One of the first things you notice about the impressive, detached house in a tree-lined street in the heart of Brighton are the CCTV cameras.
It’s not the only safeguard. At night, lights come on if anyone approaches the property. Inside is an alarm with a panic button linked to a private security firm. The owner is on its ‘emergency response’ list, which carries out regular patrols around her address.
And there is a further layer of protection, the house has what is known as a ‘police marker’ on it, meaning that a call from this residence is treated as a priority by officers.
So why do you think this female owner, who until very recently was a highly respected executive at Brighton And Hove City Council, needs such security?
Is it because: (a) she is the victim of domestic violence from a vengeful former partner; (b) she is being stalked by an obsessed admirer; or (c) she fears reprisals after standing up to the GMB union which has a strong presence among binmen in the city?
The last answer is the correct one and, while it may may seem scarcely believable to anyone outside the city, her ordeal is entirely in keeping with a culture of intimidation and violence at the Brighton waste depot where a samurai sword, nunchucks (a martial arts weapon consisting of two sticks connected by a chain) and knives were once discovered in the GMB office, along with baseball bats, heavy chains and metal poles found stashed next to the driver’s seat in some refuse trucks.
Yes, we’re talking about the GMB – one of Labour’s biggest backers, donating more than £1 million a year – not the mafia.
Is there any difference, many might ask, in the light of revelations emerging in Brighton about recent events which Bella Sankey, the leader of the Labour-run administration, has called ‘gangsterism’? Indeed, the situation is reminiscent of TV’s The Sopranos where fictional ‘Don’ Tony Soprano runs a waste management business as a ‘front’.
How perverse that the GMB annual congress took place at the Brighton Centre this month and one of the items on the agenda was ‘tackling the explosion in work-related violence’. The hypocrisy is beyond parody.
In fact, the origins of the escalating ‘bin wars’ in this most liberal of seaside cities – at a time when the bin strike in Birmingham is entering its fourth month – goes back many years.
The extent of the lawlessness in the rubbish and recycling service was revealed in 2023 following an independent investigation commissioned by Ms Sankey’s newly elected Labour administration.
It was carried out by Aileen McColgan, KC, who highlighted allegations of physical aggression, including threats to stab people who didn’t toe the union line – one harassed employee committed suicide – in an environment which was likened to George Orwell’s Animal Farm where union bully boys, not the council, were in charge. Today, the Mail names two of the union officials accused of presiding over a climate of fear, perhaps epitomised by the fact that whistleblowers had to testify in secret because they feared reprisals for giving evidence.
At the critical time, the authority was under the control of the hard-Left Momentum group which supported Jeremy Corbyn and had strong links with the GMB locally, a malign coalition that resulted in troublemakers facing disciplinary proceedings simply being let off the hook by compliant councillors.
The publication of the excoriating McColgan report, which resulted in up to 40 staff leaving –among them members of the GMB sacked for gross misconduct – was supposed to mark a new beginning.
But nothing has really changed. In the last year or so, when she still worked for the council, the woman who had security installed at home, faced an almost daily onslaught of bullying and threatening behaviour from GMB officials and members at the depot in the Hollingdean district of Brighton, who resisted attempts to modernise and improve the woeful service.
On one occasion, a union member warned her about what might happen if she continued to cross them. He got up from his chair, stood behind her and made a throat-cutting gesture by drawing his fingers across his jugular vein. At the same time, they made it known that they ‘knew where she lived’. The tyres of her car were also repeatedly slashed.
The former council executive, who is in her 30s and has a family, was too fearful to speak to us when contacted. Her treatment, however, is documented in internal council papers. ‘It is hard to describe how awful it was for her and how much it has taken out of her,’ said someone who still works for the council.
‘She had to take time off with severe depression as a result of all this stuff. She was suicidal at one point and was really unwell and eventually left. She is recovering but is still fragile.’ Her recovery has not been helped, the source said, by the fact that she recently heard that ‘she may still be a target’ because of her brave stance against the union.
More than ten of her former colleagues, we have been told, have had a risk assessment carried out at their homes by a security firm working for the council and some, like her, opted for extra protection. A special team of council officers has ‘been mobilised to monitor and document all suspicious activities’, a cabinet meeting heard in May.
In fact, the threat level has escalated since January when a waste depot manager, involved in disciplinary proceedings against a staff member, received a death threat which coincided with a masked figure stoning his home.
The attack was captured on CCTV and ‘needed to be taken with the utmost seriousness,’ a letter to all staff from the interim director of environmental services revealed last month and followed an equally sinister incident when a note was left on his car outside his house which read: ‘Leave the case alone. Nice dog, by the way.’
The letters RDWSTJMJ, our own inquiries have established, were scribbled at the bottom. Were they a clue to the identity of the perpetrator of the warning? Another manager arrived home to discover his wife’s car had been scraped all along one side.
It was the only vehicle damaged on the road. When he returned to the depot in his own undamaged car, two employees and GMB members, who worked together on the same refuse collection round close to where he lived, approached him and said: ‘We thought you had a red Fiat [his wife’s car].’
Again, the incident is documented in council papers.
It’s not just individuals who have been singled out.
Bin lorries have been sabotaged as part of the war of attrition against any attempt by management to make changes. ‘We found wires with clean cuts on them (not frayed or chewed by rats as suggested on social media),’ the council said.
