The Right to Strike: From the Trade Disputes Act 1906 to a Trade Union Freedom Bill 2006 – Edited by K. D. Ewing
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00653.x |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| Author | Anthony Kerr |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
living standards, Johnson and Zaidi’s on work over the life course, Connolly and
Gregory’s on women and work since 1970, Sanderson’s on education and the labour
market, and Broadberry and O’Mahony’s on Britain’s productivity performance.
Some of the chapters read too much like dry textbook summaries of the literature.
Chris Wrigley’s discussion of the trends in trade union membership and collective
bargaining in chapter 9 was useful, but I wish he would have devoted more attention
to the effects of unions on wages, working conditions, etc. Similarly, Pat Thane’s
chapter on the welfare state and the labour market (chapter 8) would have been better
if she had examined the effects of various welfare programmes on poverty rates and
workers’ living standards.
While the volume’s 13 chapters cover most aspects of the labour market and
workers’ living standards, the book would have benefited from the addition of two
more chapters, on the effects of the two world wars on the British labour market and
on the changing employment patterns of young people (say, those aged 12–24).
Several authors mentioned the economic importance of wars and Horrell has a brief
discussion of the changing contribution of children to household income, but these
topics deserve more than the brief coverage they get here.
Despite these minor quibbles, Work and Pay in Twentieth Century Britain provides
an excellent overview of the transformation of the labour market over the past century
and is an important addition to the literature on the economic history of modern
Britain. Students will find it to be a valuable reference work, and economic and social
historians and labour economists will want to add it to their bookshelves.
George R. Boyer
ILR School
Cornell University
The Right to Strike: From the Trade Disputes Act 1906 to a Trade Union Freedom Bill
2006 edited by K. D. Ewing. The Institute of Employment Rights, Liverpool,
2006, xvi +310 pp., ISBN 0 9551795 4 8, £15.00
Until it was repealed in 1971, the Trade Disputes Act 1906 (the 1906 Act) provided the
legislative framework for regulating industrial action. Compared to modern statutes,
the 1906 Act was a model of conciseness and clarity. It was a relatively simple statute
of five short sections which took less than 500 words to dispose of the barriers which
a hostile judiciary had been erecting for the previous 30 years. Shillman put it well
when he said, in Trade Unionism and Trade Disputes in Ireland (Dublin, 1960: 18):
‘Rarely in the field of legislative endeavour has so much been accomplished for so
many in such few words’.
The purpose of the 1906 Act is easily stated. Workers, subject to the requirement
that they be acting ‘in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute’, were to be
permitted to picket peacefully and were rendered immune from the torts of civil
conspiracy and inducement of breach of a contract of employment. Additionally,
registered trade unions were rendered completely immune to tortious claims. There is
no doubt that, without the Act’s protection, it would have been impossible for trade
unions to lawfully organize industrial action.
This book is a genuine celebration of the 1906 Act whose centenary came to pass on
21 December 2006. The story of its enactment is told through chapters by Graeme
Lockwood and John McIlroy, which focus on the infamous decisions of the House of
Book Reviews 861
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.
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