On 13 August 1981 the European Court of Human Rights decided, by a majority of eighteen to three, that the dismissal by British Rail of three of their employees, Messrs Young, James, and Webster, for their refusal to join a union was a violation of their rights under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Although a variety of different arguments concerning the compatibility of their dismissal with the Convention's provisions had been presented to the court, the eventual decision was based entirely on Article 11 which protects, inter alia, the “right to … freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions.”

Professor Williams has done much to explicate and defend the subjectivist account of mens rea, which makes conscious risk-taking central to the idea of recklessness. It is thus not surprising that he should be critical of the rulings in Caldwell and Lawrence; nor would I quarrel with many of his objections to those decisions. My concern here is with his own views on the proper definition of “recklessness,” and on the proper use of that definition, in the criminal law: for his Textbook of Criminal Law suggests, and his discussions of Caldwell show, that he is willing to extend the concept of recklessness beyond the strict limits of subjectivism. Such an extension is indeed warranted: but I will argue that it can be explained and justified only by a more radical revision of subjectivism than he seems to allow (I ignore Lawrence and reckless driving here: Professor Williams is willing to accept an objectivist account of recklessness as gross negligence in the context of reckless driving, so long as it retains a suitably subjective meaning in other criminal contexts (R.R. 273–275)).

Care and concern for the elderly have long been regarded by social anthropologists as hallmarks of a civilised community. Unfortunately the care of the elderly frequently presents problems of both a social and legal nature. Some of the difficulties which confront legal practitioners arise from factual situations similar to the following: an aged, widowed father, whose health is deteriorating, asks his adult child to move into his house and look after him for the rest of his days. In return, the father promises orally to leave the house by will to the child or to the child and his or her spouse. The type of problem which can then occur is seen when it is found on the father's death either that he has died intestate, and the estate of which the house forms part has to be divided equally between the child and his or her brothers and sisters, or that he has forgotten to alter his last will. Consequently a will executed perhaps many years earlier provides that the house should be left to some other relative—or even to the legendary cats' home. The child, having assiduously cared for the elderly father, may wish to claim the house and may seek the practitioner's advice.

What forms of economic coercion should the law permit in the conflict between labour and capital? This is a fundamental question to ask in any developed economy. It is also hotly disputed, particularly in Britain where, in the last ten years especially, successive governments have attempted to redefine the legality of strike action to reflect their own views of what society should tolerate. As every student of labour law knows, the liberty to strike in Britain has been created by Parliament giving unions and workers a series of immunities from judge-made liabilities, and the scope of that liberty can be altered by expanding or restricting the immunities accordingly. This perhaps suggests a simple control mechanism for adjusting at will the boundary between lawful and unlawful industrial action. But the description is deceptively simple and any such conception is grossly misleading.