The Conservative Party and the Closed Shop: Inherent Contradictions, Non-Compliance and the Failure of the Industrial Relations Act 1971

The 1970-74 Conservative Government was strongly committed to enacting industrial relations legislation which would simultaneously grant workers the right to belong or not to belong to a trade union, provide for legally enforceable collective agreements and facilitate more stable industrial relations by enhancing the authority of trade unions over their members. The associated 1971 Industrial Relations Act was therefore intended both to enhance the liberty of individual workers by weakening compulsory trade union membership via the closed shop and imbue Britain’s system of industrial relations with greater order and predictability by reducing unofficial or wild-cat strikes by local-level shop stewards. It was also tacitly envisaged that these reforms would result in more ‘responsible’ pay bargaining by the trade unions, thereby obviating the need for a formal incomes policy to curb inflationary wage increases. Drawing on the archival record, we argue that ministerial haste resulted in inherent contradictions at the heart of this strategy being overlooked or underestimated: if the closed shop was outlawed, and fewer workers belonged to a trade union, then the authority of union leaders would be correspondingly diminished. As trade unions became bolder in defying the Act, ultimately rendering it ineffective, policymakers were unable to adapt. Pragmatic and effective policy was sacrificed to Conservative Party ideological predilections as an inability to escape inherent contradictions and legislative inconsistencies ultimately resulted in a major failure.