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6 January 2012: The Toff and the Monster
Asked in 2009 why British entries always did so badly in the Eurovision song context, former presenter Terry Wogan answered, “There has always been that general feeling [in Britain] of distrust of Johnny Foreigner, but of course it is mutual. Britain has attacked nearly every country in Europe and people don't forget.” Perhaps with this very history in mind, bookmakers made Paris not London the favourites in July 2005 to obtain the 2012 summer Olympics. The moment at which London inched past Paris is generally said to have been Sebastian Coe’s speech to the critical meeting of the International Olympic Committee. Now by this stage, in Britain, Coe was best known as an unsuccessful politician in his own right. He had been a Tory MP from 1992 to 1997 and William Hague’s constant companion during the latter unsuccessful stint as leader of the Conservatives after the 1997 election. Very much Adam Werrity to Hague’s Liam Fox, Coe was said to spend his every morning in judo bouts with his leader, and in one unfortunate incident the former Olympic gold medallist was left unconscious by a Hague neck lock. More here.

January 2012: Lives running
I have begun a page here for a book I have coming out over the summer. More here.

21 December 2011: Luis Suarez: offence is no defence
Liverpool have been leaking to the Guardian Suarez's defence for several weeks now; which is in essence that the word he used "negrito" is not considered racist in Uruguay. This was always a rotten argument, for three main reasons: More here.

December 2011: What about the workers
Over the last twelve months the Coalition government has been developing its plans for law in general and Employment Tribunals in particular. First of all, it plans to reduce the public’s entitlement to legal aid. Many cases which get legal aid now will not from autumn 2012 (for example non-asylum immigration cases, most custody disputes after relationships break down, and most claims by tenants for housing disrepair). Civil legal aid will be restricted to the very poorest. And claimants will only get legal aid by applying through a call-centre rather than by speaking to a solicitor directly (there is no purpose to the call-centre other than to give claimants an additional hoop to jump through, the government’s hope being that most people will give up rather than push on with their claim). More here.

13 November 2011: Tribune - reborn
All good luck to Tribune magazine, which is presently re-launching itself as a workers' co-operative. They are calling on old readers to re-subscribe. More here.

5 November 2011: Who benefits from racism?
In the dying days of the Blair government, Polly Toynbee wrote a piece asking who benefited from migration. Her answer was the rich, 'London, where migration is greatest, also has the highest unemployment, especially among British-born ethnic minorities. Poor families in this most expensive city can't pay for childcare, and compete for jobs with single migrants willing to take less than a living wage. But the rich prosper: restaurants, cleaners and all other services are cheaper because wages are low.' Who suffered? The poor. 'The Tories are torn between Little England anti-foreigner tendencies and neo-con cheap-labour enthusiasm. Labour are the traditional celebrators of cultural diversity, and the Treasury gleefully supports wealth-creating migration. But what if it creates wealth only for the wealthy, while threatening Labour's social-justice goals?' (P. Toynbee, ‘Immigration is now making the rich richer and the poor poorer’, Guardian, 11 August 2006) There are many problems with this argument, above all the failure to separate migration from the treatment of migrants. Under present conditions, with present levels of restriction, yes migration benefits the rich, but it does so chiefly because of the discrimination suffered by migrants, because of the ways their lives are controlled, because of their economic, social and political oppression, in short, because of racism. More here.

5 November 2011: November 2011: Tribunal of the boss
George Osborne used his speech to the Tory party conference to announce that in future employment tribunals will charge fees to hear claims. Under his proposals, claimants will have to pay £250 to issue a tribunal claim, and a further £1000 to have the claim heard. Employers defending a claim will pay nothing. The proposed fee is punitive: it is around ten times more than it would cost to issue a similar claim in the county courts, on which the tribunals are modelled. More here.

31 October 2011: A terrible moustache
Killing time in the National Archives on Friday, I happened across George Orwell's Special Branch file, which was released in 2005 and commented on by various people at the time including in the Guardian. The file contains a brief description of Orwell's revolutionary politics, which appear to have been surprisingly unaffected by his day-time job as a teacher at a boys' prep school. More here.

