Chapter 4 addresses a notable gap in the literature by exploring the period during which the government built its new institutional framework. The chapter argues that establishing credible and respected institutions was essential to legitimise the Act’s legal rules, but the process was bedevilled by internal tensions and disagreements about presentational aspects of reform between ministers, the ‘lower-levels’ of the core executive and officials working in the new institutions. The chapter provides insights into the institutional formal rules and informal norms that ministers hoped would secure institutional credibility and the perception of independence. This was a critical part of a wider framing contest over the merits of reform. By tracing the staggered introduction of the Registrar of Trade Unions and Employers (Phase 1), the Commission of Industrial Relations (Phase 2), the Industrial Arbitration Board and the National Industrial Relations Court (Phase 3), the chapter discusses the informal mechanisms of influence and control that developed as the day-to-day practicalities of institutional ‘independence’ dominated internal debates. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Act’s ‘non-role’ during the first miners’ strike (December 1971 – February 1972), indicating the limits of ‘depoliticised’ strategies at moments of heightened tensions. This section provides the first detailed account of the discussions that took place surrounding use of the Act’s emergency procedures in this dispute and explains why ministers were so cautious about intervening for fear of ‘repoliticising’ the government’s role in industrial relations before the Act had settled in.

This chapter provides greater detail on treaty law. It covers sources of treaty law, the entry into force of treaties, reservations to treaties, interpretation of treaties, the validity and effect of treaties, state succession in respect of treaties, and national law and the entry into force of treaties.

This chapter addresses international environmental law. It covers the internationalisation of environmental law, principles of environmental law, relevant UN conferences, institutionalisation, and environmental treaties.

This chapter introduces the dominant narrative associated with the Industrial Relations Act’s failure. It argues that, in the context of Britain’s relative economic decline and widespread unofficial, wildcat strikes, trade unions were easily framed by the political class as a ‘problem’ that had to be solved. As the ‘voluntary’ system of postwar industrial relations fractured, the Conservative Party sought to depart from the status quo by introducing a formal legal framework into British industrial relations to regulate collective bargaining practices for the first time. Building on these insights, the chapter outlines two key contributions that underpin the book’s rationale. First, despite the existence of an extensive secondary literature, this book is the first substantive account of this Act’s failure to draw on recently released documents from the National Archives, Modern Records Centre and Conservative Party Archive. Second, the book is framed using a novel, multi-dimensional framework to argue that the Act is best understood as a flawed attempt to disengage from – and thus ‘depoliticise’ – the process of industrial relations reform and, in doing so, shape societal perceptions about political ownership of the trade union problem.

This chapter addresses the sources of international law. It covers the sources of international law more broadly before introducing treaties, customary international law, decisions of international organisations, other sources of law, and the relationship between international sources of law and legal rules.

This chapter contributes the first account of the final 18 months of the Act to draw heavily on archival material. It argues that, in a changing industrial context, the Act continued to function in the background, but, with the exception of a few notable cases, it was an irrelevance in the major disputes of the day. In addition to the challenge of trade union non-cooperation, the chapter explains that the Act failed to function as intended in part because the industrial relations landscape had been transformed. The short notice, wildcat strikes of the 1960s had largely given way to large-scale, public sector disputes that were, by their nature, highly politicised given the state’s position as de facto employer. With the government now operating an incomes policy, its role in the micro-management of the economy was reaffirmed. As a depoliticised governing strategy, the Act had failed to reconfigure the system of industrial relations and, as perceptions of governmental interference were affirmed, the framing contest over the merits of reform was lost. When the miners recommenced industrial action in autumn 1973, the Act’s status as a liability was confirmed. Heath calculated that his only remaining option was to turn to the electorate and ask: Who governs Britain? The Conservative Party’s defeat in February 1974 confirmed the Act’s failure as the government was held directly responsible for the crisis of British industrial relations.

