dominated legislation. The difference between contract of service andcontract for service however got greater significance as the British legislation most often concerned the open ended contract of service.129 The inadequacy of a contractual model meant that the British courts preferred to regard the servant’s duties “not as operating on a contract but as imposing extra-contractual obligations enforceable through criminal prosecution and through actions in tort”.130 Great Britain, which did not experience the work-book system, used penal sanctions on deserting workers until the late 19th century. A statute of 1823 provided the basis for most of the mid-nineteenth century prosecutions of manual workers for offences such as desertion, neglect of duties or “any other misconduct or misdemeanour”. If convicted, the servant could be imprisoned with hard labour for up to three months, his wages reduced and his services terminated. On the other hand, an employer who broke a contract of service was only liable to be sued for damages or payment of the agreed sum. When in 1875 parliament eventually repealed the master and servant laws, with their penal sanctions, the law seemed to promise a freely bargained exchange between equal contracting parties. Nevertheless, for a long time there was antagonism between the courts on the one hand, defending the doctrines influenced by Blackstone’s Commentaries and the laws on master and servant, which allowed public law sanctions against striking workers, and on the other hand the legislature’s ambition to protect the freedom of association, which had been introduced as early as in 1824.131 In general, it was not until the end of the 19th century that the guild system, the state direction of labour power, penal laws and other obstacles to a development of a free labour market were c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 71 129 Supiot 1994, p. 16. 130 Kahn-Freund 1967, p. 641;Veneziani 1986, p. 44. 131 Honeyball & Bowers 1993, pp. 1-3.
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