Three members of staff at London Metropolitan University's Working Lives Research Institute (WLRI) have been suspended from work in an attack on human rights, trade unions and academic freedom. Professor Steve Jefferys, European employment relations academic, Director of London Met’s Faculty Advanced Institute for Research (FAIR) and head of WLRI, was suspended on Wednesday 20 February for ‘potential gross misconduct’. Five years previously, he had agreed that Jawad Botmeh should have the chance of going forward to be interviewed as a part-time casual administrative worker on a temporary three month contract in WLRI, when Jawad had a criminal record (he had served 13 years on a conspiracy to cause explosion charge, a charge which is widely believed to be a serious miscarriage of justice). Jawad Botmeh, after working for five years to the complete satisfaction of all staff and post-graduate students who worked with him, was overwhelmingly elected to the Board of Governors as one...