Sparks off the Rock

THE row over some of Rupert Murdoch's minions routinely tapping telephones for their stories has brought diverse reactions. A journalist friend, inclined perhaps to defend his colleagues rather than consider how his skills (not to mention scruples) were being rendered redundant, has remarked on the hypocrisy of those in government who authorise telephone tapping and surveillance of mere working folk and political dissidents, yet show outrage on hearing it is done to them,as well as showbiz celebs.

On the other hand, many people point to what seems like police reluctance to go into this, compared to the alacrity with which others are prosecuted. "I wonder what the News of the World has on the Yard?", asked one cheeky letter writer. Whatever it is, those of us who remember the charging police horses outside Fort Wapping tend to assume that, broken laws or not, the Met and Murdoch's merry men and women understand they are on the same side.

Britain is said to have more surveillance than any other country. For my generation "Big Brother" held menace, for the young it's just a naff television programme offering instant "celebrity" to anyone desperate for attention. The way some people use their mobiles you can listen into them from a distance whether you like it or not, without needing any bugging equipment, though what with the over-acting performance I sometimes suspect if you could hear the other end it would just be a clear voice saying "the time now is...exactly".

But those of us who do worry about surveillance and eavesdropping are aware that they are often linked with the other, less entertaining aspects of Big Brother, such as police repression and blacklisting. Now and then the kind of thing we all suspect, or know, goes on comes into the public gaze, and people who have previously sneered that we were paranoid turn to shrugging and saying "of course, so what?", even "don't you think it is justified?"


Back in December I wrote about a new little book that was out, telling how the British government insisted on a Gibraltarian trade unionist, Albert Fava, being removed from his home and exiled , perhaps because he was too good at organising.
http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2008/12/labour-in-government-and-rights-on-rock.html

That happened in 1948, and yes we had a Labour government then. As we did when Brian Bamford had his experience, as he tells in the Summer issue of Northern Voices magazine.

"One Saturday morning in the Summer of 1967, I met Alberto Risso, then boss of the Gibraltar branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union and Gibraltar's Minister of Labour, outside the Town Hall on Main Street, Gibraltar . We were there to get the aid of Sir Joshua Hassan, who became Gibraltar's Chief Minister, to help me to continue to work as an electrician and let my young family stay in Gibraltar. Our residence permit had been cancelled by the British authorities".

Albert Fava's expulsion was ordered on the basis of intercepted correspondence with British trades unionists and the Communist Party. In Brian's case, as he was told by Alberto Risso, the authorities knew he was "not a communist", but they saw him as a "dangerous anarchist". As Brian recalls, this was at a time when General Franco was stepping up pressure on Gibraltar and about to close the frontier. Faced with a hostile fascist dictator, the British Foreign Office and security services naturally had to clamp down on Franco's enemies, the communists and anarchists!

Harold Wilson's Labour government was in office. Back in Manchester, Brian, the "dangerous anarchist" had been involved in the 1960 engineering apprentices' strike, and had served four days in Strangeways for taling part in a Ban-the-Bomb sit-down in 1962. So now he was blackballed to prevent him working in Her Majesty's Dockyard, or for any of the contractors engaged in government work. A memo was sent out to local firms warning them not to employ this man.

He managed to get a job as an electrician with Gibraltar City Council, but that was when the British government stepped in with its powers to take away Brian and his family's residence permit.

What prompted Brian to recall this episode was the raid on the Droitwich premises of a Mr.Ian Kerr and the Consulting Association which led to Kerr's appearance in court in May and his case being sent to Crown Court for prosecution. Kerr had begun with the right-wing Economic League, which gathered and circulated information on thousands of people it considered left-wing "subversives", and had its activities funded by some of the leading names in British business. .After the League was officially wound up in 1993, Kerr set up his own operation, with building firms like Costain, Laing, Balfour Beatty and McAlpine as clients, pooling informaton and paying for dirt on job applicants.

For their £3,000 a year plus £2.20 per inquiry they could receive information such as that so-and-so was "Irish, ex-army, bad egg", or someone else an "ex-shop steward". There were files on more than 3,200 people. Some workers were listed for going to employment tribunals or even raising health and safety issues.

Blacklisting is not illegal - the Labour government resisted calls from trade unionists to outlaw the banning of workers from jobs in its 1999 Employment Act, claiming it did not have enough evidence of the practice. Kerr was raided and faces prosecution under the Data Protection Act, for keeping information on computer about individuals, without their knowledge, and denying the existence of these files.

