ABSTRACT
The 1971 Act defined the requirements for a legal closed shop very narrowly; but most employers maintained existing arrangements. The relaxation of the rules under the 1974 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act encouraged a substantial increase in closed shop agreements, and by 1979 nearly 5.2 million employees – almost 40 per cent of all union members – were covered. Royden Harrison’s remark at the end of the decade accorded with a widespread diagnosis in the 1970s of a ‘crisis of governability’ in Britain, with trade union militancy seen as its clearest expression. For many contributors to the ‘Forward March’ debate, economic crisis would lead naturally, given the British tradition of fragmented unionism and defensive sectional militancy, to increasingly divisive responses with each group possessing any strategic power fighting its own corner at the expense of others, encouraging an authoritarian political outcome.
