12 ms·

London Metropolitan Police admits role in blacklisting construction workers

182 points by cogs 9y ago

cogs 9y ago
Apparently this was on the BBC front page this morning, but somehow I blinked and missed it. I don't have any trade union axe to grind, but I'm pretty shocked both by the security services behaviour, and by the lack of coverage this is getting. Whatever your opinion on trade unions, it's a pretty fundamental threat to democracy when the security services monitor legal behaviour and can destroy someone's livelihood for behaviour they disapprove of. And .. why isn't this on the BBC News front page all day? I get most of my news there, and now I worry how many other democracy-shaking stories I might have missed.
- ianopolous 9y ago
  The BBC is notoriously biased for the government. I stopped reading anything from them after their appalling coverage of the Snowden revelations.
  - alex_hitchins 9y ago
    bbc.gov.uk
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - alex_hitchins 9y ago
      The BBC is a Statutory corporation run also by Royal Charter.
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    More details on why this was appalling, please.
    - ianopolous 9y ago
      Factually wrong in many cases, always in the government's favour. Very biased language and framing. Many things not reported at all, or reported very late. The first few results from search are pretty indicative: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24464286 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24464286 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24486649 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24486649 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24454918/ex-gchq-chief-nobody-is-reading-all-your-emails http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24454918/ex-gchq-chief-nobod...
  - cryptokush 9y ago
    Same with me, I also stopped trusting BBC news after Snowden, it shockingly revealled their heavy establishment bias.
- wallace_f 9y ago
  >why isn't this on the BBC News front page all day? I remember this clip of Trump boasting of oppressing someone[1] and wondered why the media didn't grab a stronger hold of it. 1-https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/07/513976112/trump-jokes-of-state-senator-well-destroy-his-career https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/07/513976112...
  - mastax 9y ago
    'Trump says bad thing' is almost not even news anymore. You'd have to have a daily quote or something. Stick it next to the weather.
    - wallace_f 9y ago
      Some things are worse than others. In my mind, the only worse thing he could have said was that he would have him quartered, drawn and hanged.
      - zaroth 9y ago
        Part of why Trump was elected is his lack of filter. He says what is on his mind, he’s not afraid of being politically incorrect, and he’s a sarcastic motherfucker. The next few years will show us one way or the other, with North Korea, with China, with Iran, with Mexico, with Israel/Palestinians whether a guy who doesn’t act “Presidential” can make big things happen for the USA. The tax cuts were enormous. We’ll see how the tariffs work out but even Schumer is congratulating Trump for them. I think NK could work out pretty well too. When Trump makes politically incorrect jokes to either get his point across, or to rattle his opponents, I think it only advances his agenda when media insist on taking a literal interpretation. MET Police special forces infiltrate unions and blacklist workers is “real” news. Taking a joke Trump makes and quoting it like a serious statement of intention, like “Trump says we should try out China’s Xi-style ‘President for life’” is what we call fake news. Just like Trump joking “maybe Russia can recover those 30,000 emails Hillary deleted” the people who vote for Trump laugh and get the point — the obvious crime that gets ignored - while Trump haters consider the statement an actual endorsement. It’s nothing more than a Rorschach test.
- cogs 9y ago
  Oh, and my original title made clear, although the BBC title which HN has now imposed did not: this was done by Special Branch. Special Branch are the police arm of the UK domestic security services, not the kind of neighbourhood police implied by the name "Metropolitan Police"
  - OJFord 9y ago
    > not the kind of neighbourhood police implied by the name "Metropolitan Police" Where 'neighbourhood' is the largest and capital city, and 'police' is the largest force in the country.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - Bartweiss 9y ago
      Largest, capital, and most surveilled! I know Europeans often talk about discomfort with US police - their prevalence and armament, mostly - but London in turn never ceases to shock me with the sheer density of cameras. The Metropolitan Police have never felt even a bit 'neighborhood' to me.
      - PaulKeeble 9y ago
        Considering some of them seem to patrol tube stations at rush hour with MP5 sub machine guns they aren't exactly warm and cuddly friendly police either. Fact is in a busy station on a morning even if you knew someone was a terrorist and could see him you couldn't actually shoot him without gunning down about 30 civilians between you and the bad guy. An MP5's on display is a show of force against the populace not a reassuring sign of protection.
        stordoff 9y ago
        > Fact is in a busy station on a morning even if you knew someone was a terrorist and could see him you couldn't actually shoot him without gunning down about 30 civilians between you and the bad guy. The Met use the MP5SF (Single-fire) variant (routinely anyway - I'd imagine they have access to other weapons for specific situations), so it isn't necessarily accurate to refer to it as an SMG. It'd take serious misuse of such a weapon to end up gunning down 30 civilians. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/met-armed-police-patrols-london https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/met-armed-police-...
- darrenf 9y ago