One group of workers for whom the news of the blacklist was not news were some of Brian Bamford's fellow electricians in Manchester area, who have been in dispute at the Royal Infirmary site since 2006. Sure enough their names appeared in the files. Steve Acheson, secretary of the Manchester contracting branch of my own union Unite is described as a master militant. The workers' suspicion that they were blacklisted had already been confirmed when former Haden Young manager Alan Wainwright accused his company -Balfour Beatty's electrical subsidiary - of fraud and blacklisting. Wainwright said they employed a firm to gather information, and he released names of 1,000 electricians on the blacklist. He lost an unfair dismissal claim against Hayden Young, and now it is understood his own name is on the blacklist.

One entry quoted by Brian Bamford says that "EPIU site activity in Manchester is in the hands of **** *****, and other role apart from becoming an anarchist, is to travel around the country addressing meeetings."
Clearly, a dangerous type!

The Electrical and Plumbing Industries Union(EPIU), formed when the EETPU electrical union was expelled from the TUC after Wapping, merged into the TGWU which is now part of Unite the Union. The EETPU meanwhile had merged with the engineers' union, and thus via Amicus is part of Unite's other wing. Brian notes that UCATT, the building union, is campaigning for blacklisting to be made unlawful. He wonders why Unite isn't doing more.

For now, this is a free country. You're free, more or less, to say what you like, to object to unsafe working conditions, for instance, and to join a trade union. If you gather some mates to picket, say, or go to another place to persuade others to come out, you may be accused of "conspiracy", as the Shrewsbury building workers were, and if you stop work in solidarity with others you may be in breach of the laws on secondary action, as we saw when airport workers were forbidden to come out in support of fellow workers - some of them family members -sacked by catering firm Gate Gourmet. The employers on the other hand can band together to exchange information and deny employment to someone, preventing that person earning their livelihood and providing for their family. But that is not considered "violence", or "conspiracy", and the threat that persuades you to keep your mouth shut and "nose clean" if you want to work, is not considered intimidation. Of course it is not illegal.

See also:
Haden Youngs whistleblower:
http://www.cnplus.co.uk/news/haden-young-director-tells-tribunal-that-firm-used-blacklisting-company/374072.article


Kerr in court:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/27/construction-worker-blacklist-database1

UCATT leader on blacklist:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/features/blacklist_shame

To contact Northern Voices, e-mail northernvoices@hotmail.com

Labour in government, and rights on the Rock

EVERY timed I walk into the headquarters of my trade union, the TGWU-Unite, I pass the bust of a former British Foreign Secretary. No, it is not the late Robin Cook, whom the union once sponsored, and who will be remembered for his talk of a "moral dimension" to foreign policy and for resigning Tony Liar Blair's cabinet rather than support the Iraq war.

It is former TGWU general secretary Ernest Bevin, who became Churchill's wartime Labour Minister, then Attlee's Foreign Minister, supporting NATO and Cold War, and expecting the US to back British Empire in return for bases against the Soviet Union.

Bevin still has his devotees. Besides the bust you pass in the TGWU's foyer, another was ordered by Robin Cook when he moved into the Foreign Office. A couple of years ago TGWU officials wanted a Workers Memorial Day march, heading for the statue of the unknown building worker at Tower Hill, to pay homage en route to Bevin's statue in Tooley Street, Southwark. (This may have been a matter of prestige, because the building worker's statue is regarded as a UCATT property, rather than anything to do with Bevin's contribution to workplace safety. Union officials are like that). There's even an Ernest Bevin Society, though I'm not sure what relationship its curious politics have to the man himself, let alone the union .
http://ltureview.com/index.php

That aside, one episode in Bevin's career, the former union leader's treatment 60 years ago of a fellow-trade unionist, has been brought to light in recently-released government files in Britain and Gibraltar. The Shameful Deportation of a Trade Union Leader, the story of Albert Fava", is the title of a pamphlet on this subject by Jonathan Jeffries and Dr. Tom Sibley, and I'm glad to note that my union, the T&G Unite, is sponsoring it.

Writing in the Morning Star on November 27, Tom Sibley says: "IT WAS a shameful attack on trade union and human rights. It was carried out by a British Labour government whose foreign secretary was the legendary ex-trade union leader Ernest Bevin. The victim was Gibraltarian Albert Fava".
http://www.rinf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5422

In the immediate post-war years, Gibraltar became an important centre of trade union and anti-colonial struggle, but it was also of course of key strategic importance to Britain and the United States.

