The Legal and Political Context of Engineering

A contract is a bargain to which there are two sides. Each side or party does or promises to do something in return for action or a 

Contracts can be ended in various ways. One is by due notice , given under the terms of contract by either party, and subject to the employee s right not to be unfairly dismissed. Another is by frustration , whenever something occurs to prevent the continuous performance of the contract or radically to alter its basis. Obviously death is one such instance so too may be imprisonment or lengthy 

The system of the courts which enforce both criminal and civil law and the details of types oflaw vary between England and Wales on one hand and Scotland on the other. The legal system is served by three 

However it was not that the legislation was unimportant. The Conciliation Act (1896) and the Industrial Court Act (1919) provided the basis for a whole range of state agencies and services in the fields of conciliation, arbitration, mediation and inquiry, and these services were valued by the practitioners of their day. Yet the essence of these services were that they were largely voluntary, except of course for Committees and Courts of Inquiry where a certain minimum amount of compulsion was available if necessary, and whether or not people used the services or not was entirely up to the parties themselves. 

The Wages Councils legislation was of a different order. From 1909 the state accepted on purely social grounds the necessity of intervention in the basic terms and conditions of employment for approxi- 

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