28 October 2011: Why Kenny's wrong
At his press conference today, this was Kenny Dalglish’s take on the FA investigation of Luis Suarez, “We have got a case going on which seems to be dragging its feet. We would rather have it done and dusted, out in the open and whoever is the guilty party, whether it's the person who said it or the accuser, [should] get their due punishment.” Until then, the controversy over John Terry’s treatment of Anton Ferdinand had obscured the more serious and more troubling row over what happened, or didn’t happen, between Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra during the recent match between Liverpool and Manchester United. More here.

26 October 2011: Employment Tribunals, a venture capitalist writes
The Tory papers have been sent leaked extracts of a new Number 10 report, to the effect that workers should lose their right to claim unfair dismissal. The report was written by Adrian Beechcroft, described as a “venture capitalist”, which does make you wistful for the old days of long ago when Tory policy was made up by people who claimed at least some knowledge of the area of life which they proposed to alter; instead of the present, where expertise seemed to be established by saying simply “you’ve got to do what I want, I’m very rich.” More here.

17 October 2011: Princes, the Dregs of their Dull Race
Millions of readers know what to expect from a Peter Ackroyd history: an eye for detail, the appalling anecdote, deep use of literary and archaeological sources. The History of England exhibits these familiar virtues. The literary sources begin with the Greek merchant Pytheas, landing in Britain two centuries before Caesar. A Viking triumph is illustrated by a quotation from a 10th century lament. To illustrate the ubiquity of violence in mediaeval England, Ackroyd cites the story of a 12th century nun, seduced by a priest, and forced by the members of her order to castrate her lover, after which the nuns stuffed the priest’s excised genitals into his mouth. More here.

3 October 2011: Osborne and the Bullingdon club’s vision of law for the rich
George Osborne appears to have used his speech to the Conservative Party conference as the opportunity to reveal the outcome of the government’s consultation, underway since this spring, on the future of Employment Tribunals. More here.

2 October 2011: Agency workers: one step forwards, two steps back
On 1 October 2011, new Regulations came into effect protecting agency workers. The TUC, which played a considerable part in lobbying for the Regulations, has welcomed them. Government and business have criticised the Regulations, blaming them on Labour’s supposed instincts for over-regulation. What both accounts miss out is that, over the past five years, there has been a dramatic reduction in agency workers’ legal rights in which the key episode has been agency workers’ loss of the right to claim unfair dismissal. The Regulations are welcome, but barely remedy what has been overall a dramatic reduction in workers’ rights. More.

October 2011: The Battle of Cable Street: 75 years on
On 4 October 1936, fascists and anti-fascists clashed as 1,900 supporters of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) attempted to march from the City of London through London’s East End. Mosley himself was driven to the scene in a bullet-proofed Bentley; he wore a peaked cap, an SS-style jacket, jodhpurs and knee-length jackboots. On arrival, he inspected his supporters and took the fascist salute from them. His way was blocked by a crowd of more than 100,000 anti-fascists at Gardiner’s corner, the main route into East London. More here.

19 September 2011: Three steps to a luckier team
I have been trying as hard as I can to know as little as possible about Liverpool's thrashing this weekend at Spurs. But if I was in Kenny's shoes, and basing this only on thoughts I've seen from watching some of Liverpool's victories this season; I'd try the following to get back the momentum we had a few weeks ago. 1. Play five in midfield. It doesn't matter if Carroll starts (as at Arsenal) or Suarez. We keep the ball best and play fastest with five in midfield. More

8 September 2011: forthcoming book: Struck Out
Every year, over a hundred thousand workers bring claims to the Employment Tribunal. The settling of disputes between employers and unions has been exchanged by many for individual litigation. In Struck Out, Dave Renton gives a practical and critical guide to the system. In doing so he punctures a number of media myths about the tribunals. More here.

