EVIDENCE PASSED TO this blog in the past 48 hours shows that the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), Matt Wrack, personally intervened to block a membership application from a black firefighter who had made an allegation of racism against one of his close allies.
The evidence exposes Wrack to the suggestion that he isn’t as serious about challenging racism as he frequently likes to claim, and comes to light just a couple of weeks before he is due to face an employment tribunal hearing into a complaint of racial discrimination brought against him by executive council member David Shek.
In 2022, Mohammed (‘Mo’) Ahmed, a black firefighter in the London Fire Brigade (LFB), made an accusation of racism against a work colleague. The colleague also happened to be an official of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and was known to be a close ally of Wrack.
Mo alleged that the colleague had used racist language towards him when the pair had worked together at a fire station. He later made a complaint to the LFB. The complaint was upheld, and the colleague was sanctioned (that sanction is currently subject to a legal challenge).
Conscious of his colleague’s role in the FBU, Mo resigned his membership of the union in protest. However, after later being encouraged by another official to rejoin, he submitted a membership application.
But then something odd happened. Whereas most applications to join (or rejoin) the FBU are processed swiftly – indeed, most people would assume that a union which prided itself on fighting racism would be especially keen to welcome back into its fold a firefighter who had alleged that he had been subjected to racist behaviour in the workplace – this particular application appeared to hit a brick wall. Even though the application had been approved locally the union’s head office seemed in no hurry to process it. This was all the more surprising given that Mo had, until his resignation, been a vocal supporter of the FBU and, in 2016, had his personal story of mental health challenges covered in a two-page special feature in the union’s in-house magazine.
When he asked senior officials about the status of his application, Mo did not receive a satisfactory answer. He was merely told that enquiries were taking place into various matters that seemed to have no direct relevance to his application.
At one point, the national union, in the form of the executive council, even voted to overturn the decision of the London regional committee to approve the application. Someone at the highest level of the union seemed intent on making sure that Mo’s application to rejoin the union was not rubber-stamped.
After several months of delay and obstruction, the union’s London regional secretary, Jon Lambe, submitted a complaint to the official trade union regulator (known as the ‘certification officer’). Lambe’s complaint alleged that, in blocking Mo’s application after the regional committee had approved it, the executive council had exceeded its powers and breached the union’s rule book.
In its submission to the certification officer, the union’s leadership argued that it could not progress Mo’s application because it first had to await the outcome of an internal union complaint against the official who had allegedly used the racist language. It also claimed that the application was no longer ‘live’ and had, in any case, been wrongly processed by local officials. However, the certification officer flatly rejected all of these arguments and upheld Lambe’s complaint. (FBU members are unlikely to know anything about this case, as the leadership never circulates details of legal judgments that go against the union.)
This blog can now reveal that Mo’s application appears to have been blocked on the personal instruction of Matt Wrack. Evidence passed to us (and which not even the certification officer has seen) shows that Wrack sent a memo to staff at the union’s head office instructing them not to progress the application. After the instruction was sent, an entry was made on Mo’s file on the union’s membership database. That entry read:
Warning – 03/02/23 – memo from Matt – not to be rejoined – see notes
In the run-up to the hearing before the certification officer, it appears that Wrack suddenly backed down and dropped his opposition to Mo’s application. Mo was then allowed to rejoin the union. But Wrack’s earlier intervention raises some serious questions.
Did he try to block the membership application of a black firefighter on the grounds that he had levelled an accusation of racism against a close ally?
Was he angry at Mo Ahmed for making that accusation?
Was he determined to make sure that Mo never returned to the ranks of the FBU?
Given that the certification officer found that there was no other legitimate reason for blocking Mo’s application, it is reasonable to ask all these questions. It is certainly highly unusual – perhaps even unprecedented – for the general secretary to personally intervene in a membership application in the way he did in this case.
The certification officer might have put the above questions directly to Wrack at the hearing, but he didn’t attend. Instead, he sent along national officer Mark Rowe, who had had no involvement in the matters under consideration. Wrack’s refusal to attend attracted criticism from the certification officer.
Mo, on the other hand, did attend the hearing and gave evidence. In her 26-page written judgment, the certification officer wrote:
Mr Ahmed came across to me as a genuine witness who had suffered racial abuse which left him with a genuine, and understandable, grievance about how he had been treated. In my view the union’s actions have had a significant impact on Mr Ahmed… Mr Ahmed was unable to join the union for a significant period of time which meant that he was not represented at work and could not contribute to the union.”
These words stand as a damning indictment of the FBU leadership’s actions. The whole grubby affair has damaged the reputation of the union and left a black firefighter feeling ostracised and abandoned. A general secretary who regularly likes to flaunt his anti-racist credentials might like to reflect upon his own central role in the episode.