There’s a weird 1970s-80s retro feel this week; the anniversary of the miners’ strike, the renewed salience of some old ideas, and this story: it seems that a political blacklisting operation which kept files on trade unionists in the construction industry has been busted.
Rather like the old Economic League, which lasted from 1919 to 1993 before being shut down for violating the Data Protection Act, the “Consulting Association” was raided by the Office of the Information Commissioner, whose agents recovered a huge card index and invoices detailing a large number of customers. In fact, it turns out, it was all the work of a former League employee, as this informative article in the Guardian points out. From the Grauniad, here’s the inverse blacklist, of companies who used Mr Kerr’s services:
Amec Building Ltd
Amec Construction Ltd
Amec Facilities Ltd
Amec Industrial Division
Amec Process & Energy Ltd
Amey Construction Ex-member
B Sunley & Sons Ex-member
Balfour Beatty
Balfour Kilpatrick
Ballast (Wiltshire) plc Ex-member
Bam Construction (HBC Construction)
Bam Nuttall (Edmund Nuttall Ltd)
C B & I
Cleveland Bridge UK Ltd
Costain UK Ltd
Crown House Technologies
(Carillion/Tarmac Construction)
Diamond (M & E) Services
Dudley Bower & Co Ltd Ex-member
Emcor (Drake & Scull) Ex ref
Emcor Rail
G Wimpey Ltd Ex-member
Haden Young
Kier Ltd
John Mowlem Ltd Ex-member
Laing O’Rourke (Laing Ltd)
Lovell Construction (UK) Ltd Ex-member
Miller Construction Ltd Ex-member
Morgan Ashurst
Morgan Est
Morrison Construction Group Ex-member
NG Bailey
Shepherd Engineering Services Ltd
Sias Building Services
Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd
Skanska (Kvaerner/Trafalgar
House plc)
SPIE (Matthew Hall) Ex-member
Taylor Woodrow Construction Ltd Ex-member
Turriff Construction Ltd Ex-member
Tysons Contractors Ex-member
Walter Llewellyn & Sons Ltd Ex-member
Whessoe Oil & Gas Ltd
Willmott Dixon Ex-member
Vinci plc (Norwest Holst Group)
It would have been shorter to list the firms that didn’t.
Well, great. I’m especially pleased that ICO actually did something; I’d long written it off as essentially a flexible friend, doing a lot of bemoaning the Surveillance Society but always giving in when the government wanted to do some more surveilling, and the only occasions when I actually reported someone to it hardly inspired confidence.
Obviously, of course, this is the clear moment to explain that all this stuff about civil liberties is nonsense. It would perhaps be better to point out that surveillance and data-hoarding by the private sector is every bit as troublesome as by the state.
Basically, so what?
So long as the reports are factual, nothing wrong has been done in my opinion.
It’s just the same as your proposals for ID cards, central databases etc, from which the public won’t be able to get access.
Such hypocritical reactions are just what I would expect from you as a politician.
Here’s a little prediction. The public will start taping their conversations with government, and they will start using them. Ditto for other forms of suveilance. No doubt you will try and ban that.
Ah, spoke too soon. You’ve just banned us filming the police and their misdeeds.
Until the Socialist Labour party stop with their surveilance society, the private individual has every right to use the same back on them
Nick
My proposals for ID cards? You realise I’ve been in No2ID since 2004? Who’s the we here, paleface?
Such hypocritical reactions are just what I would expect from you as a politician.
I’m not a politician.
Here’s a little prediction. The public will start taping their conversations with government, and they will start using them. Ditto for other forms of suveilance.
Indeed. I’ve got my own phone breakout kit. And you can’t spell surveillance.
No doubt you will try and ban that.
Ah, spoke too soon. You’ve just banned us filming the police and their misdeeds.
Me? Me? I’ve been threatened with arrest for filming the police misdeeding.
Until the Socialist Labour party stop with their surveilance society, the private individual has every right to use the same back on them
I wasn’t aware that the Socialist Labour party had anything to do with it. I thought it was the Labour party. And you still can’t spell “surveillance”.