This chapter follows the period after the Conservative Party’s General Election defeat in October 1964, during which the Party embarked on a period of reflection and in-depth policy formulation. The chapter argues that Conservative politicians believed that the strike problem could be resolved by a novel legal framework because rank-and-file trade unionists would fall in line due to an inherent respect for the rule of law. The chapter identifies internal dilemmas and the emergence of numerous contradictions within the burgeoning strategy as the architects of reform worked to overcome the Conservative Party’s anti-union image and simultaneously impose discipline on British industry. Through a detailed reading of the archival record, the chapter traces the debates surrounding the Party’s controversial policy document Fair Deal at Work. It demonstrates how Conservative politicians sought to reframe trade union immunities as ‘privileges’ before detailing how senior figures expected that trade union deference to the law would have a powerful disciplinary effect. More significantly, it shows how politicians hoped trade union leaders would eventually become allies in forging a ‘new’ modern capitalist economy free from the strike problem. This element of reform was intended to underpin the broader legitimation of the Act. This period, the chapter argues, is the source of many of the Act’s contradictions, long before the Conservative Party returned to office.

This chapter argues that Hague Conventions V and XIII do not regulate cyber-espionage, and underlines that States did little to define further regulation in the field. First, both conventions contain rules pertaining to material operations which are irrelevant to cyber-espionage: Articles 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the Hague Convention V and Articles 1, 2 and 8 of the Hague Convention XIII. Yet – and at least for the moment – this chapter argues that States only consider that belligerents are prevented from inflicting damage to a neutral State and from erecting ICT infrastructures on neutral territories or neutral waters. In addition, they consider that the mere transiting of cyber-operations through the infrastructure of a neutral State is not contrary to international law. Second, the Hague Convention V contains rules pertaining to the use of telecommunications. This chapter argues that belligerents are prevented from launching cyber-operations through these means. In parallel, a neutral State is not obliged to forbid or restrict the use on behalf of the belligerents of telecommunications infrastructure belonging to it or to companies or private individuals. If restrictions are decided, they must be impartially applied to both belligerents. In this situation, this chapter argues that cyber-espionage activities may be indirectly affected, but without resulting in a general prohibition.

Following embarrassing and poorly handled industrial unrest throughout the summer of 1972, the future of the Industrial Relations Act was unclear. Orthodox accounts argue that the reform agenda was effectively abandoned and became little more than a bargaining chip in tripartite discussions to decide the future of the economy. This chapter corroborates these accounts, suggesting that the Act was effectively ‘put on ice’ even though, as the archival record confirms, politically it was impossible to denounce the strategy. Nevertheless, the chapter presents a sizeable body of new evidence to argue that a longer-term commitment to a ‘depoliticised’ approach to reform still underpinned the government’s strategy, despite being undermined by increasingly interventionist steps in counter-inflation policy. The Act continued to operate in the background, albeit never as intended and with few widely publicised successes. The chapter covers the negotiations surrounding a return to a formal incomes policy as inflation spiralled, to explore how depoliticising and politicising currents became increasingly intertwined and contradictory. In the absence of a meaningful strategy, the government began to muddle through, playing for time as ‘tactical procrastination’ took hold.

This chapter unites the work of Oakeshott and Foucault on the nature of the relationship between teleocratic law and governance. It argues that what Foucault labelled “governmentality” is chiefly the result of purposive social action. In the modern State such social action tends to take place within the complex of law, discipline and security, producing a regulatory or managerial approach which derives from law but achieves its purposes through what Foucault called “tactics” rather than laws. That is, while law is able to declare purposes and also specify intermediary objectives on the way to achieving those ends, it is unable in itself to realise them: it cannot in itself affect change at the desired level of the population. Instead, it must give rise to more indirect means for manipulating conditions within the population so as to “conduct conduct” more subtly. While, in other words, law becomes oriented to teleocracy, it retains elements of nomos which prevent it from bringing about social change on its own. Governmentality is understood therefore as the means of circumventing this problem. The chapter ends by arguing that just as the State was “governmentalised” by imagining the State as having the purposive of improving well-being - declared in law but achieved through regulatory “tactics” - so a sphere of global human rights governance is now being “governmentalised” by imagining the international community as having the purpose of improving well-being universally. Here, human rights law declares the relevant ends, and gives rise to the deployment of regulatory “tactics” for achieving them.