Local asbestos campaigner uncovers chilling espionage undertaken by bosses at Rochdale asbestos factory

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

Bosses at the Turner & Newall asbestos factory in Spodden Valley, Rochdale, spied on journalists and environmental campaigners who exposed the killer dust’s dangers and launched a covert campaign to accuse them of being communists.

Documents uncovered by Save Spodden Valley campaigner Jason Addy reveal that T&N executives monitored people they considered to be 'subversive' and kept a dossier on their activities at the height of the debate about asbestos safety in the 1980s.

Speaking to Rochdale Online, Mr Addy said: "Within the hundreds of thousands of pages of asbestos industry archives there are nestled intriguing and damning correspondence between Turner & Newall and Rochdale's then MP, Cyril Smith.

"Smith was later to admit that he owned shares in the asbestos multinational."

Smith was enlisted by T&N to attempt to smear and discredit the makers of an award-winning documentary, Yorkshire TV's Alice: A Fight for Life, that told how asbestos workers were dying from cancer.

In a letter marked 'urgent' and sent from the firm’s Rochdale factory to Smith’s office at the House of Commons, they made arrangements to meet him ahead of a select committee hearing where Yorkshire TV directors were due to give evidence and attached a number of questions they deemed 'suitable' as 'thought starters' for the committee.

At the hearing, the television directors were forced to defend suggestions that researchers on the programme had communist sympathies – allegations they had never previously heard. The executives later wrote to Smith thanking him for his 'help and guidance' on the day of the hearing and added: 'I doubt if we will ever succeed in ridding ourselves of the Yorkshire TV ogre.'

Mr Addy said: "The Alice documentary was groundbreaking. The revelations about asbestos cancer in the workforce and environment were chilling. The scandal and injustices revealed were met with more than silence from Smith. Instead of defending dying workers and their families he instead went on the offensive to defend asbestos. He faced some of these allegations whilst still alive. He callously dismissed then in an interview to BBC TV - 'nobody made them work there... they could have left'."

Mr Addy is one of a number of campaigners calling for a full-scale inquiry into what they describe as “decades” of espionage against campaign groups in the UK.

"My research findings give me great cause for concern. There must be an investigation into Turner & Newall's role in undermining the democratic process, especially in light of the ongoing Pitchford Enquiry and Blacklisting court case. Who guards the guards? This may shed light on why Cyril Smith appeared to have been protected for so many years," said Mr Addy.