15 August 2011: Resolving Workplace Disputes, the view from the RCJ
Between January and April this year, the government consulted on plans to alter the Employment Tribunal system. At the heart of the consultation document, “Resolving workplace disputes”, were proposals to make it more difficult to bring claims. One suggestion was that the qualifying period for an unfair dismissal claim should be extended from one year to two. Another idea was to introduce issuing fees for new Tribunal claims (although noticeably, there was no suggestion as to what the amount of the fee would be). There were also plans to introduce something like the old Part 36 offers, an idea taken form the much more formal Civil Procedure Rules. More here.

14 August 2011: The London riots
The consensus is that the police cannot be criticised for the London riots as they have made every effort to improve since the last riots of 1981. The policing of the young and of black communities is now done by consent, we are told. But going back to 1981, a main cricisms of the Scarman Inquiry was of Operation Swamp 81, the ‘flawed’ method of ‘hard policing’ which say 950 people stopped and searched in Lambeth in April 1981. By comparison the police stopped and searched 3817 people in Lambeth in June 2011 and the figures for Tottenham and Hackney are little better. Many readers will be familiar with the commonly quoted statistic that black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts. At least with stop and search (unlike curfew and exclusion orders) it is possible to trace the racial basis. As Orwell once wrote, "when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on."

17 June 2011: Keep on trucking
King Alfred the Great is supposed to have spent eight hours each day a week in prayer, eight hours in sleep, and only eight hours at work. The European Working Time Directive supplies our modern limits: workers’ rights to rest breaks, daily rest, weekly rest, maximum weekly working time and annual leave, which form an increasing part of all employment lawyers’ workload. More here.

Spring 2011: The Tories, Eton and private schools
One of the most striking features of the new government is the dominance within its ranks of individuals showing every sign of class privilege. The Sunday Times reports that 18 of the 23 full-time members of the cabinet are millionaires, having between them a capital wealth of about £50 million.1 David Cameron is an Old Etonian descended from three generations of stockbrokers.2 George Osborne was educated at St Paul’s and endowed by his parents with a £15 million stake in his family wallpaper business,3 while Boris Johnson, Cameron’s contemporary at Eton, is a son of a Tory MEP. An image much reproduced in the general election showed Cameron, Osborne and Johnson together in evening dress as members of Oxford’s Bullingdon Club. Appearing in the same image are the less familiar faces of the future Baron Altrincham, Earl Wemyss and Lord Northbourne. More here

February 2011: Fascism and Anti-Fascism Between the Wars
Two decades ago, it was possible for historians of fascism in Britain to remark that the literature of their subject was unnecessarily limited. Up to that point, writers had accepted two self-imposed restrictions which were no longer capable of justification. First, historians had kept their research to the inter-war period, neglecting almost entirely such post-war organisations as the National Front (NF) and the British National Party (BNP). Second, the careful studies of the ideas, organisation and activities of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) had been almost entirely unmatched by any comparable interest in those who had campaigned against the BUF. The lack of attention paid to anti-fascists was especially striking. It was certainly arguable that anti-fascists had been instrumental in Mosley’s defeat, and (whether that was accepted or not) it was clear that they had been as well organised, as politically diverse, and more numerous than, Mosley’s followers. More here

Winter 2010-2011: A cuts agenda takes shape? (Socialist Lawyer)
Six months in, much of the legislative programme of the present government remains vague. Policy still takes the form of initiatives leaked to the media rather than concrete proposals. This is just as true of employment as it is of other areas of the law. But two ideas being trailed in the press give a taste of where the government’s cuts agenda could well lead. More here

October 2009: Tribunals and Tribulations
In January 2009 a health worker and Unison activist, Karen Reissmann, brought a claim of unfair dismissal to the Employment Tribunal.1 She complained that she had been dismissed for publicly criticising cuts at her trust. After her dismissal 700 of her fellow workers struck for 14 days in an attempt to save her job. Her battle then entered a legal stage, culminating in a tribunal hearing that lasted for two days. The employment judge made rulings that narrowed the scope of Reissmann’s claim. On the third day the case was compromised, with the settlement agreement including a confidentiality clause. More here