Only a ‘handful’ of culprits were responsible for ‘engaging in acts which are tarnishing our reputation’ but the authority was at pains to stress: ‘It is not isolated. It is coordinated. It must stop.’
What has this meant for council taxpayers? In the past six months there have been 1,369 missed bin collections in Brighton and Hove – an astonishing increase of 140 per cent.
One of the reasons for rubbish piling up in some areas, the council has now admitted, is ‘gangsterism’ in the service, namely that sabotaging of bin lorries.
The ‘gangsterism’, including criminal damage, possession of offensive weapons and harassment, has occurred since 2023 and been reported to Sussex Police. Inquiries into some of the incidents have concluded. Others are still being investigated. All remain under ‘continual review’.
Remember, at the centre of this is the UK’s third biggest trade union, with members in almost every sector of the economy from the NHS to manufacturing. No one should be the least bit surprised because, as the old saying goes, ‘the fish rots from the head.’
GMB General Secretary Gary Smith, who was in town for the annual congress this month, has been secretly recorded warning a female employee ‘we’ve got better lawyers than you’ after she brought a sexual harassment claim against another official. The tape surfaced last year and followed a report in 2020 which found that ‘bullying, misogyny, cronyism and sexual harassment were endemic’ in the union.
The GMB says Smith’s comments in the recording were taken out of context and an investigation by an independent barrister found the complainant was ‘politically motivated’. She signed a settlement agreement with a confidentiality clause before eventually leaving the union.
In Brighton, the GMB is also embroiled in allegations of criminality. One of the reasons corruption at the Hollingdean depot went unchecked for so long was because of political interference.
Around six years ago, at the height of the problems, the council leader was Nancy Platts, a former Labour parliamentary candidate who had worked in Jeremy Corbyn’s office, and about half of her ruling Labour group were supporters of the hard-left Momentum faction.
Sackings at the Hollingdean depot, which the GMB regarded as its fiefdom, were routinely overturned by councillors at ‘member appeal panel’ hearings. They have now been abolished.
Andy Pumphrey was appointed head of the bin fleet at Holling- dean in 2018. He left nine months later. ‘Women on the site were being verbally threatened by someone in the union,’ he said. ‘Two of the women left. I said they had to act and they suspended the person, which was good but then, because they were so nervous of strikes, they allowed him back. I said you can’t do this, so I handed in my notice.’
One of the those who benefited from the policy of appeasement was Dave Russell, 64, a union official who was suspended over an undisclosed disciplinary matter in 2019. The GMB responded to his suspension and that of two colleagues by threatening to call binmen out on strike during Pride weekend which attracts around 300,000 people, in effect doubling the city’s population.
In an all too familiar chain of events, Russell was subsequently reinstated. He was finally sacked in 2023 following the McColgan investigation. Russell, a martial arts instructor, was back in the news last year when he was charged with possessing the Samurai sword mentioned earlier, which was found in the GMB office at the Hollingdean depot after a manager, who was eight months pregnant, said he had drawn the weapon in front of her.
The prosecution was withdrawn, however. Russell told the Brighton And Hove News website that he was ‘disappointed’ the case never went to court because he was ‘innocent’. The sword was not his, he insisted, and the GMB office was used by other people.
Except the Crown Prosecution (CPS) has now reviewed the case and concluded the decision to offer no evidence was wrong because there was a ‘realistic prospect of conviction’. Nevertheless, a six-month statutory time limit on the offence means he cannot be charged again.
The CPS apologised to the woman who reported Russell. ‘It is evident from your initial witness statement that it must have been very shocking for you when the suspect showed you a sword,’ Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor Judith Reed wrote in a letter to her earlier this year. ‘I’m sorry to note the impact this had on you, especially whilst pregnant.’
Russell was suspended by the council for a final time on the same day as his boss, GMB Sussex branch secretary Mark Turner. Their laptop and email accounts were immediately frozen. Turner, 64, was the man who presided over what McColgan called a ‘toxic’ culture at the depot.
She had evidence from 70 people but said ‘face-to-face interviews had to be conducted under conditions of secrecy because of the level of fear expressed by some potential witnesses about potential retaliation… I regarded that fear as well founded’.
Indeed, those who agreed to give evidence against Turner at his dismissal hearing in November 2024 were instructed by security not to use their own cars or public transport ‘for their own safety’.
The council source told us: ‘They were told to get a taxi to the back door where they would be met by a security guard. They were escorted to a waiting room where they were all told to stay and to return home by the same route.’
Such precautions are not unusual at criminal trials – but a council disciplinary hearing?
Turner did not take the opportunity to answer the questions we put to him in an email which was forwarded to him by the union.
But he is now pursuing a claim for unfair dismissal against the local authority. In December, his application for financial support – or ‘interim relief’ – before the full tribunal was rejected.
The harassment and bullying has left some staff at the depot with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the council said. They have been provided with a ‘programme of therapeutic support’.
‘It’s shocking that council employees are still suffering abuse and threats to their personal safety, just for doing their jobs,’ said councillor Steve Davis, leader of the Green Party.
Conservative leader Alistair McNair added: ‘As far as I am aware, the GMB has never apologised for the shocking behaviour.’
In fact, Mark Turner is still GMB Sussex branch secretary. So much for ‘tackling the explosion in work-related violence’.
Additional reporting: Frank le Duc and Jaya Narain