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THE APPEAL COURT AND THE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS ACT
In the case of the Industrial Relations Act, the bourgeoisie as a whole were in favour of its passage. However, they were also aware that it had been only imperfectly worked out in the politics of both classes before its passage. The working class viewed the law as class law. The TUC had withheld its consent and the Labour Party was forced to follow suit, thereby going against many of the planks of its programme when in Government. The bourgeoisie's idea was that no one should use the Act at first until it had somehow permeated everyone's lives and was accepted - until everyone had got used to it. This idea reflects accurately the way most laws work in Britain, except that the getting-used-to is done before their passage - they simply register a social occurrence or make the necessary organisational and regulatory arrangements of an agreed change. Examples of this are the 1871, 1875 and 1906 trade union laws which registered and gave legal form to the gains made by the working class struggle; and the National Health Service, Social Insurance system, Education Act and Coal nationalisation passed after World War II which made the necessary arrangements for agreed changes (by both classes). The Industrial Relations Act is an attempt to change social relations by prescription: using the authority of the law. In doing this it departs from the normal method of running the state in Britain and therefore the bourgeoisie realised they would have to bide their time before trying to make it bite. They reckoned that if it began to work gradually, it would have a chance. (This was the consensus reached at the FT Conference on the Act held last month.)
This was understood by the most conscious members of the bourgeoisie, the big employers. They have carefully refrained from using the penal parts of the Act while immediately applying those which are concessions to the working class (e.g. better provisions for unfair dismissal, more exact contracts of employment, right to join a union). Understanding the place of the law in terms of their economic objective which they will realise will not be won by the stroke of a pen or in a year or two, they have not taken the law on the basis of abstract bourgeois political theory - that the rule of law orders society.
Those who have not understood this are the small employers and the working class. These two have provided the National Industrial Relations Court with its most controversial and dangerous cases in the past fortnight. The case of the small container firms was described in The Communist No 50. The Appeal Court overturned the National Industrial Relations Court's ruling on this - throwing out bye-the-bye all that Sir John Donaldson had said about the courage and public spirit required by both employers and trade unions in bringing the rule of law to the shop floor.
The Appeal Court's basis for doing so was (l) common law, (2) that the National Industrial Relations Court had wrongly determined that an unregistered trade union should be fined where Parliament had not been explicit. Completely out of context from his judgement Lord Denning spoke of his sympathy and understanding for the dockers. He could realise why they were acting (i.e. illegally) as they did. Judges like Lord Denning speak for and represent the society in a similar way to that described for Parliament. They are guided not by the abstract theory of the law but by the need to apply the law in each situation in a way that the society will consider just at that time - a reflection of the state of play of the class struggle. Each time the judges have stepped out of line by eating away at a right which the working class has established in practice, Parliament has restored that right to the working class (1906 and 1964 TU Acts redressed judgements made by the House of Lords.) Up to this point, Lord Denning has if anything been anti-trade union in his judgements (on closed shops). This time he plainly spoke for the ruling class in defusing a situation which could have led to open political confrontation.