  FWIW, it was one of the main stories on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, which means it reached a very large number of people. And it's linked on both the England and Politics index pages, albeit top story on neither.
  - cogs 9y ago
    It's not on the BBC News England page now (8 hours after story was posted in the early morning UK time). I did find it, as you say on the Politics page, and yes it was one of the smaller headlines with the title "Police admit role in blacklisting workers". Nothing to imply the security services were involved or that there was a risk to our democracy, sounds more like they keep a list of people who do a bad job painting police stations. I would go to the politics page if I wanted to follow the twists and turns of UK politics. I wouldn't expect to have to go there to find out something so serious. I guess I'm going to have to look again at where I get my news. The Today programme is very good, but I can't scan it like I can a webpage, so I don't listen often.
- icu 9y ago
  I'm honestly glad that this sorry state of affairs is cause for you to openly question a major source of your media consumption. I'd really encourage you to not stop there and discover for yourself, by your own words, the plethora of "democracy-shaking stories" you have indeed missed from the BBC. Personally I use the British Brain-washing Corporation (and other news outlets) as a way of orientating what narratives are being spun to the public, and what narratives not to pay attention to.
pjc50 9y ago
This is another one of those stories that ought to be shocking but is unlikely to move the dial. While the UK police are generally not that corrupt, Special Branch enjoy secrecy and closeness to power, which they interpret as a license to commit crimes against leftwing groups they consider anti-government. There's a long history of this from complicity in murders in Northern Ireland to present day highly intrusive surveillance against demonstrators. > Evidence given to Parliament suggested that one undercover officer who infiltrated Mr Smith's union was Mark "Cassidy" Jenner, a member of Scotland Yard's now disbanded Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). That's the Mark Jenner who also spent years having a relationship with the environmental activists he was spying on, the subject of a separate set of court cases and inquiries. See also Hillsborough and the Miner's Strike. (Oh, and disrupting the possibility of effective union action has been a priority of the government since the days of Thatcher)
- mtgx 9y ago
  > Special Branch enjoy secrecy and closeness to power Yeah, but they operate in secret, which means there can't be any transparency, because that would reveal their operations and whatnot, and we wouldn't want that. Also, they're "just doing their jobs." Literally what all short-sighted surveillance defenders always say in such cases.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- lmm 9y ago
  > This is another one of those stories that ought to be shocking but is unlikely to move the dial. No. This is an outrage and the British people will rightly be outraged. The effects of this will and should be felt in the next election and beyond. Your sophisticated world-weary cynicism is counterproductive.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    I'd like to be wrong, but I suspect that outside of people who are already in the labour movement, nobody will be talking about this next week let alone the next election. How much of a role did SDS play at the last election, when that was already known about? It's been ""known"" for years that Special Branch helped murder people in Northern Ireland, and outside the republican community and the small subset of mainland "left" that pays attention, it makes no difference. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/how-special-branch-betrayed-the-police-34855866.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/how... (Far too many of the "british people" read rightwing press outlets which will minimise this and some other issue, probably Brexit, to rile up their readers to demand more not less authoritarianism)
jaweb 9y ago
Worth also noting - there are strong signs that this blacklisting is still continuing, despite the court cases (although not necessarily with involvement from the police) - https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/blacklisting-battles-continue https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/blacklistin...
alkonaut 9y ago
They were blacklisted because they were organized? Aren't almost all construction workers organized?
- dazc 9y ago
  No, since most construction companies in the UK do not directly employ construction personnel. Many work indirectly though employment agencies or as 'self-employed' sub-contractors. The blacklist is a legacy of different times when this wasn't so.
squozzer 9y ago
>"We were told, things like that don't happen here." The perfect epitaph for Western Civilization.
Spearchucker 9y ago
Just moved from London to the continent because of Brexit. And it's amazing how quickly I stopped giving a damn about stories like this one since the move. I pity the victims though.
- cat199 9y ago
  ... yes, certainly there are no elites scheming in concert to illegally protect their self interest on the continent.
- detritus 9y ago
  Congratulations?
aoeudnhtaeun4n 9y ago
> It uncovered a list of more than 3,000 workers - which in some instances also included details of personal relationships and their political activity as well as their trade union links on building sites This is what I think the average person doesn't understand about pervasive surveillance. This is the kind of shit that it causes. When the government has to know who you're sleeping with, where or whether you pray, who you associate with, etc., it always ends up with this kind of shit. Usually worse.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Eventually, much worse. When civil rights are squandered now, they are squandered for those to come as well. The converse is also the case.

