Redesigning the Polity: Europe, Women and Constitutional Politics in the UK

Abstract

In autumn 1993, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) and Trades Union Congress (TUC) each lodged a complaint with the European Commission against the British government. Months before, the Conservative government had abolished the Wages Councils which, since 1909, had embodied Britain’s scant and gendered minimum wage policy. Unlike every other Western European and North American state, the United Kingdom now had no statutory minimum wage at all. To the government, the abolition of Wages Councils represented a policy decision properly made by Parliament. Under the constitutional doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, this was the final word. The EOC and TUC reopened the issue. Their radical claim was that repeal of this policy was unconstitutional under European fundamental law, a breach of positive obligations which had been incurred by Britain through membership of the European Community (EC).2KeywordsMinimum WageEuropean Economic CommunityBritish WomanConstitutional ChangeEqual Opportunity CommissionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.