A TRADE-UNION lawyer who was “unlawfully” arrested on a picket line earlier this year has accused the London’s Metropolitan Police of “criminalising strike action.”
Franck Magennis, former head of legal for the United Voices of the World (UVW) union and a barrister with Garden Court Chambers, was handcuffed and detained on January 13 outside St George’s, University of London, where security guards had been staging a strike over sick pay.
Mr Magennis, who is suing the force over the incident, said that his arrest at the medical school in Tooting, south London, had intimidated workers and prevented them from exercising their legal right to strike.
The public inquiry is the result of more than a decade of determined campaigning. Now, those who fought for justice want the full story of government involvement and police conduct to be told, says KATE FLANNERY
On the 40th anniversary of the Wapping dispute, this Morning Star special supplement traces the long-planned conspiracy that led to the mass sackings of printworkers in 1986 – a struggle whose unresolved injustices still demand redress today, writes ANN FIELD


