THE MET Police have been referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for blocking GMB’s “quest for the truth” over the blacklisting of trade unionists.

GMB said the Met had ignored its Freedom of Information Act request since April, which demanded the force’s full report into its role in the blacklisting of more than 3,000 construction workers.

The union also asked for all emails relating to the report and details of overt and covert meetings between officers and members of blacklisting organisations.

In March, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Richard Martin finally admitted that police officers “supplied information that appeared on the blacklist, funded by the country’s major construction firms.”

He added that the report — which sat on the Met Commissioner’s desk for two years — found that, “on the balance of probabilities, the allegation that the police or Special Branches supplied information is ‘proven’.”

The construction blacklist, organised by the firms including Sir Robert McAlpine and Balfour Beatty through the Economic League and The Consulting Association for four decades, kept secret files on trade unionists, sometimes just for raising on-site safety concerns.

GMB national secretary Justin Bowden said the Met’s response was “shameful.”

He said the state spying on trade unionists was “bad enough,” but that trying to deny closure to the victims simply “compounds the crime.”

Blacklist Support Group secretary Dave Smith said: “It’s our personal data, information the police hold on union members, we are entitled to see the report.

“If they try to justify not giving it to us because of spurious claims of ‘national security,’ it says a lot about the way the state views trade unions. Are we still the ‘enemy within’?”