halt in work production leverages a demand to enforce workers’ rights. Despite this, the UK does not recognise the legal right to withdraw labour. Instead, the UK’s “right to strike” is said to depend on a complex statutory scheme[2]. This article will analyse a variety of sources, “statutes such as TULRCA 1992, the common law, Convention rights, and relevant case law[3]”, to determine whether the UK’s “right to strike” “is a classic instance of a ‘legislated’ right[4]” or if it is merely a “slogan/legal metaphor[5]”. -- - ‘In truth, the “right to strike” in the UK depends for its realisation on a complex statutory scheme. Even in jurisdictions where the right to strike is specified textually in a constitutional document, such a complex right must be operationalised through labour statutes. It is a classic instance of a “legislated” right. Since the enactment of the Human Rights Act, and the evolving jurisprudence of the ECtHR, UK law may now be described as protecting a right to strike albeit one that is pieced together from a variety of sources: statutes such as TULRCA, the common law, Convention rights, and relevant case law.’[1] Does this statement accurately encapsulate the UK law on the ‘right to strike’? How do the different sources of law interact and what factors determine the correct balance to be reached between competing interests in regulating industrial action? Use case law, statute, legal -- affect innocent third parties (i.e. the general public).^[6] Therefore, in order to appease and ‘bring the labour under control’, the capital would ‘have to make concessions [i.e. comply with the strikers’ new terms], which provoke crises of profitability’.[7] However, the loss suffered by a business^[8] during and after industrial action is justified on two persuasive grounds. The first ground identified by Gwyneth Pitt is the human right aspect.^[9] To restrict the right to strike would be akin to the horrific period of slavery,^[10] where man had no power to withdraw his labour. This justification is recognising the inequalities in bargaining power between employer and -- of withdrawal of labour is the equilibrium argument. The power of the employer and their actions can only be matched and questioned by a ‘concerted stoppage of work’.^[14] Essentially, the right to strike is more than the withdrawal of labour: it is also the encompassing ‘right to free expression, association, assembly and power’.^[15] Yet there is ‘no positive legal right to strike in the UK’.^[16] Instead, ‘the “right to strike” in the UK depends for its realisation on a complex statutory scheme’.^[17] In contrast to its neighbouring European countries’ (Spain and Italy) jurisdictions ‘where the right to strike is specified textually in a constitutional document’, the UK law ‘protects a right to strike … from a variety of sources: statutes such as TULRCA, the common law, Convention rights, and relevant case law’.^[18] The accuracy of Bogg and Dukes’ encapsulation of the UK law on the ‘right to strike’ and how the different sources of law interact will be subsequently discussed. -- Judiciary While Spain^[19] and Italy^[20] protect the right to strike by suspending the contract of employment during industrial action, this contract is broken under English law.^[21] This is because the English common law does not confer a right to strike,^[22] hence ‘the rigour of the common law applies in the form of a breach of contract on part of the strikers and economic torts … [for] the organisers and their union’.^[23] -- its torts^[42] to protect ‘already powerful organisations’.^[43] Hence, from the perspective of trade unions and their members, the common law’s (inadequate) protection for the ‘right to strike’ has been, undeniably, very disappointing. -- Railway Co successfully sued the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants union for £42,000.^[45] This sum is equivalent to £5,196,328.39 today. This verdict, in effect, eliminated ‘the strike as a weapon of organized labour’.[46] Naturally, workers turned to political parties for redress. The concern and advocacy for trade union -- economists, such as FA Hayek, viewed trade unions as an obstacle to economic growth.^[56] This perception was heightened by the Winter of Discontent (1978-79): a period characterised by widespread of strikes in response to the Labour government’s wage cap (to maintain falling inflation).^[57] Subsequently, Thatcher’s government further justified -- democracy, rights, and freedom of trade union members; ‘too often in recent years it has seemed that employees have been called out on strike by their unions without proper consultation and sometimes against their express wishes’.^[60] Accordingly, the Thatcher government introduced legislation that prior Conservative governments -- services’,^[66] 40% of all members entitled to vote must have voted in support of the industrial action. These stringent procedural requirements have to be strictly followed for a strike to be lawful.^[67] Oddly, there was no pressing need to introduce these restrictive measures.^[68] There were no significant problems in industrial relations at the time (ie, Winter of Discontent) nor any significant ‘pressure from business for further laws on strikes’,^[69] but the Conservative government justified these 2016 measures through the findings of Bruce Carr QC and Ed Holmes.