Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Rhagfyr 1973.
If the right hon. Gentleman will listen, I will go through the story of what happened.
On 10th October, the court considered who should take steps to enforce its order. It heard argument. It was clearly shown that the court had an inherent right in a civil action—not only in a criminal action, as the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) thought—and in certain circumstances a duty, to issue writs to ensure that the orders were effectively enforced, that it was exercising jurisdiction in the public interest, and, as it thought and held in the industrial relations case, that the public interest called for it so to do.
The writ of attachment, the concept of which is found in the ordinary concept of contempt and the effect of which is the binding of the property of a party as a means of compelling obedience to the court order, operates against property only. It is in the form of a command in the same way as a writ of attachment to a sheriff to bring a person to the court.
The writ of sequestration goes to the commissioners to seize or get in the property until the party clears its contempt. Once the court issued the writ, which was the only method which the court could employ to enforce obedience to its order in face of defiance, the duty of the commissioners was to seize or take in the property of the defiant party to meet the provision for penalty for disobedience.
If the union had objected to the writ—the union, of course, knew of the writ—, it could have appealed. However, the AUEW did not do so. The consequences which flow fall on its head alone.