Public relations, private investigations

["Michael Keaney" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

US computer firm hired Beattie Media to spy on workers

By Neil Mackay Home Affairs Editor
Sunday Herald, 19 August 2001


STRATHCLYDE police are investigating a dirty tricks campaign
orchestrated by the
PR firm Beattie Media on behalf of the giant American company National
Semiconductor.

It is alleged that National Semiconductor and Beattie Media spied on
trade
unionists who were investigating a spate of miscarriages, cancers and
fertility
problems among female staff, and that there was an attempt to sabotage
an
investigation by BBC Scotland's Frontline programme into the company's
health
record.

The company targetted Jim McCourt, a Greenock TUC activist, for
surveillance.
He had set up Phase II (People for Health and Safety in Electronics),
the
umbrella group representing sick employees.

The US firm hired Beattie Media, the company at the centre of the
Lobbygate
and West of Scotland Water affairs, to co-ordinate its campaign. A
confidential
National Semiconductor report shows McCourt was put under surveillance,
and
that Beattie Media's female staff 'posed' as workers 'to elicit
information
directly from Frontline Scotland'.

Beattie Media and another PR consultancy firm are now arguing over which
firm
should take responsibility for drafting the undercover plan. At the time
the
document was written in January 1998, Graham Isdale was the Beattie
Media
director in charge of the contract. He later left the firm and set up
his own
agency, The Big Partnership, taking the contract with him.

However, the Big Partnership claims the daily running of the contract
was handled
by Nicola Tennant, who still works for Beattie Media.

McCourt said:'This is a total violation. I will consider suing National
Semiconductor. Private companies can not spy on trade unionists as if
they were MI5.'

Bill Spiers, general secretary of the Scottish TUC, said:'This is the
biggest
anti-union scandals to hit Scotland in many years. Both National
Semiconductor
and Beattie Media must be fully investigated not only by the police but
by the
Executive. If these allegations are true then the company was trying to
prevent
workers getting access to legal assistance, and trying to damage an
organisation
that was trying to protect their lives. They deserve to be severely
punished.'

Full article at:
http://www.sundayherald.com/17656

Background:
In the autumn of 1999 there was an almost immediate scandal surrounding
the new Scottish parliament when Kevin Reid, of Beattie Media and son of
then-Scottish Secretary of State John Reid, was caught on film with a
colleague boasting to a client that he had access to top Scottish
politicians. Media attention thereafter focused on the apparent
differences between John Reid and Donald Dewar, as the anomalous nature
of devolution became clear owing to the turf war between the First
Minister and the Cabinet Minister. The potential for a Whitehall
backlash has been most recently discussed by Tom Nairn in the New Left
Review ("Mario and the Magician, NLR 9). The truth is that it has
already long since begun, although it has yet to intensify, as it will
with the inevitable tussle over central funding. Meanwhile another
former Beattie Media employee, Jack McConnell, who failed to succeed
Donald Dewar as First Minister, is now Scottish Education Minister (and
was, for six years, General Secretary of the Labour Party in Scotland).
There is a full archive of "Lobbygate" material at
http://www.sundayherald.com/lobbygate.shtml, including a comprehensive
listing of Beattie Media's lucrative links with the state-private sector
"local enterprise network".

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney@xxxxxx