26/12/2024
Dennis Carabott Wins Key Victory Against his Unjust Sacking by Newham Council. This is a Victory for all of Newham and Tower Hamlets!
Demand Newham Council reinstates Dennis Carabott now. We will not accept attacks on our leaders. We will defend our jobs and communities against austerity measures and against racist and anti-immigrant attacks.
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On December 18th Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) Judge Barklem found that the original Employment Appeal (ET) Judge’s decision against Dennis was not based on the evidence and was “arguably perverse”. Perverse means a decision made by an employment tribunal that is so clearly against the weight of evidence and so irrational, one sided and unjust that no reasonable person could have reached that conclusion. This is a spot-on description of ET Judge Massarella’s decision against Dennis Carabott.
Dennis Carabott is a refuse worker and a highly regarded champion of workers’ rights. He is a trade union activist and strike leader. Dennis was a refuse truck driver and worked for Newham for 16 years, before he was suspended in 2019. Dennis was unlawfully and unjustly sacked by Newham Council in response to his record as a workers’ leader who would not back down – who exposed the bullying, discrimination and corruption of Newham management and successfully defended his co-workers – including another union steward – who were unjustly targeted by managers. Management response was to set-up Dennis to be sacked on spurious charges in retaliation. He has been fighting to reverse this cowardly and baseless attack by Newham and expose their actions ever since.
Throughout his fight, Dennis has had the unwavering support of Newham refuse workers, Tower Hamlets workers, and communities across Newham, Tower Hamlets and all of London. This is a victory that points the way forward for the kind of struggle we need, in order to defeat the austerity policies we now face under the Labour government. Dennis is the kind of leader who will not back down. He speaks truth to power.
Dennis’ victory is a victory for all of Newham and Tower Hamlets. However, Dennis, his union support person Alex Owolade, and his US-based legal team (BAMN – MFJ’s sister organisation) were told that he had no chance by every solicitor, barrister, UK employment law site and union official they reached out to for help. And the judge who first reviewed Dennis’ EAT application of appeal rejected his appeal and described Judge Massarella’s decisions as “well-reasoned.”
There were two important developments before Dennis’s second EAT hearing on December 18th, where judge Barklem gave his strong decision in support of Dennis’ right to appeal his case. First, Movement for Justice (MFJ), the anti-racist, pro-worker and pro-immigrant rights organisation that supports Dennis’ fight, redoubled its public organizing campaign to mobilize support for Dennis. Second, his legal team went on a self-taught crash course in UK employment law, in order to add further grounds for his appeal and to sharpen our arguments. By the time the winning case was heard, Newham Council had been scandalized and Dennis had irrefutable legal arguments to convince Dennis’ new EAT judge to rule for him.
Employment Tribunals are terrible, pro-management bodies, aimed at making workers feel subhuman and so demoralized, angry and hopeless that many workers just want to abandon their cases rather than endure hours more of bullying and shaming.
Dennis won because he is an honest leader dedicated to the fight for workers’ rights and Justice. But he could never have won fighting alone. Dennis had an organization to support him and develop a winning strategy, based on an understanding of how to beat the rich and powerful. He had a group of co-workers and community supporters and family members standing by his side urging him to keep fighting. Without all of these different kinds of support most workers would lose or give up. The lessons of Dennis’ victory are that you need: a) an organization to win; b) to know that having any illusions in the fairness of the ET process is a guaranteed way to lose and c) to ignore the advice of weak, routinist solicitors and barristers who are more concerned about looking good to a judge than fighting for their clients to win.
The Employment Tribunal Kangaroo Court of Judge Massarella
Last year Dennis’s case was unlawfully shut down by Judge Massarella, at the East London Employment Tribunal. Dennis was denied the opportunity to present one speck of factual evidence from the overwhelmingly strong case against his illegal sacking by Newham Council – a sacking on the ludicrous charge that he took a 20 pence discount on a can of soft drink from a store owner (sic). Judge Massarella sprang into action when – before any evidence was heard – the Council’s barrister made a reference to Dennis’s leadership in the Newham and Tower Hamlets refuse workers strikes.
