The Return of The Blacklist

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The Return of The Blacklist

I liked the comparison between bolshies and terrorists

It was an analogy, relating to the topically relevant ways in which those two different categories of individual might be denied fair process in their respective circumstances.

It was not a comparison. It was not intended as a comparison. It was not presented as a comparison. I can't really be held responsible for people taking it as a comparson so that they can misrepresent my views.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The Return of The Blacklist

troll-u-like

Cheers TonTon. My experience of this board has taught me that the word "troll" is handed out to anybody who challenges the sacred cows of the cosy left wing consensus on here. I'm happy to keep "trolling" away, just as a reminder to OTFers that they need to test their assumptions and pre-conceptions from time to time.

[Duncan Gardner]

The Return of The Blacklist

Lord Mauleverer wrote:

You are simply attributing views to me which I not only do not hold, but would abhor

I'm drawing reasonable conclusions from what you said. Such blacklists exist to stop trade union organisation, or to intimidate it where already in place. Not to protect helpless employers against self-publicists like Robinson, as I said. That the blacklisters are often careless and inaccurate, as Chippy said, doesn't detract from their intent.

And what TonTon said about your rather provocative style.

Nefertiti wrote:

Is it really impossible to say on OTF that Unions in certain industries can become extremely regressive and undemocratic forces?

No. Broadly, hardly anything here is ever censored or deleted by the moderators. Specifically, all the union reps here (including at least one who is elected to a national executive) are on record here criticising prejudice shown by union leaders and members, most recently in the 'British jobs for British workers' dispute. Also, let's not go too far back. Closed shops are long gone, Powell's sacking was 40 years ago. Do you have a link for that Heathrow story?

[Wyatt Earp]

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TonTon wrote:

I really don't mean this in a nasty way (though I don't suppose it can really be taken as anything other) but does anyone else think this LM character comes over as a comedy Tory made up by one of us lefties to make ourselves feel even more smug?

The only awkward fact with that one, for me, is that I've actually met the dude.

[Wyatt Earp]

The Return of The Blacklist

Incidentally, Mauly, did you not get EIM's gag there, that I was quoting with approval?

[Duncan Gardner]

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Indeed. I've also met his lordship (sorry for the witless name gags, but I wanted to show there are other unloved minorities of one on here). Can't remember if Wyatt was also there, but if so the three of us probably fought over a comb or something.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The Return of The Blacklist

I'm drawing reasonable conclusions from what you said. Such blacklists exist to stop trade union organisation, or to intimidate it where already in place.

DG, the reasonable conclusion, then, from my unequivocal support for the Information Commissioner's criminal prosecution of the people running the blacklist is that I reject such attempts to intimidate or stop trade union organisation. Your radically different conclusion seems to be wholly unreasonable.

[Brandenburger Toro]

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Don't take this as an endorsement of LM's position, but there's a definite air of "blood in the water" about this one.

I also don't think it's fair to insist on imputing inferred views to somebody when they have explicitly denied holding them.

[Wyatt Earp]

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Abu Al Torotoro wrote:

Don't take this as an endorsement of LM's position, but there's a definite air of "blood in the water" about this one.

You want to get that looked at.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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did you not get EIM's gag there

Yes, I paid tribute to it with my "right angle" comment.

[DCI Harry Batt]

The Return of The Blacklist

there's a definite air of "blood in the water" about this one.

Oh well. Never mind, eh?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Nice, TonTon.

Toro, you need not worry on my account, there is no "blood in the water". No blood is drawn by thrusts which miss their target by around 90 degrees.

[Wyatt Earp]

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I personally am loving this geometry motif.

[Duncan Gardner]

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Lord Mauleverer wrote:

DG, the reasonable conclusion, then, from my unequivocal support for the Information Commissioner's criminal prosecution of the people running the blacklist is that I reject such attempts to intimidate or stop trade union organisation. Your radically different conclusion seems to be wholly unreasonable

LM- your description of employers' motives for using such blacklisters as "legitimate" seems to me to contradict that.

Toro- "blood in the water" really is melodramatic. Incidentally, although I've spent decades denying that I support Rangers (for example), it doesn't stop the usual suspects here imputing etc. I don't mind, really.

[E10 Rifle]

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Nefertiti's comments upthread deserve a bit more discussion I reckon, not least to move us away from the bitch-slapping of this evening's posts. Because the question of how unions use what (little) power they have is one worth discussing.

The only thing is, contrary to myth, when union leaders start throwing their weight around or acting undemocratically, they're usually doing so these days from a position of conservatism - manouevres to silence effective activists, keeping the tin lid on too much grassroots activism etc - doing, in other words, the precise opposite of the Scargill/Red Robbo stereotype.

