IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/indlaw/v54y2025i4p954-983..html

Sir Patrick Elias and the Right to Strike

Author

Listed:
  • K D Ewing

Abstract

This paper addresses Sir Patrick Elias's contribution to the right to strike, looking particularly at RMT v Serco Ltd; ASLEF v London & Birmingham RailwayLtd (2011). The decision brought to an end an intense period in which employers were able to obtain injunctions to prevent or discontinue industrial action, sometimes on what appeared to be insubstantial grounds. In doing so, the Court of Appeal reset the judicial approach to industrial action, acknowledging the ‘right to strike’ with implications for the substance of the law as well as the law relating to remedies. The paper explores the background to the decision and explains the significance of its content, while also assessing its impact and implications. In doing so, attention is devoted to the recent decision of the Irish Supreme Court in H A O’Neil Ltd v Unite the Union (2024) which expressly adopted an important passage from Serco, but in doing so raised important questions about the future development of the economic torts which continue to form the foundation of legal liability during industrial action

Suggested Citation

  • K D Ewing, 2025. "Sir Patrick Elias and the Right to Strike," Industrial Law Journal, Industrial Law Society, vol. 54(4), pages 954-983.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:indlaw:v:54:y:2025:i:4:p:954-983.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/indlaw/dwaf027
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:indlaw:v:54:y:2025:i:4:p:954-983.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ilj .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.