Grim Warning in Fares Judgement

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judges IN A recent issue of Socialist Organiser, John O'Mahony wrote an excellent expose of the hypocrisy of those right wingers who attack so-called 'opponents of democracy' while themselves supporting the manifestly undemocratic practices of members of the legal profession whose judgements clearly defy decisions made as a result of the votes of thousands and millions.

The judgements of the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords in the Fares Fair' case, wrote Comrade O 'Mahony in SO 67, provide *a precious warning to the labour movement, which can learn from it what can happen if it ever tries to take drastic measures against the ruling class' The activities of Lords Denning, Scarman and the others are not simply a warning of what might happen at some future time when there was a fundamental attack on capitalism.

Many judicial rules exist, along with a panoply of other extra-parliamentary institutions, from the armed forces and the civil service right down to the monarchy and the House of Lords, to preserve class rule against any long term threat, whether it begins in Parliament or anywhere else.

The judges are being used not just as a back-up for capitalism, but as a real and present threat to the mildest of reforms, involving public spending or administrative action of which the Tories and their friends do not , approve.

More and more in the 1980s we are likely to see measures agreed by the labour movement, voted on according to the norms of the system of parliamentary democracy, only los be frustrated by the direct action' of judges and other non-democratic forces.

This has already had an effect in many spheres of action for the labour movement. It has applied in obvious ways to the action of trade unionists, but it has also more and more affected what Labour local authorities have been able to do.

Fare-fixer Denning The üse of the law by a group of Tory councillors in the Fares Fair' case was by no means the first such event.

As is well known, a similar court case was taken out against a group of Camden councillors who in 1979 committed the heinous crime of voting to pay a minimum wage of £60 for the Council's employees.

That particular case is still going through the courts, but there are many others that have not even got there at all because coun cillors have been scared, on legal advice, from acting at all.

Hallowed

The 'Enterprise Board' proposed by the Greater London Council has encountered difficulties of this sort.

Beyond this there is the increasingly active intervention of 'district auditors' in the affairs of local councils, with continual threats to most of the sorts of policy now likely to be proposed by Labour groups in local government.

Many forms of direct labour may be kept in check by district auditors, and it seems likely that efforts to enforce trade union conditions on contractors will also fall foul of the law.

Such interventions would bring into question almost the first thing that public sector unions were able to do, when they began to get 'fair wages clauses' in local authority contracts in the 1890s.

The ever widening range of legal intervention thus applies not simply to radical, new policies: it also threatens the most hallowed and long-term gains of the working class movement.

Working class representatives in the 1980s, be they trade union officials or local councillors, who make a principle of never being in conflict with the law are not just cowardly or right wing.

They are also expressing a reluctance to fight in ways that may from now become necessary.

Enforce

To refuse to take this into account is to express a profoundly reactionary compliance with rules whose application now threatens the very purpose of the movement.

It is worth also considering some other aspects of the application of the law to the labour movement, and number of significant changes which are a product of recent history.

Traditionally, trade unionists and socialists have campaigned for changes in the law, for example to enforce shorter hours of Under attack: Livingstone work or to expand the educational system.

However, on matters of industrial relations, the settlement of strikes and so forth, the traditional view in the labour movement has always been against the intervention of the legal system in any form.

Thus trade unionists have always opposed even tne positive legal definition of their rights for fear of what might happen to the interpretation of this definition in the courts. (Such has not always been the case in other countries-in France, for example, or more recently in In the mid 1970s in Britain there was something of a change in this.

The 'social contract agreed over the heads of the members between the trade union bureaucracy and the post-1974 Labour government held back living conditions and wage claims in return for the promise of a series of measures including legislation, which made it possible, for example, to sue for 'unfair dismissal' and to claim discrimination on racial or sexual grounds.

Whether these measures were good or bad, they were certainly important, and there is no serious trade union negotiator today who does not take full account of such developments as legislation on health and safety, codes of practice on time off for trade union representatives.

The legal measures introduced by the Labour government from 1974 to 1977 brought the law into industrial relations in a much more serious way than ever During the latter period of that Labour government up to 1979, the limits and effects of these measures were probed and questioned.

Such probing was particularly the job of a Conservative Party front organisation laughingly known as the National Association For Freedom (now the "Freedom" Association).

During its latter period, the Labour government, because of its pact with the Liberals was prevented from carrying out any measures which could be even alleged to be of benefit to the trade unions.

The NAFF took up a number of carefully prepared legal cases against the trade union movement. Thus in January 1977 it took out an injunction against the Union of Post Office Workers for threatening a week long boycott against South Africa.

Enshrined

This legal judgement, though it became enmeshed in numerous legal technicalities about the position of the Attorney General, brought into question the rights of Post Office workers to go on strike.

It clearly provided the basis for the present Tory government, when it altered the status of the Post Office in 1981 and set up British Telecom, to leave in doubt the legal right to strike of this major and powerful section of public sector workers.

Other legal decisions and pressures brought by NAFF and the star recruit George Ward of Grunwick, prepared the way for many other measures threatened OI already introduced by the Tories.

The Grunwick case saw court injunctions used to halt blacking action by Post Office workers, implicitly threatening prosecution for those engaged in industrial action. This principle is now enshrined in Prior's Act and enlarged upon Tebbit's proposals.

Defiance

So also is curtailment of the right to picket or to take secondary industrial action of any kind.

All this has brought the legal system much more into industrial struggle than was the case in the past, and the effects can be seen every new day of this government.

We must of course campaign against the Tebbit Bill and for the repeal of the Employment Act as well as other changes in the law. However, we need also to carefully consider how the law has been recently changed, and the implications of this.

The problem can be resolved not just by invoking the ghost of Lord Carson, who was quite prepared to organise defiance of the democratically agreed Home Rule Bill before the First World War.

Exploitation

Nor do we simply have to recall the mutterings about a possible military coup that were heard in mess rooms and elsewhere during the great class battles of 1974.

We must also deal with the reality of Lord Denning and Scarman, and others who are determined to uphold norms of capitalist exploitation whatever we decide, or however we play the rules.