'BLACKLISTED' - Launch of the book

BLACKLISTED - The Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists
By Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain
Tuesday 28th April, 6pm at the Unite building on Islington
Book signing on Wednesday 29th April, 1pm in News from Nowhere Book Shop on Bold Street

By Ritchie Hunter
Photo of protest outside Liverpool Town Hall June 2013 by Jeremy Hawthorn

On average one worker dies every week from incidents in construction, so it's appropriate that this book is being launched on Workers Memorial Day. It exposes how companies collude with the police and the secret services to control workplace employment, with the aim of keeping them free from “domestic extremists”, a term they use for those who raise health & safety issues or ask for better pay and conditions.

The book gives detailed evidence of a conspiracy happening within the 'Revolving Door', Old Boys network, of those who move between industry, the police and the security services and back again. Here workers are placed on a 'Blacklist' and barred from employment. There are also details of how some union officials have gone along with this process.

The consequences for some workers are prison, for others poverty, low pay and suffering families. The result has been poor health or even suicide.

The book contains details of how workers, such as Terry McBride, were targeted by employers, hounded by the press and put under unbearable pressure leading to his early death; his treatment described as 'deliberate, conscious blacklisting'.

But this book is not just about construction – we know most about this because of the campaigning work done by Dave Smith and others in the Blacklist Group – we can also read here of other campaigners for justice, labelled as terrorists because they asked for fairness in society.

Lots of information still remains secret, but we know that Anti-Apartheid protesters and members of left-wing parties have been targeted. Even mums asking for safer roads for their kids have had their names put on a secret list. Environmentalists are part of this story as well, with some getting abused by spies or agent provocateurs along the way.

'Blacklisted' is a well researched, detailed and compulsive read. It contains many case studies and well documented analysis. It is a welcome addition to the growing body of knowledge of how big business and the state secretly control our lives and it ranks alongside Seamus Milne's The Enemy Within as an exposé of the 'dark forces' in society.

BLACKLISTED
The Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists
By Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain
£9.99 at News from Nowhere

About the Authors

Dave Smith is a blacklisted union activist from the construction industry, and an award-winning campaigner on human rights, health and safety, anti-fascism and employment rights issues. He currently works as a trade union education tutor.

Phil Chamberlain is an experienced investigative journalist who has written for the Guardian, Observer and the Independent amongst others. He is also a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of the West of England, Bristol.

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