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Law and Politics at the National Industrial Relations Court 1970-75: "Rather Peculiar Things"

Law and Politics at the National Industrial Relations Court 1970-75: "Rather Peculiar Things"

Author: Peter Oldham KC
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781509985418
Published In: October 2025
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

List Price: RM631.80

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This book gives extraordinary new insights into the legal, political and industrial strife in the UK of the early 1970s, focusing on the National Industrial Relations Court and how its independence came to be injured at a time of national crisis.

Constitutional and employment lawyers, and indeed anyone interested in the history of the times, will not want to be without this deeply researched yet entertaining work.

When the Heath Government came to power in 1970, it set up the National Industrial Relations Court to referee highly contentious disputes between unions and employers. Regarded with hostility by the labour movement from the start, the Court and its President, Sir John Donaldson, faced mounting suspicion, and were regularly front-page news. When Donaldson jailed five dockers in 1972 – the Pentonville Five – for defying the Court's orders, strikes erupted and the docks closed. With the country's food supplies dwindling, a state of emergency loomed. How had it come to this? Could a way through be found?

This is a revelatory account of the National Industrial Relations Court's defining crisis, set in the context of a wider, and frequently startling, exposition of how Donaldson went about his role as its President.

Author Peter Oldham KC fuses decades of experience as a barrister with archival research to shine a bright new light on how and why the Court found itself doing – in Donaldson's own words – “rather peculiar things”.

'Little cause for gratitude to our profession': The Origins of the National Industrial Relations Court

'Doubt upon my parentage': Donaldson's Appointment

'It is a court and totally independent of the Government': Communication between the Department of Employment and the NIRC

'Less than orthodox': Donaldson's Expansive Presidency

'Angry after lunch': Prosecuting Martyrs

'The answer which we were all seeking', or 'Seemed to be a load of rubbish to me': Three Days in July 1972

'Judges are not expendable. Lord Chancellors are': Con-Mech

'Not a happy outcome for anyone': The end of the NIRC, and What Donaldson did Next