blacklist support group
BP are not the only corporate criminals legitimised by the British Museum.
For decades, multinational construction firms compiled an illegal blacklist of trade unionists, journalists and campaigners. These workers suffered years of unemployment simply for trying to raise safety standards in an industry with one of the highest fatality rates in the UK.
The Blacklist was finally exposed in 2009 after a raid on the offices of the Consulting Association that operated the blacklist on behalf of the major companies.
Many honest working people were placed on the unlawful blacklist, suffering years of unemployment because they raised concerns about safety on major construction sites. The hard hat therefore represents the key area of dispute between big business and trade unions in an industry with one of the highest fatality rates in the UK.
The multi-faceted hard hat is an iconic piece of Personal Protective Equipment, widely recognised throughout the world, as a logo and visual indicator for construction safety awareness, constructed of rigid plastic and polymers sourced from unsustainable and environmentally harmful raw materials and a perfect medium for moderate détournement linking people caught up in the Blacklist scandal.
The facilities management contract at the British Museum is carried out by the multinational firm Carillion, one of the major construction firms intimately involved in the blacklisting conspiracy that the late Michael Meacher, former environment minister, once described in parliament as ““the worst human rights scandal in the UK in the past 50 years.”
The Blacklist Support Group have long since recognised the techniques of corporate propaganda and product/logo branding as a means to ‘wash’ corporate criminality and abuses of human rights from the consciousness of their customers and investors and through our artistic acts and endeavours the group have tried to level the playing field.
‘Art Hats’ are a visual statement connecting collectivism and environmentalism to express our goal of justice. They render the hard hat neither safe nor functional, drawing on parallels with the multinational construction corporations who Blacklist their workers and people fighting for a sustainable environment before profit.
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t realise they were planting seeds”
— Blacklist Support Group