The ET panel then allowed Newham management to enter a new and unverified email message as evidence on the second morning of the hearing. It was supposedly sent from the manager to Dennis, sacking him three days before he received the letter by post. They were attempting to argue that Dennis’ ET case should be thrown out of court because it was out-of-time. Dennis had never received this email, and out of scores of emails it was the only one that was not copied to his union representative worker and MFJ leader, Alex Owolade. David Humphries, the manager who supposedly sent the email was not even in court for questioning.
Instead of demanding that the Newham Barrister prove the suspicious email was authentic and explain how Newham management failed to find it for three years, Judge Massarella put the burden on Dennis and his family to prove the email did NOT exist. But given that it was never sent, it was no surprise that Dennis couldn’t produce it. This entire farce was dictated by Judge Massarella in open court in order to avoid Newham having to answer for its scandalous and unjust sacking of Dennis.
It was these actions that Employment Appeal Tribunal judge Barklem called “arguably perverse” and arguably “errors of law” in Dennis’ hearing on 18th December. The judge’s decision is definite and strong, giving Dennis the best chance possible to win at the forthcoming full hearing of the Employment Appeals Tribunal. That hearing should give Dennis his first chance in the 5 years following his illegal sacking to finally get his case heard and his sacking reversed.
Defend our workers’ leaders – Defeat the austerity attacks by Labour
Dennis would not give up. Newham workers and the community would not give up. Newham Council had one play in its gamebook – endlessly delay; they live by the old adage that “justice delayed is justice denied” and they plan to achieve that delay/denial at every step. No trick, no lie is considered too wrong – but now we have turned the tables, and now Newham Council is on trial.
The job of the movement now is to mobilise, and force Newham to drop its embarrassingly weak case against Dennis. It is too costly and too much of a diversion to continue. The Council needs to reinstate Dennis and stop wasting the Council’s resources. But it will not do this unless we mount an all-out campaign of action that unites the community, the unions and workers, and all the oppressed & struggling people of Newham.
The Council fears that if it cuts its losses and reinstates Dennis, then every worker and community member will gain the confidence to wage a collective campaign to stop the cuts in community services and the redundancies on the horizon. What our Councillors fears is precisely what we have to build, and the fight for Dennis Carabott’s immediate reinstatement is a vital part of building such a campaign of resistance to the attacks on the community and workers.
Newham Councillors were elected by the community; they should respond to our fight against austerity and the struggles of their own workers. They should be organising the fight against the Labour Party’s depraved campaign against local communities and against its own past history of progressive, pro-working-class policies.
Newham can and must lead a fight right across London boroughs and beyond, to stand up for the workers they employ and for workers generally, to stand up for struggling middle class community members, including market traders and small businesses, and especially for the youth and the immigrant and refugee communities.
The only question is, will our elected councillors participate in the fight or do we need to clear them out of the way to win. Either way, we must build independent committees of action to lead the fight. We cannot place our futures in the hands of tired, scared, subservient and sure to sell-out leaders, like the current union bureaucrats, or religious and civic leaders who only know how to fight to lose.
We have a base to build on. The movement in support of victory for the inspiring and courageous struggle of the Palestinian people has already galvanized hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and millions worldwide. Our job is to unite our movement to stop the cuts with the Pro-Palestine movement and the other progressive movements, so that we have the power to defeat all the bankrupt policies of the Labour Government and the Labour Party in Parliament and in local councils.
We demand that Newham Council Reinstates Dennis Carabott now.
Organize and Unite the movements to Defeat all attacks on the leaders we elect and trust.
Build Independent Committees of Action to Defeat the austerity measures.
Join the Struggle now to defeat the Labour Party’s anti-working class & anti-poor cuts and redundancies; against racist, sexist and homophobic policies ; against the pro-imperialist War drive; and against attacks and deportations on immigrants and asylum seekers.
If We Stand Up Together and Prove We Are Inseparable, We Can Win
Email/message us to help mobilise to win: movement4justice.bamn@gmail.com
