Legal Control of Strikes Ineffective

Experience showed that additional legal sanctions against unionists breaking with procedures and agreements were not likely to lead to any reduction in strikes, Mr, A.J. Marsh says in a Paper authorised by the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations. Mr. Marsh, a senior research Fellow in industrial relations at Oxford, contends that attempts to enforce procedures and agreements in Britain would involve both a change in their character and in the attitude of the parties towards them. "Certainly disputes would become much more a matter for legal decision, although there is nothin in the British legal tradition which would suggest that lawyers are adept at handling the problems arising out of industrial relations. Procedures themselves would have to be largely re-written in a much more rigid way, particularly at shop floor level. It is not that strikes are not a problem, but is seems more useful to study the actual circumstances of strikes, rather than rely on overall disciplinary rémedies backed by law," he argued.