It is notable as Lord Denning MR said the following: It has been held for over 60 years that workmen have a right to strike... provided that they give sufficient notice beforehand...The Port of London Authority negotiated with a single union.
If it had been a full week's notice by the men to terminate the employment altogether, it would not have been a threat to commit a breach of contract.
In Stratford (J. T.) & Son Ltd. v. Lindley I stated the argument in this way: "Suppose that a trade-union officer gives a 'strike notice.'
He says to an employer: 'We are going to call a strike on Monday week unless you ... dismiss yonder man who is not a member of the union.'...
As the Master of the Rolls has said, it is not altogether easy to see the logical reason in law why, if the men tell the employers that, if the latter do not terminate the employment of X, they (the men) will not work according to the terms and conditions of their existing contracts, that does not amount to a breach or to a declaration of intention to breach their contracts.
This point was dealt with by my Lord in Stratford (J. T) & Son Ltd. v. Lindley in the passage which he has quoted in his judgment in the present case.
In the present case this was accepted by the Port of London Authority who, as I have said, did not break their contract with the plaintiff but terminated it by lawful notice.
This conception does not, in my view, conflict with the observations made by Lord Donovan in Stratford v. Lindley on the particular facts of that case.
Whether or not the approach above suggested be correct, there is abundant authority for the proposition that it is not unlawful for workmen to inform their employers that they will not work with a particular man or set of men.
Of course both of those words are difficult to define, and I prefer to say that they have a right to make the statement to him that they are going to do it, and that whatever epithet or substantive you may apply to it, if they do not go beyond that there is no cause of action.
"That statement of principle, aptly illustrated as it is by the two converse Irish cases to which my Lord has referred has never been doubted.
But it is nevertheless clear that the legislature were contemplating that in certain circumstances a contract of employment should be deemed to continue even though the employee was on strike.
It was a statement that in default of action by the Port of London Authority which it might lawfully take the men would withdraw their labour, which in effect I suppose would mean that the obligations under the contract would be mutually suspended.