on building sites, employees at Carillion, Balfour Beatty, Skanska, Kier, Costain, McAlpine and more than 30 other companies would fax their names to the Consulting Association, where Kerr would check his files to see if they matched.

The authors of this article requested any files on the campaigners in the Blacklist Support Group from several police forces, which all said they would “neither confirm nor deny” that they held such information. The group believes it is the target of ongoing police surveillance. A request by Dave Smith under the Data Protection Act for information held on him by the police was refused because it might jeopardise ongoing criminal investigations.

In 2012 a solicitor complained on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group about collusion between the police and Consulting Association. This was passed to the Independent Police Complaints Authority, which said “it was likely that all Special Branches were involved in providing information about potential employees”. Operation Herne, which was set up to look into the activities of undercover officers, and which is being boycotted by the Blacklist Support Group and other affected groups, says there is no such evidence.

We don’t suggest that any undercover police officer directly passed information to the Consulting Association. Undercover police officers spied on union activists, and their intelligence was added to Special Branch files. The industrial section of Special Branch passed on some of this information to construction industry managers, including Dudley Barrett. Peter Francis says: “I would like somebody independent of the police to forensically examine all the blacklisting files, to be cross-referenced with Special Branch records to look at the areas of collusion.”

In March 2014, home secretary Theresa May announced a public inquiry into undercover policing. Campaigners say victims should assist with drawing up the remit to ensure it encompasses all aspects, including collusion with blacklisting of trade unionists.

Five years after the ICO raid, nearly half the 3,213 people with Consulting Association files have still to be traced. While some aspects of the blacklisting have been investigated, there are many loose ends. What happened to all the minutes of Consulting Association meetings? Not one scrap of paper has so far been disclosed by any of the firms.

Group litigation is likely to go to full trial this year. Employment tribunals are ongoing and claims to the European Court of Human Rights are waiting to be heard. Balfour Beatty is the only firm to have defended its use of the Consulting Association. CEO Andrew McNaughton expressed regret but claimed it was the consequence of “an extremely difficult industrial-relations climate that had an adverse effect not only our company, but on our industry, our customers and the country as a whole”. To this day, no blacklisting firm has made a public apology to the workers whose lives they ruined.

Steve Acheson, a 61-year-old electrician from Denton, south Manchester, believes the blacklist was the reason he got only 36 weeks’ employment over a nine-year period. After the blacklist was shut down in 2009, he said: “I’ve been angry for so long. It affects your character and demeanour – it’s the fact it’s so blatantly unjust … I’ve been at snapping point a few times. You’ve got a job, then you haven’t got a job.

Helen Steel is a longstanding environmental and social justice campaigner, and became known as one of the two “McLibel” defendants sued by burger giants

McDonald’s in the 1990s. It was the longest civil trial in English history, and cost the fast-food chain millions in legal fees. She is currently suing the police after she discovered that her one-time boyfriend was an undercover policeman, John Dines. Steel found herself on the blacklist and believes information on it originated from the police.