I recently finished Willibald Steinmetz, Begegnungen vor Gericht: an extraordinary, detailed account of the way late Victorian and Edwardian courts dealt with cases brought by employers and workmen. Steinmetz argues that these years saw a growing legal equality between the two sides; but despite that progress, there was no increase in the number of cases brought by workers. This class hostility to the courts was rare in Europe: in Germany, for example, the very same years witnessed the establishment of an effective employment tribunal system.

Steinmetz's work raises a number of questions: how much of the experience of British law is shaped by statute, how much by other factors, including cost, complexity, the archaism of common law? Reading his book, I found myself wondering: had Britain enjoyed a system similar to the German, would there have been less strikes? How much of the decline in British trade union militancy since 1972 is down to the employers offensive, or should we explain the falling number of strikes rather in terms of what he dubs the 'juridification' of industrial relations?

If Steinmetz is correct, it would seem that previous historians of labour and industrial relations have systematically under-analysed the conduct of the British state, treating an actually contingent and limited set of relationships as normal, fixed and given. I don't want his general argument to be right; but the primary test of Steinmetz's argument is historical.