The Brookside Metal Company is situated just south of Watford on the A 41. The firm is a subsidiary of the British Insulated Callender's Cables Company. In 1970 Brookside won the Queens Award to industry, supposedly because the firm is very efficient and makes excellent profits for the parasitic shareholders. Yes, there are excellent profits to be made from the Broodside Metal Company. Profits that are made from the sweat of poorly paid labourers and prisoners from Pentonville who are allowed out on parole during the day. The working conditions are appalling.
The civilian labourers are the butts for abuse from the tyrannical management, and illtempered, bullying foremen. These workers have no recourse to the benefits and protection that a trade union would provide. In fact the formation of a trade union is very much opposed by the management, as obviously their vested interest in such a commercially viable enterprise as Brookside would be undermined, as would their standing with the "big wigs" controlling both the B.I.C.C. empire, and, of course, themselves.
Brookside is a large scrap metal yard cum foundry. A foundry with smelting rooms completely devoid of extractor fans to get rid of the many varied poisonous gases which come from the smelting of such "health risk" substances as lead and tin. The majority of workers are immigrants, mainly West Indians, working long hours under despicable conditions for very poor wages. In the main the workers are middle aged, with very few exceptions. They are seemingly reluctant to criticise the firm, in the open that is, feeling that their tenuous hold on a job might be in jeopardy by doing so. Indeed holding a job seems to be a very difficult thing to do at Brookside especially if a worker is critical of management attitudes, even if the criticism is voiced in a reasonable and sensible manner. Many workers get the sack for trivial matters such as demanding face masks to protect themselves from the fumes, or rubber boots when working in the mud and slush covered yard.
But there are workers at Brookside who labour under far more trying conditions than the over exploited civilians. These men are prisoners from Pentonville who slave on the prison's outside working party scheme. A scheme, so we are told, that was initially meant to help a man to readjust to the normal working conditions that one would find in any modern, efficient factory when he eventually returned to the so- called "free society' Instead the ever grabbing capitalists have seen this scheme as an opportunity to once more exploit. Brookside is the epitome of this criminal attitude.
The firm pays Pentonville prison E17 per week for each prisoner working a 40-hour week! Each prisoner receives 40 p per week from the prisen in pay! I p per hour worked!! Ten prisoners are constantly employed. The prison guarantees that there will be a full quota of men at the factory every day. Therefore this poses no problem of absenteeism for the management. The prisoners pay no insurance contributions. Neither do Brookside or the prison. Therefore the men have no recourse to compensation in the case of accidents etc.
This is slave labour. Pure fact. And the conditions under which the prisoners slave only substantiate this fact. From morning until night they toil with pick and shovel breaking up various metal ores that are emptied from large containers. The whole work yard is shrouded in dust. No face masks are provided. No milk provided - which is customary nay obligatory in these situations. The men work outside in all weathers - wind, hail, ain or snow and are not even provided with protective clothing, neither macintoshes nor rubber boots. You can probably well imagine the filthy condition the men find themselves in at the end of the day. Still there are nice hot showers to be found in a beautifully warm changing room, with lockers, tiled floors and driers. However, the management is very concerned that the prisoners should have as little contact with the civilian workers as possible, and so the men from Pentonville wash up in a small hand basin, and change in a damp, cold hut situated in the work yard itself. The greatest trial of all though for any prisoner working at Brookside is withstanding the abuse that is heaped upon him from both management and foremen. This is the great plague of slaves. The prisoners are sworn at, "dressed down" in front of civilians, and generally reviled because of their unfortunate position. One foreman called Eddie when asking a prisoner to perform a particular task invariably shouts to him:
"Hey fucking shit...
In the main prisoners see no point in protesting about their abysmal conditions because they realise that they can be quite easily removed from the factory and sent back to sewing mailbags in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the prison workshopwhere the repressive attitude is even worse than Brookside-and replaced by another willing slave, gasping to work in the relative freedom of this Watford workhouse. Mind, there are fringe benefits to the job One can look at the beautiful countryside on the journey to and from Pentonville every day. And every Friday night the management magnanimously donates a bar of soap to each prisoner for his own individual use.
Though some prisoners do protest. Early in January of this year three prisoners voiced their grievances to the yard foreman-Eddie. Within half an hour the local police arrived at Brookside consulted the screw for thirty seconds and whisked the three, now handcuffed men, back to Pentonville. The men were placed in the chokey!, accused of being drunk, why else would they protest about the wonderful conditions at Brookside! The men were found guilty of being drunk, although they had received no medical from a doctor or any test whatsoever. Each man received a punishment of "fourteen days all round" -fourteen days loss of pay, fourteen days chokey and fourteen days loss of remission. Each man had initially less than a week of his sentence to serve when they approached the foreman about the bad working conditions. There are ways and means you see of convincing the slave that it is in his interest not to complain.
Brookside is not just an isolated case of an outside party scheme 'gone wrong'. In the eyes of the prison authorities it is pertectly all right. There are many such schemes now in operation throughout the country, a and many more to come. The Home Office has realised that prisoners are a welcome source of cheap labour.
When a prison slaves 5 days a week in atrocious conditions for anything up to 6 months or more, is paid 40 p per week, and does not leave prison with more than £4 in his pocket with no home or job to go to then there is something sadly amiss with the whole of our fetid capitalist society. Mind you, Brookside are laughing-laughing all the way to the bank 'Loobo" (ex-slave labourer and Pentonville prisoner) 1- Chokey: solitary Confinement.
undant by technological advance and where, as is usual in such cases, the workers concerned are expected to shoulder the burden. Barratt Brown carefully analyses the policies of the industry". On page 5 we are told that they did not get workers control, yet nothing more is said on the topic except for hints that there were "control' aspects to the 1969