This book examines the origins, deployment, and legacy of Order 1305, a measure introduced in 1940 to make it a criminal offence to take part in a strike.Surprisingly, the prohibition on the right to strike was retained by the Attlee administration after the Second World War, and was transformed to become a weapon of government during the Cold War to deal with what were wrongly claimed by ministers to be Communist-inspired strikes engineered for subversive purposes...

This monograph was originally developed as a direct response to the claim made by members of the 'Employers Group' at the 2012 International Labour Conference, namely that the right to strike is not protected in international law, and in particular by ILO Convention 87 on the right to freedom of association.The group's apparent aim was to sow sufficient doubt as to the existence of an internationally protected right so that governments might seek to limit or prohibit the right to s...