Defending the right to strike
Ahead of a TUC special Congress next weekend to fight Conservative anti-strike laws, JOHN FOSTER looks back to 1969 and 1972 when similar proposals were defeated through class solidarity and painstaking organising work
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BETWEEN 1969 and 1972 two successive attempts were made to limit the right to strike in Britain. Both were defeated.
The first was by a Labour government. In 1969 Harold Wilson produced his white paper, In Place of Strife, proposing to make unofficial strikes illegal and to punish unofficial strikers directly. Penalties were to include both fines and ultimately imprisonment.
The second was by Edward Heath’s Conservative government. Its 1971 Industrial Relations Act required the registration of all trade unions and laid down financial penalties for any union whose members were responsible for unofficial strikes deemed illegal under the Act. Strikers themselves were punishable at law for infringements of the Act.
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