Since 1979, the Conservative government in the UK has introduced wide‐ranging and detailed regulations for the conduct of union internal affairs; a number of other Western industrialized countries have not done so (or have not done so to the same extent) but have continued their tradition of...

This is the second of two linked articles on the question of union autonomy; the first appeared in the previous issue of this journal. It considers state control and approach to union autonomy in the wider context of state controls on unions′ bargaining activities including industrial action....

In 1976, the Conservative Party expressed the view that trade unions were “… imperfectly democratic”. Subsequently they returned to this theme in a Green Paper on Union Democracy in 1983 which expressed strong reservations about the electoral practices of trade unions. The Conservatives...