Like many Gibraltarians, Albert Fava had been evacuated to Britain during the second world war, when the colony was full of forces personnel. Working in this country he became active in the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), and joined the Communist Party.

In July 1948 he returned to Gibralter to take up the post of general secretary of the Gibraltar Confederation of Labour (GCL). Within three months, he had reorganised and revitalised the organisation.

The British authorities were watching closely.

A colonial minister wrote to the then TUC general secretary: "As a result of Fava's personality, energy and knowledge of trade unions, the membership has increased and members began to pay their subs more regularly ... great activity was set on foot and Fava attempted to introduce many trade union practices employed in the UK."

This might have seemed all in his favour. Gibraltar workers may have thought so. But the British government - a Labour government - feared that the growing confidence of Gibraltar labour, combined with aspirations to democratic rights and self-determination, would endanger the security of fortress Gibraltar.

Following consultation with British ministers, the governor decided to use his powers to eject Fava as "an undesirable." The authorities moved quickly, so as not to give the workers movement in Britain or Gibraltar time to build up a campaign against deportation. "On October 9 1948, within a week of the order being issued, Fava was sent packing with his wife and three children on the first available ship to Britain".

The British authorities were anxious to stress that Fava had been exiled, not because of his trade union role but because of his activities as a Communist. The governor wrote to British colonial secretary Creech Jones.

"There is adequate evidence that he is maintaining a political correspondence with communistic elements abroad and I am satisfied that, under cover of genuine trade union activity and in accordance with the usual communist infiltration into local labour organisations, is endeavouring to sow the seeds of discord and to make mischief in local industrial circles."

The governor never published his "evidence," even when challenged by the GCL leadership to do so, and he refused to allow any independent scrutiny of the sources for his allegation.

Secret service files reveal a letter from the Communist Party's London offices at King Street wishing Fava well in his new job and a letter to the Fire Brigades Union, then under Communist Party leadership, asking for technical trade union advice. This is the only evidence of correspondence with "communistic elements abroad."

"It is hard to see how Fava could have been accused of infiltrating the GCL after being appointed general secretary. Meanwhile, sowing discord and making mischief is what trade union leaders in the colonies were always accused of simply for doing their job by raising demands on behalf of members.

"But Jones, a minister with long experience in the labour movement and a record of supporting colonial workers' rights when in opposition, apparently accepted this nonsense, presumably because he wanted to keep Bevin sweet in a period of anti-communist hysteria.

It seems the British TUC leadership went along with Labour ministers in the attack on trade union rights in the colonies. There is probably more to come out on how the security services were involved, and on the way some unions have provided a conduit for them in the guise of international work.

Gibraltar politics has followed a difficult course, on the one hand striving for democratic rights and better treatment from Britain; on the other hand anxious not to be handed back to Spain, especially during the long years of the Franco dictatorship - which British and US authorities were too ready to appease and proclaim part of the "Free World". Now Gibraltar is still classified by the UN as a colony, and yet it has gained EU membership.

On December 2003, to mark the 55th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Self-Determination for Gibraltar Group announced it was launching the annual Gibraltar Awards, for "people who have contributed significantly to the emancipation or political development of the Gibraltarians or to the democratisation of Gibraltar".

The first awards went posthumously to "the Gibraltarian who returned from the UK to Gibraltar to take up the post of General Secretary of the Gibraltar Confederation of Labour in 1948 at the request of the GCL. Mr. Fava was exiled from Gibraltar for the rest of his life on October the 9 th 1948, being given 48 hours to leave Gibraltar. No charge was ever brought against him to justify the Expulsion Order served upon him by the Governor supported by the UK Colonial Office, the predecessor of our Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the F&CO". The Gibraltar Award to Albert Fava bore the date October the 9 th 2003, to commemorate the date of his expulsion.
http://www.self-determination.gi/emancipation.htm

During the 1960s, the Gibraltar Confederation of Labour amalgamated with the TGWU. To commemorate the 60th anniversary of Fava's deportation, the TGWU section of Unite, Gibraltar, has launched a campaign to demand that all the government papers concerning this shameful act be released so that the full story can be told. British ministers have been asked to make public all the relevant evidence.

The booklet The Shameful Deportation Of A Trade Union Leader: The Story Of Albert Fava is available for £3 (post free) from Tom Sibley, 156 St Stephens Road, Hounslow, TW3 2BW or from T&GWU Unite, Town Range, Gibraltar. Make cheques payable to Unite TGWU section, Gibraltar.