Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Law and Politics at the National Industrial Relations Court 1970-75 : 'Rather Peculiar Things' - Peter  Oldham

Law and Politics at the National Industrial Relations Court 1970-75

'Rather Peculiar Things'

By: Peter Oldham

Hardcover | 30 October 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover


RRP $180.00

$159.75

11%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $39.94 with

 or 

Ships in 25 to 30 business days

This book gives extraordinary new insights into the legal, political and industrial strife in the UK of the early 1970s, focusing on the National Industrial Relations Court and how its independence came to be injured at a time of national crisis.

Constitutional and employment lawyers, and indeed anyone interested in the history of the times, will not want to be without this deeply researched yet entertaining work.

When the Heath Government came to power in 1970, it set up the National Industrial Relations Court to referee highly contentious disputes between unions and employers. Regarded with hostility by the labour movement from the start, the Court and its President, Sir John Donaldson, faced mounting suspicion, and were regularly front-page news. When Donaldson jailed five dockers in 1972 - the Pentonville Five - for defying the Court's orders, strikes erupted and the docks closed. With the country's food supplies dwindling, a state of emergency loomed. How had it come to this? Could a way through be found?

This is a revelatory account of the National Industrial Relations Court's defining crisis, set in the context of a wider, and frequently startling, exposition of how Donaldson went about his role as its President.

Author Peter Oldham KC fuses decades of experience as a barrister with archival research to shine a bright new light on how and why the Court found itself doing - in Donaldson's own words - ''rather peculiar things''.

More in Legal History

Keir Starmer : The Biography - Tom Baldwin

RRP $27.99

$23.75

15%
OFF
Dragon on Centre Street : New York vs. Donald J. Trump - Jonah Bromwich
A Concise History Of American Law - William E. Nelson
A Legal History for Australia - Sarah McKibbin

RRP $69.99

$55.75

20%
OFF
The Outback Court Reporter - Jamelle Wells

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Custody : A Secret History of Motherhood - Lara Feigel

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Ending Isolation : The Case Against Solitary Confinement - Christopher William Blackwell
V13 : Chronicle of a Trial - Emmanuel Carrère
A Concise History Of American Law - William E. Nelson
Tradition and Change in Australian Law : 5th Edition - Patrick Parkinson

RRP $122.00

$102.75

16%
OFF
Gaskell and the Law - Paul  Mitchell

RRP $170.00

$151.75

11%
OFF
Inside the Underworld : Routledge Revivals - Peta Fordham

RRP $179.00

$158.99

11%
OFF
Constitutional Effectiveness : The Case of Germany's Basic Law - Dieter Grimm
Instruments of Peacemaking 1918-1941 : The Failure of Diplomacy - Michael Reynolds