182 points by cogs 9y ago

cogs 9y ago

Apparently this was on the BBC front page this morning, but somehow I blinked and missed it. I don't have any trade union axe to grind, but I'm pretty shocked both by the security services behaviour, and by the lack of coverage this is getting. Whatever your opinion on trade unions, it's a pretty fundamental threat to democracy when the security services monitor legal behaviour and can destroy someone's livelihood for behaviour they disapprove of. And .. why isn't this on the BBC News front page all day? I get most of my news there, and now I worry how many other democracy-shaking stories I might have missed.

ianopolous 9y ago
The BBC is notoriously biased for the government. I stopped reading anything from them after their appalling coverage of the Snowden revelations.
- alex_hitchins 9y ago
  bbc.gov.uk
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - alex_hitchins 9y ago
    The BBC is a Statutory corporation run also by Royal Charter.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  More details on why this was appalling, please.
  - ianopolous 9y ago
    Factually wrong in many cases, always in the government's favour. Very biased language and framing. Many things not reported at all, or reported very late. The first few results from search are pretty indicative: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24464286 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24464286 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24486649 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24486649 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24454918/ex-gchq-chief-nobody-is-reading-all-your-emails http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24454918/ex-gchq-chief-nobod...
- cryptokush 9y ago
  Same with me, I also stopped trusting BBC news after Snowden, it shockingly revealled their heavy establishment bias.
wallace_f 9y ago
>why isn't this on the BBC News front page all day? I remember this clip of Trump boasting of oppressing someone[1] and wondered why the media didn't grab a stronger hold of it. 1-https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/07/513976112/trump-jokes-of-state-senator-well-destroy-his-career https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/07/513976112...
- mastax 9y ago
  'Trump says bad thing' is almost not even news anymore. You'd have to have a daily quote or something. Stick it next to the weather.
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Some things are worse than others. In my mind, the only worse thing he could have said was that he would have him quartered, drawn and hanged.
    - zaroth 9y ago
      Part of why Trump was elected is his lack of filter. He says what is on his mind, he’s not afraid of being politically incorrect, and he’s a sarcastic motherfucker. The next few years will show us one way or the other, with North Korea, with China, with Iran, with Mexico, with Israel/Palestinians whether a guy who doesn’t act “Presidential” can make big things happen for the USA. The tax cuts were enormous. We’ll see how the tariffs work out but even Schumer is congratulating Trump for them. I think NK could work out pretty well too. When Trump makes politically incorrect jokes to either get his point across, or to rattle his opponents, I think it only advances his agenda when media insist on taking a literal interpretation. MET Police special forces infiltrate unions and blacklist workers is “real” news. Taking a joke Trump makes and quoting it like a serious statement of intention, like “Trump says we should try out China’s Xi-style ‘President for life’” is what we call fake news. Just like Trump joking “maybe Russia can recover those 30,000 emails Hillary deleted” the people who vote for Trump laugh and get the point — the obvious crime that gets ignored - while Trump haters consider the statement an actual endorsement. It’s nothing more than a Rorschach test.
cogs 9y ago
Oh, and my original title made clear, although the BBC title which HN has now imposed did not: this was done by Special Branch. Special Branch are the police arm of the UK domestic security services, not the kind of neighbourhood police implied by the name "Metropolitan Police"
- OJFord 9y ago
  > not the kind of neighbourhood police implied by the name "Metropolitan Police" Where 'neighbourhood' is the largest and capital city, and 'police' is the largest force in the country.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    Largest, capital, and most surveilled! I know Europeans often talk about discomfort with US police - their prevalence and armament, mostly - but London in turn never ceases to shock me with the sheer density of cameras. The Metropolitan Police have never felt even a bit 'neighborhood' to me.
    - PaulKeeble 9y ago
      Considering some of them seem to patrol tube stations at rush hour with MP5 sub machine guns they aren't exactly warm and cuddly friendly police either. Fact is in a busy station on a morning even if you knew someone was a terrorist and could see him you couldn't actually shoot him without gunning down about 30 civilians between you and the bad guy. An MP5's on display is a show of force against the populace not a reassuring sign of protection.
      - stordoff 9y ago
        > Fact is in a busy station on a morning even if you knew someone was a terrorist and could see him you couldn't actually shoot him without gunning down about 30 civilians between you and the bad guy. The Met use the MP5SF (Single-fire) variant (routinely anyway - I'd imagine they have access to other weapons for specific situations), so it isn't necessarily accurate to refer to it as an SMG. It'd take serious misuse of such a weapon to end up gunning down 30 civilians. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/met-armed-police-patrols-london https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/met-armed-police-...
darrenf 9y ago
FWIW, it was one of the main stories on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, which means it reached a very large number of people. And it's linked on both the England and Politics index pages, albeit top story on neither.
- cogs 9y ago
  It's not on the BBC News England page now (8 hours after story was posted in the early morning UK time). I did find it, as you say on the Politics page, and yes it was one of the smaller headlines with the title "Police admit role in blacklisting workers". Nothing to imply the security services were involved or that there was a risk to our democracy, sounds more like they keep a list of people who do a bad job painting police stations. I would go to the politics page if I wanted to follow the twists and turns of UK politics. I wouldn't expect to have to go there to find out something so serious. I guess I'm going to have to look again at where I get my news. The Today programme is very good, but I can't scan it like I can a webpage, so I don't listen often.
icu 9y ago
I'm honestly glad that this sorry state of affairs is cause for you to openly question a major source of your media consumption. I'd really encourage you to not stop there and discover for yourself, by your own words, the plethora of "democracy-shaking stories" you have indeed missed from the BBC. Personally I use the British Brain-washing Corporation (and other news outlets) as a way of orientating what narratives are being spun to the public, and what narratives not to pay attention to.

