Industrial Conflict: Limitation on immunities for inducing breaches of contract

In the initial Employment Bill there existed no provision on secondary action. What accelerated the issue was the great damage caused by secondary action, such as indiscriminate blacking and blockading of customers and suppliers extraneous to the dispute and the resultant spate of cases which came before the courts in 1978 and 1979 and in particular the decision of the House of Lords in Express Newspapers v. McShane which clarified the law on industrial conflict. The Labour Government's Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974 as amended by the 1976 Amendment Act created a virtually unlimited immunity to take industrial action however remote from the original dispute and however slight its connection with it. The events of the winters of 1979 and 1980 illustrated how the 1974–76 statutes enabled industrial action to be extended well beyond the original dispute. Employees and employers not connected with that dispute consequently had their livelihood put at risk and their business damaged. S.17 of the Employment Act 1980 which deals with secondary action other than picketing therefore represents the Government's immediate response to the legislation on trade union immunities enacted under the 1974–76 legislation.