ABSTRACT
The first point to seize about natural rights is that they are always thought of, and appealed to, as being both universal and somehow objective. It has been claimed that the notion of a right is 'peculiarly connected with the distribution of freedom of choice'. In Britain both the industrial Trades Union Congress and its political creature, the Labour Party, lose no opportunity of insisting upon the workers' unalienable rights to form and to join labour unions. In proclaiming the general right of association both the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the later specifically European version make it quite clear that this right is the right to join or not to join, at will. Carping critics have even suggested that this is one reason why the TUC and the Labour Party have been so hostile to supra-governmental European institutions.
