The answer was given by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice). The general fund is contributed to by all members of the union. If any punishment is to be inflicted it should be inflicted on the whole of the union. The political fund is made up of contributions by members who have opted to pay into it. Therefore, if the punishment is inflicted on the political fund, not all members of the trade union are equally punished. That is the injustice of it.

The offending firm, Con-Mech, was found to be in the wrong by the CIR. The Secretary of State did not mention that. I think that in common fairness he should have done so. The court has taken no action to bring the parties together. Judges often bring parties together. It would have been easy for the court to say, "We will adjourn this case. The parties had better get together." But it blithely went ahead and slapped a fine of £100,000 on the union, almost peremptorily. The union merely wanted to meet the management.

Con-Mech consists of 30 to 35 men with an arrogant boss who thinks that he can run his own show completely. I met such situations in the old days. I met people who refused workers the basic trade union right to be represented, so I pulled them out. There was no difficulty. That was the rule. It was justice. It may have been rough justice, but it was justice. In this case we do not get justice. The matter goes on and the parties are not brought together. Sir John Donaldson could have brought them together. Week after week we read about cases in which a judge says, "I think the parties had better meet", and he defers the matter.

Sir John Donaldson did not do that. The fine goes on the union and the arrogant contempt of the court by Con-Mech is allowed. There was far more contempt of court by the boss of Con-Mech than ever there was by my union. My union's funds have been dealt with in many courts. But we considered that this court was a political court from the beginning and that a protest was to be made in the most exemplary terms.

A case could be made that we could have avoided this if we had attended the court and been represented. Had we done so I believe that we should have won the case. But the Government had better tell that to the Transport and General Workers' Union, which went to court and got fined £100,000. I cannot say too much about that. However, in passing, it does not strike me as being a just judgment.

With regard to the court's decision, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State will remember that when we were discussing the guillotine motion I said that the Bill ought to have been five Bills and that every Bill deserved a protracted parliamentary sitting. Something that was never envisaged on either side of the House was the mischief that the court would do. We had long debates on other aspects of the Bill, but that was not one upon which we fastened. The industrial court suffered from the guillotine. The House did not discuss it at the time. In effect, even taking into account the House of Lords, in which things are more leisurely, the Clause establishing the court was Clause 195, which was discussed in Committee on 27th May 1971, when amendments were moved by my noble Friend Lord Diamond. The discussion lasted for just under three hours in that place, where the wicked rest and the weary cease their suffering.

The schedule which concerned the court was discussed in the House of Lords on 8th June 1971 for about 70 minutes. There is not a great deal of industrial experience in the House of Lords—any more than there was in the Intervention of a few minutes ago. Yet the court appears in a whole series of sections. It appears in Sections 4, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42 to 45 and 46 to 50. It hardly entered into discussion. Words had no significance beyond their meaning in the Bill. That is what we had here and the court, which has done more mischief than anything else, was not discussed.

I could continue to make a long speech about the mischief that the Act has done, about how it has literally promoted strikes and has lent itself to all sorts of doubtful artifices. When the Official Solicitor had to come in concerning the five dockers, we knew that this was a time of great danger to the country if there was a dock strike. But that was not settled on any legal basis. It was settled on a contemptible political stratagem to save the Government's face. We live in a world of charade and pretence. The motion was signed by 180 Members. I notice that those who have led off against them are the lawyers. this place needs fewer lawyers and more engineers. They are the weft and woof of this sort of place. The Government reckon without the real people in this country.

This does not seem to be a realistic Act. I can only hope that when the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State comes again to the House he will have refreshed himself in London, having got away from the bogs of old Ireland. I only hope that his successor, when trying to form with all the goodwill in the world the Council of Ireland, is rather better briefed than the right hon. Gentleman was this afternoon.