^[70] The Government -- questioned the necessity of protecting industrial action by reflecting on the development of employment tribunals and discussing the economic consequences of strikes. The same ‘free-market economic theory’ that underpinned the MIR’s recommendations ‘drove’ the pragmatically restrictive and economically influenced 2016 statute developments.^[74] -- developed a three-part test to examine the legality of industrial action. This test encapsulates the substantive and procedural requirements for a lawful strike whilst observing the intertwined and ‘uneasy’ relationship between the common law and statute.^[82] If the industrial action is unlawful at common law, the judiciary asks whether -- the statutory rules’^[86]; there is a series of High Court instances of injunctions being granted to ‘ever more powerful and well-resourced employers’^[87] owing to invalid strike ballots.^[88] The readily available labour injunctions continued to be the “key piece^[89]” of suppressing collective action until the minor development in 2011. -- indicated a change in emphasis rather than substance’^[96] (since unions are still burdened with the challenges of exercising a ‘lawful’ strike),^[97] this judgment enhanced union’s ability to resist injunction applications (as observed by Balfour Beatty Engineering Services Limited v Unite the Union).^[98] The unbiased interpretation -- The ECtHR confirmed, in Enerji Yapi-Yol Sen v Turkey,^[100] that Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights included protection of the right to strike. This Article, and Article 6 of the European Social Charter^[101] bestow the right to strike for their member states members and due to the UK Human Rights Act 1998, ‘British workers are understood to enjoy a right to strike’.^[102] This, unlike the mere domestic statutory immunities, is the only instance of a ‘legislated’ right to strike in the UK.^[103] Under section 3(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998, ‘statutory provisions -- be the leading precedent on the UK’s provisions of Article 11,^[107] despite the RMT and ASLEF judgment. In RMT and ASLEF, the UK courts acknowledged the ‘clearly protected’^[108] right to strike under ECHR Article 11. However, the court emphasised the importance of a ‘fair balance to be struck between the competing interests of the individual -- ECtHR (and Human Rights Act 1998) in ‘controversial’ matters such as industrial action. This review has the powerful ability to eliminate the only instance of a legislated right to strike in the UK.^[125] -- ‘The notion of lawful industrial action is restrictive’, the procedural requirements are ‘onerous’ and the consequences of unions liability for unlawful strikes are ‘serious’.^[126] Nearly two decades after the European Social Charter’s review,^[127] the UK still does not guarantee the right to strike. The precedent in Metrobus still stands. There continues to be a ‘poorly reasoned and barely consistent’ series of judgments ‘by what looks like a weak, timid’^[128] and politically influenced^[129] judiciary. The enactment of the ‘Human Rights Act and the evolving jurisprudence of the ECtHR’^[130] will not prescribe a right to strike in the UK until the Supreme Court or ECtHR rule UK’s current provisions as incompatible with Article 11. In truth, ‘the right to strike [in the UK] has never been much more than a slogan or a legal metaphor’.^[131] This ‘slogan’ is a regime of immunities that are purposely designed upon an overly complex and -- injunctions, and unfair dismissals.^[134] This system was successfully underlined with the political agenda of deterring trade disputes; the UK’s worker strike total has fallen to its ‘lowest level since 1893’.^[135] The ‘unanimous and hostile’^[136] approach of the legislature and the judiciary towards industrial action exhibits the -- Workers Union’ (2020) 49 ILJ 477, 478. [2] Nicholas Pohl, ‘Political and Economic Factors Influencing Strike Activity During the Recent Economic Crisis: A Study of The Spanish Case Between 2002 And 2013’ (2018) 9 Global Labour Journal 19, 21. -- [4] Harry Smith, ‘How Far Does UK Labour Law Provide for The Effective Exercise of a Right to Strike?’ (2014) 6 The Student Journal of Law accessed 15 December 2020. -- [9] Pitt (n 6), 570. [10] Manfred Davidmann, ‘The Right to Strike’ (Solhaam, 1996) accessed 15 December 2020. -- s246. [15] Brian Smart, ‘The Right to Strike and The Right to Work’ (1985) 2 Journal of Applied Philosophy 31. -- [49] RMT and ASLEF (n 22) [2]. [50] Keith Ewing, ‘The Right to Strike: From the Trade Disputes Act 1906 To A Trade Union Freedom Bill 2006’ (Institute of Employment Rights, March 2013) accessed 11 December 2020. -- Union Act 2016’ (2020) 45 ILJ 227. [64] Bart Cammaerts, ‘The Efforts to Restrict the Freedom to Strike and To Deny A Right to Strike Should Be Resisted Fiercely’ (LSE Blogs, 14 September 2015) accessed 11 December 2020. -- [79] Bogg and Dukes (n 1), 492. [80] Ruth Dukes, ‘The Right to Strike Under UK Law: Not Much More Than A Slogan? NURMT v SERCO, ASLEF v London & Birmingham Railway Ltd’ (2011) 40 ILJ 302, 309. -- [87] Kalina Arabadjieva, ‘Royal Mail Group Ltd v Communication Workers Union (CWU): Injunctions Preventing Industrial Action and The Right to Strike’ (UK Labour Law, 6 March 2020) accessed 12 December 2020. [88] TULRCA 1992, s226. -- [125] ECHR Art 11. [126] Ruth Dukes, The Right to Strike Under UK Law: Something More Than A Slogan? Metrobus v Unite The Union [2009] EWCA Civ 829’ (2010) 39 ILJ 1, 7. -- [134] ibid, 7. [135] Richard Partington, ‘UK Worker Strike Total Falls to Lowest Level Since 1893’ (The Guardian, 30 May 2018) accessed 15 December 2020