Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T18:19:08.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coercion and the labour contract: revisiting Glasbrook Brothers and the political fiction of Lewis Jones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2012

Melanie L. Williams
Melanie L. Williams*
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
*
m.l.williams@exeter.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In his tale of the struggles and privations of the mining community in the industrial south of Wales in the early decades of the twentieth century, Lewis Jones, ex-miner and socialist activist, put aside the usual tools of political activism – of oratory and pamphlet propaganda – and instead turned to fiction as a means of educating and mobilising the political energy of the workforce. In doing so, Jones represented the extent to which the law was pivotal to the social organisation delivering injustice to working people. When one turns to history and to the legal record, the contestable accounts, elisions and absences from the record speak eloquently of the extent to which selective doctrine contributes to that injustice. The resultant message resonates with debates on the relationship between society, politics and the rule of law itself.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atiyah, P. S. (1995) An Introduction to the Law of Contract. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Banaji, Jairus (2003) ‘The Fictions of Free Labour: Contract, Coercion, and So-Called Unfree Labour’, Historical Materialism 11(3): 69–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cain, M. and Hunt, A. (eds) (1979) Marx and Engels on Law. London/New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, John (2003) Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A. (1997) ‘The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom’ in Goodin, Robert and Pettit, Philip (eds), Contemporary Political Philosophy. Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies. Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell, 429–45.Google Scholar
Cole, Daniel H. (2001) ‘“An Unqualified Human Good”: E. P. Thompson and the Rule of Law’, Journal of Law and Society 28(2): 177–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Hugh (1982) Marxism and Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Hugh (1993) The Law of Contract. London: Butterworths.Google Scholar
Conaghan, Joanne (1987) ‘Critical Labour Law: The American Contribution’, Journal of Law and Society 14(3): 334–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curzon, L. B. (1981) Roman Law. London: M & E Handbook.Google Scholar
Davies, Paul and Freedland, Mark (eds) (1983) Kahn-Freund's Labour and the Law, 3rd edn.London: Stevens and Son.Google Scholar
Deakin, Simon and Morris, Gillian (1998) Labour Law, 2nd edn.London: Butterworth.Google Scholar
Edwards, Richard (2010) ‘Police Offered Right to Strike’, Telegraph, 1 October: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8038086/Police-offered-right-to-strike.html.Google Scholar
Fallon, Richard H. (1997) ‘“The Rule of Law” as a Concept in Constitutional Discourse’, Columbia Law Review 97(1): 1–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Robert (1994) ‘The Rule of Law and Muggletonian Marxism: The Perplexities of Edward Thompson’, Journal of Law and Society 21(2): 193–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fish, Stanley (1989) Doing What Comes Naturally. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Garnsey, P. (1970) Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gordley, James (1991) The Philosophical Origins of Modern Contract Doctrine. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, W. Burnett (1961) ‘The Rule of Law in Historical Perspective’, Michigan Law Review 59(4): 487–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvie, Christopher (1991) The Centre of Things – Political Fiction in Britain from Disraeli to the Present. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd.Google Scholar
Holton, Robert J. (1981) ‘Marxist Theories of Social Change and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism’, Theory and Society 10(6): 833–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda (1988) A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jeffery, Keith (1981) ‘The British Army and Internal Security 1919–1939’, Historical Journal 24(2): 377–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Lewis (2006) Cwmardy and We Live. Cardigan: Parthian Books, Library of Wales [first published 1937].Google ScholarPubMed
Keen, M. (1990) English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348–1500. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Lewis, Roy (ed.) (1986) Labour Law in Britain. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mclellan, David (ed.) (2000) Karl Marx, Selected Writings, 2nd edn.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Oliver, Dawn (1999) Common Values and the Public–Private Divide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pashukanis, Evgeny (1989) Law and Marxism: A General Theory. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole (1988) The Sexual Contract. Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Simmonds, Nigel (1985) ‘Pashukanis and Liberal Jurisprudence’, Journal of Law and Society 12(2): 135–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Dai (1999) Wales: A Question for History. Bridgend: Seren.Google Scholar
Thomas, Paul (1985) ‘Mixed Feelings: Raymond Williams and George Orwell’, Theory and Society 14(4): 419–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1975) Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Trevelyan, G. M. (1986) A Shortened History of England. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Trotsky, Leon (2005 [1924]) Literature and Revolution, ed. Keach, William. Chicago: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond (1982) ‘The language of the working-class novel of the 1930s’, in Gustav Klaus, H. (ed.), The Socialist Novel in Britain. London: Harvester Press, 133–34.Google Scholar