MPs in the House of Commons on Thursday voted by 120 votes to three to demand that the government releases papers related to Shrewsbury conspiracy trials in the wake of the 1972 building workers strike
The documents are being withheld under Section 23 of the Freedom of Information Act, the section relating to national security.
A backbench debate on the motion, secured by Blaydon Labour MP Dave Anderson, saw sharp class divisions.
Moving the motion, Anderson said: ‘1972 was a momentous year for industrial relations in this country.
‘A weak government had twice declared states of emergency, first in February during the first miners’ strike for almost half a century, and secondly in August during the national dockworkers’ strike.’
He said the Tories made this move ‘to prevent unions from defending their members’ rights, wages and conditions at work’.
He said that the Shrewsbury 24 were blacklisted and ‘forty years on from their dispute, this disgusting practice is still going on today’.
Anderson said that in 1972 ‘a building worker was dying every day on average’.
Tory MP for Shrewsbury, Daniel Kawczynski, interrupted to defend police and condemn strikers, accusing them of violence.
Anderson continued: ‘The strike was called off after the unions forced their employers to concede the biggest increase in basic pay rates ever.
‘It was a victory for the working man, but a bitter blow for the employers, who were determined on revenge. They were not alone.
‘The Tory government were rattled by the success of one of the least well-organised groups of workers in this country and were determined to help their friends in the building industry.
‘To pursue that revenge, the employers’ body, the National Federation of Building Trades Employers, went on what can only be described as a fishing expedition’ to secure evidence against strikers.’
He said that Tory fundraiser Lord McAlpine had ‘no problem with the law…but that the problem was rather down to “the lack of enforcement of the law by the police”.
‘The police…were being told by an employer that they had not done their job properly.’
Anderson added that Home Secretary Robert Carr instructed that there be an investigation in the area around North Wales.
The Blaydon MP said that a local paper talked of ‘a sinister plot’.
He noted that ‘if conspiracy could be proven, the potential to lock up some of the leaders of the dispute for a very long time became a reality’.
Anderson added that the North Wales area was where ‘the MacAlpine family had a huge amount of political influence’.
He said also that the High Sheriff of Denbighshire ‘just happened to be the ninth member of the McAlpine family in succession to have held that post’.
He went on to say that the Shrewsbury 24 were charged with intimidation, ‘the first six were charged with intimidation with intent.’
He said they were charged in relation to a meeting of union members which had agreed to send pickets to Shrewsbury.
Anderson stressed: ‘The meeting was simply a planning meeting; when it got to court it was described as a meeting to conspire to intimidate.
‘One of those charged, John McKinsey-Jones, wasn’t even at the meeting.’
He said that two trials were held in Mold; the first just imposed fines and the second returned not guilty because defence lawyers could challenge jurors connected with the building industry.
‘At the Shrewsbury trial, the Attorney General refused lawyers the right to challenge jurors.’
Anderson said the judge would not allow a trial in a neutral area, rather than Shrewsbury.
He said that during the trial the judge ‘took exception to John Platt-Mills, who represented Des Warren, and to Des Warren himself’.
The Labour MP accused the judge of making ‘interruptions during cross-examination’ and the ‘jury could be in no doubt where the judge’s sympathies lay’.
He said campaigners had unearthed a letter from then Attorney General Sir Peter Rawlinson to Home Secretary Carr that had advised ‘that these proceedings should not be instituted’.
Anderson stressed that ‘the highest legal advice in the land…not to pursue the case’ was ignored by the home secretary and ‘pressure’, particularly from ‘the chief fundraiser to the Tory party’ was ‘overwhelmingly more important’ than the views of the Attorney General.
He added: ‘These men went to jail as a result of an attack on their right to take industrial action.’
He alleged this was a case of ‘direct political interference in this country’s political and judicial systems’.
He concluded that ‘it is a matter of natural justice’ that the remaining papers are released, to reveal ‘the tentacles of big business’.
Answering Anderson, Tory MP Sir Gerald Howarth accused him of ‘seeking both to justify and to romanticise mob rule and violence and intimidation’.
Howarth added that in 1975 he called ‘for the jail sentences of Tomlinson and Warren to be maintained’.
He said that Labour MPs at the next election ‘need to make it clear that they renounce the kind of practices that prevailed in the 1970s and 1980s’.
He added: ‘This was in the day of the flying pickets…People would go around the country supporting…intimidation, even though they themselves had absolutely nothing to do with the strike.’
Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick interjected: ‘The motion calls for the publication of papers…surely we can agree on transparency…?’
Howarth proceeded that Anderson was talking about the conditions that prevailed at the time’ and complained that these included ‘nearly 11 million days’ lost due to strikes.
Accusing trade union leaders of ‘pursuing political agendas’, he went on to say ‘Britain was the sick man of Europe in the 1970s’ because of ‘trade union activity’, and that Thatcher had restored ‘trade unions back to their members’.
Frustrated Labour MP Mark Tami interjected: ‘This history lesson is very interesting…but for the third time, does he believe that the papers should be published – yes or no?’
But Howarth continued: ‘In my own time,’ adding that, in the cases of Warren and Tomlinson, ‘it is very important to put some of the facts on the record’.
He said that the trial judge, Justice Mace, had claimed that they had taken ‘part in violence and encouraged violence’.
Accused by Labour MP Jim Sheridan of filibustering, he was told by the deputy speaker to ‘come to the point soon’.
Howarth said that the issues surrounding the cases make it ‘highly relevant to question whether the papers should be revealed’.
He added that the trial judge said that ‘some of you were clearly determined to strike terror’ into strike breakers, and the appeal judge said that pickets were engaged in ‘acts of personal violence’.
SDLP MP Mark Durkan interjected to point out that this was the same appeal judge (Lord Widgery) ‘on whose verdict’ Howarth ‘relied for many years in resisting the case for a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday and so on’.
Anderson interjected to ask about the Shrewsbury pickets: ‘Why was not one person arrested on the day the event happened or was alleged to have happened but were stitched up five weeks later?’
Howarth quoted Thatcher from her Downing Street Years memoir where she alleged trade unions intimidated members, practices ‘basically endorsed’, he said, ‘at the highest levels of the Labour Party at that time’.
Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi asked: ‘This debate is about the release of papers not released on security grounds. What has national security got to do with industrial relations?’
Howarth replied to this: ‘Robert Carr was accused of discussing with police and the security services.
‘Labour did not agree to publish them. Successive Lord Chancellors have said papers should not be released that refer to the intelligence services.’
He concluded his remarks by congratulating Thatcher for her ‘fundamental reform’ to curb the trade unions.
Labour MP Steve Rotheram replied to this: ‘24 ordinary men…were wrongly convicted on trumped up charges.’
Quoting Platt-Mills, QC, he continued: ‘The government ordered a prosecution in defiance of the advice of senior police and prosecution authorities.’
After praising ‘the remarkable persistence of the campaigners over the past four decades’, Rotheram reminded MPs: ‘Britain’s building sites were workplaces of great danger…people died daily.
‘When workers had the audacity to ask the state to take action and stop the carnage, the government of the day interfered in the business of the judiciary, resulting in the most political and corrupt criminal trial that had been seen in peacetime Britain.’
