An important reason why employers have been able to mount their offensive has been the enthusiastic support they have received from the government. Part of this has been embodied in the succession of anti-union laws passed since 1979. The first wave of laws were designed principally to criminalise picketing and solidarity action. Since then the right to strike itself has been called into question, with rules on balloting and the provision of names of those balloted to employers which make the calling of a legal official strike a lengthy process increasingly open to challenge in the courts. In the first eight months of 1994, for example, twelve injunetions were taken out against unions over the conduct ol ballots.
The anti-union laws have also been used by union leaders as an excuse for refusing to sanction action, even when such action would be likely to be legal. Indeed union leaders have often gone well beyond what the law requires. To take just one example, before a ballot on industrial action will be sanctioned the NUT "Action Guidelines' require an indicative ballot to be carried out with a two-thirds majority vote for action which must include at least 50% of eligible voters. The TGWU have used the law as the reason for refusing official support to the Liverpool dockers. It is also the case that items have been removed from motions on conference agendas, or indeed whole motions binned, it the union's legal department deems that the calls for action might, if implemented, be illegal. As well as the anti-union laws the removal of other legal rights, such as the abolition of wages councils and the lengthening of the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims, have strengthened the employers' hand In addition to legal changes, the government has attacked unions directly through privatisation, contracting out, the closure of state industries and public sector cuts. The Ridley plan of 1978 envisaged buying off key groups of workers temporarily while attacking others in turn. This has been carried out, with the steel workers first in line in 1980, followed by the miners in 1984-5 and the dockers in 1988. Market relationships have been introduced throughout the public sector with the aim of weakening trade union strength.
The state attack on trade unions has had the effect of isolating those struggles that do take place. Union leaderships, fearful of the use of the law, have consistently failed to broaden disputes beyond individual workplaces, leaving workers to fight alone, and often, consequently, to lose. This has been in large measure the result of the policy of 'new realism' adopted by the union leaders in the wake of the 1983 election defeat. It was based originally on the false idea that the "winter of discontent' brought Labour down in the 1979 election and that therefore strikes are an electoral liability: New realism was strengthened by the defeat of the miners' strike two years later. It was reinforced ideologically by the anti-union laws themselves. However, the effect of new realism has not simply been to enforce compliance with the law. The approach of starting not from the interests of workers but from what purports to be a 'realistic" appraisal of the whole situation links directly into the issue of the viability of the employers: the idea that if an employer claims to be loss-making or bankrupt nothing can be done to defend working conditions or jobs.
In addition to reinforeing the policies of union leaders the anti-union laws also strengthened their position within the unions. The law is enforced through the bureaucratic mechanisms of the union and thereby gives control over events to the leadership. Since the early 1990s, when legal obstacles to strikes came to seem almost insurmountable, unions have managed to develop the ability to conduct legal ballots and follow this through to action. The strikes in the Post Office, London Underground, and various rail companies in the summer of 1996 are examples of this. However, it is also a characteristic of such strikes that they remain heavily controlled and managed by the union leaderships. The boundaries of action are tightly circumscribed by the original ballot and the action cannot be generalised to new groups of workers without defying the law. Such a situation boosts the control of the leadership within the union at precisely those times when independent initiative and activity have previously been most to the forefront. This then leeds through into a generally enhanced position for the leadership at other times. The leadership in turn judges its attitudes towards legal requirements primarily in terms of what will safeguard its own position, mainly through maintaining the union's assets and funds against legal challenges.