I was fairly dispirited, for example, when I first went to the TUC conference at just how the internal democracy of, particularly, the bigger unions seemed to be so unaccountable and dominated by 'stale, male and pale' bureacrats and how little their positions on things made reference to their members' democratic wishes, and they weren't wielding this unaccountability to further leftwing militancy that's for sure. Quite the opposite.

But TonTon's broader position holds - in modern Britain the cards are stacked, by law and by our deadened and useless mainstream political culture, absolutely massively, against organised labour. Not quite as massively as they were pre-1997, but it's still a constant, tireless uphill struggle. It is nowhere near a level playing field.

None of this seems to matter much to Lord M, who is evidently still Very Angry Indeed about what happened in the 1970s. But for those of us more focused on the here and now, this is the unequal reality of how things are.

[nefertiti]

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Duncan

Gerald Mars, Professor of Anthropology at University College London in his Book "Cheats at Work" writes about London’s Heathrow Airpor dubbed Thief Row during the 1980s after it was revealed that theft by baggage handlers exceeded several million sterling pounds a year. More disturbingly, it was disclosed that new employees were quickly inducted into various forms of dishonest practice by more experienced baggage handlers. Unlike the taxi drivers, the baggage handlers worked in highly cohesive teams and theft was central to the code of behaviour. Mars observed that new baggage handlers were quickly ostracised if they refused to steal. In effect, dishonesty was the expectation rather than the exception! The team structures also meant that theft was systematic and planned.

The trade union was one way of enforcing this.

Hansard in 1978 gives evidence that those fiound guilty of pilfering from baggage were not necessarily dismissed.

THis is from Hansard 1978

[quote] So far as people who are handed over to the police are concerned, whose cases come before the courts and who are convicted, they are not always dismissed after conviction.
..... many people work at Heathrow and it is very easy when there is an incident for the police or airport security staff to be accused of harassment, so I think it really means that they try to behave tactfully and diplomatically and do not necessarily go for everybody, so to speak, on the same day.

§ Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE

My Lords, I wonder whether I heard the noble Baroness aright? Did she say that convicted thieves were sometimes kept on in their jobs, where they have the opportunity to thieve?

Baroness STEDMAN

My Lords, that was my information when I questioned it this morning, my Lords; they are not automatically dismissed from their posts.

[E10 Rifle]

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Any examples from the last 20 years?

Yet it's the Left that's apparently 'living in the past'.

[DCI Harry Batt]

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You have to agree, though, E10, that that kind of thing is pretty naughty, and is to be frowned upon.

[Duncan Gardner]

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Thanks Nefertiti. But like Tonton, I can only giggle at the story. BAA were crassly incompetent in the 70s- it reflects on their past mismanagement, not present union organisation.

[nefertiti]

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I was asked to come up woth some evidence that their had been a co-ordinated attempt by baggagehnders at Heathrow to pilfer from passengers luggage and that the union had abused its position to maintain that situation. I think i did OK.

I did not say these practices were current in the UK.

I do however (unlike Tonton) consider it a serious issue that passengers were not able to travel without the possibility of having their belongings stolen by the people employed to transport them. If their Trade Union were complicit in that, that it is a blot on the Union movement.

[Wyatt Earp]

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Hmm. Democratically elected governments are sometimes shit, and sometimes do shitty things. Is that a blot on democracy? Lots of books are rubbish. Is that a blot on literacy?

I'm not sure what point of view you're arguing against here, nef, unless someone's been claiming that all unions always do the right thing at all times.

[NHH]

The Return of The Blacklist

What utter pompous cockrot from wash yer mouth out boy.

[nefertiti]

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What is your position NHH? Is it that Trade Unions have not at times abused their position to maintain racist employment practices and allow their membership to persist in criminal behaviour?

Or that one should not attack them for so doing?

[NHH]

The Return of The Blacklist

That one should have a sense or proportion here, and that to elevate the practices of some people in unions 30 years ago into a general critique of workers organising to further their interests is cockrot. That's my position. Unions in the US were far too closely linked to the mafia in certain unions too. Does mean that their efforts to organise workers in the meat packing industry, amongst agricultural labourers, etc are to be dismissed? Of course it fucking doesn't.

[E10 Rifle]

The Return of The Blacklist

What are the racist employment practices you're now throwing into the mix? I know at Ford's at Dagenham they used to have one racist sub-branch, but the idea that this is a habitual problem is nonsense.