pjc50 9y ago

This is another one of those stories that ought to be shocking but is unlikely to move the dial. While the UK police are generally not that corrupt, Special Branch enjoy secrecy and closeness to power, which they interpret as a license to commit crimes against leftwing groups they consider anti-government. There's a long history of this from complicity in murders in Northern Ireland to present day highly intrusive surveillance against demonstrators. > Evidence given to Parliament suggested that one undercover officer who infiltrated Mr Smith's union was Mark "Cassidy" Jenner, a member of Scotland Yard's now disbanded Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). That's the Mark Jenner who also spent years having a relationship with the environmental activists he was spying on, the subject of a separate set of court cases and inquiries. See also Hillsborough and the Miner's Strike. (Oh, and disrupting the possibility of effective union action has been a priority of the government since the days of Thatcher)

mtgx 9y ago
> Special Branch enjoy secrecy and closeness to power Yeah, but they operate in secret, which means there can't be any transparency, because that would reveal their operations and whatnot, and we wouldn't want that. Also, they're "just doing their jobs." Literally what all short-sighted surveillance defenders always say in such cases.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
lmm 9y ago
> This is another one of those stories that ought to be shocking but is unlikely to move the dial. No. This is an outrage and the British people will rightly be outraged. The effects of this will and should be felt in the next election and beyond. Your sophisticated world-weary cynicism is counterproductive.
- pjc50 9y ago
  I'd like to be wrong, but I suspect that outside of people who are already in the labour movement, nobody will be talking about this next week let alone the next election. How much of a role did SDS play at the last election, when that was already known about? It's been ""known"" for years that Special Branch helped murder people in Northern Ireland, and outside the republican community and the small subset of mainland "left" that pays attention, it makes no difference. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/how-special-branch-betrayed-the-police-34855866.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/how... (Far too many of the "british people" read rightwing press outlets which will minimise this and some other issue, probably Brexit, to rile up their readers to demand more not less authoritarianism)

jaweb 9y ago

Worth also noting - there are strong signs that this blacklisting is still continuing, despite the court cases (although not necessarily with involvement from the police) - https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/blacklisting-battles-continue https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/blacklistin...

alkonaut 9y ago

They were blacklisted because they were organized? Aren't almost all construction workers organized?

dazc 9y ago
No, since most construction companies in the UK do not directly employ construction personnel. Many work indirectly though employment agencies or as 'self-employed' sub-contractors. The blacklist is a legacy of different times when this wasn't so.

squozzer 9y ago

>"We were told, things like that don't happen here." The perfect epitaph for Western Civilization.

Spearchucker 9y ago

Just moved from London to the continent because of Brexit. And it's amazing how quickly I stopped giving a damn about stories like this one since the move. I pity the victims though.

cat199 9y ago
... yes, certainly there are no elites scheming in concert to illegally protect their self interest on the continent.
detritus 9y ago
Congratulations?

aoeudnhtaeun4n 9y ago

> It uncovered a list of more than 3,000 workers - which in some instances also included details of personal relationships and their political activity as well as their trade union links on building sites This is what I think the average person doesn't understand about pervasive surveillance. This is the kind of shit that it causes. When the government has to know who you're sleeping with, where or whether you pray, who you associate with, etc., it always ends up with this kind of shit. Usually worse.

jessaustin 9y ago
Eventually, much worse. When civil rights are squandered now, they are squandered for those to come as well. The converse is also the case.