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For a number of reasons, I have decided to begin this issue of VINE with an editorial. In the first place, as many of you will already know, at the end of June I gave up my post as Information Officer for Library Automation in order to become an Assistant Librarian in the Applied Sciences Library of University College, Cardiff. Since the Information Officer for Library Automation is ex officio editor of VINE, this means that I will also be handing over responsibility for this publication to my successor, when he or she is appointed. Unfortunately, there will be a hiatus before my successor can take over, so that for a short while, I will continue to edit VINE. However, because of my commitments in Cardiff, I will be unable to provide news of recent developments in U.K. library automation as I formerly did. Thus, in this issue of VINE and the next, I will concentrate on descriptions of automated library systems which I visited whilst on a study tour of North America in April and May of this year. Once my successor takes over, VINE will revert to being a source of up‐to‐date information about automation in specifically U.K. libraries.

An Act to amend the law relating to employers and workers and to organisations of employers and organisations of workers; to provide for the establishment of a National Industrial Relations Court and for extending the jurisdiction of industrial tribunals; to provide for the appointment of a Chief Registrar of Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, and of assistant registrars, and for establishing a Commission on Industrial Relations as a statutory body; and for purposes connected with those matters. [5th August 1971]

In 1976, the Conservative Party expressed the view that trade unions were “… imperfectly democratic”. Subsequently they returned to this theme in a Green Paper on Union Democracy in 1983 which expressed strong reservations about the electoral practices of trade unions. The Conservatives were concerned that unrepresentative union leaders “misuse(d) the wealth and power” of their unions for their own political ambitions. They noted the growing proportion of trade unionists voting Conservative and contrasted this with the continued dominance of the trade union movement by leaders sympathetic to, if not actually members of, the Labour Party. From this the Conservatives concluded that the voting system used in union elections was defective.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an observational examination of the recent Scottish elections, within which an e‐counting system was employed to manage the increased complexity of the Scottish electoral system for the first time.

Observations of an ethnographic nature, supplemented by written documentation used for both training and public consumption during the Scottish election process.

It was found that the voting system for the Scottish elections had not received sufficient review or testing prior to the election; further that the design choices imposed by the DRS software did not support the actions of its users efficiently enough, or justify confidence in the dependability of the system.

That the deployment of e‐counting systems requires careful consideration; many of the issues raised in this paper are similar to those of the official Scottish Elections Review, to which our team provided input.

The Scottish elections were the first to allow members of the public to register as election observers, accredited by the Electoral Commission. As such, the Scottish elections represented the first large‐scale opportunity to observe such processes for the academic community.

‘There is widespread concern in the country about the way in which trade unions are run” said Mr. Norman Tebbitt when introducing the Government's Green Paper on democracy in trade unions. He went on to say that “… public opinion have clearly shown the strong feeling that trade unions ought to be democratic institutions responsive to the views and wishes of their members.” He explained these statements by showing that in many cases the union executive fails to ballot its members on such major decisions as the choice of the leadership and the calling of industrial action. He talked of “… dubious decisions” being taken on a show of hands at mass meetings of workers “sometimes packed with outsiders;” of “… secret meetings at which unrepresentative minorities plot the trade union elections…” so that positions of power are held by persons who are unrepresentative of the majority.

The purpose of this paper is to review the development and current position of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in the UK, drawing on the content within a State-of-the-Art Review of Business Improvement Districts in the UK: setting the agenda for policy, practice and research, commissioned by The BID Foundation and produced by members of the Institute of Place Management.

The paper is divided into seven main sections. The first section defines the concept of BIDs, outlines their process of establishment and provides a brief critique of BIDs from the academic literature. Second, the process of introducing BIDs into the UK is discussed. Third, the different types of BIDs that currently exist are detailed. The fourth section outlines the development of BIDs since their introduction in 2004. Fifth, an analysis of BID ballots is provided, involving details of ballot results, demonstrating a general improvement as BIDs develop over time. The sixth section comprises a discussion of unsuccessful ballots and BID terminations. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of issues BIDs face in the UK, looking into the future.

The paper contains three main empirical contributions: first, a numerical analysis of the different types of BIDs in the UK; second, a timeline of their development from 2005 to 2018; and third, a statistical analysis of BID ballot results over this period, with an indication of the numbers of unsuccessful ballots and BID terminations.

This paper provides the first comprehensive overview of BIDs in the UK detailing development and performance (e.g. ballot results) in the 15 years since their introduction.

By 1st November 1984 all union membership agreements (whether written statements or informal agreements) to afford an employer a defence under sec. 58(3) of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 (EPCA) to a dismissal otherwise unfair under sec. 58(1)(c) EPCA will require to be approved by a ballot of the class of employees to which the union membership agreement (UMA) related. To assist employers and trade union members in this balloting process the Secretary of State for Employment has revised the Code of Practice on Closed Shop Agreements and Arrangements.

In the last monograph an attempt was made at giving a short historical background of the trade union movement; at defining a trade union; at discussing the closed shop and at looking towards its future.

The paper reports a major part of the results of a research project on trade union ballots in the 1980s, concerned with the role of ballots in collective bargaining. The project investigated the changes made by unions in the conduct of collective bargaining as a result of government legislation on ballots, through analysis of union rule books, interviews with national level officials, and case studies of collective bargaining at local level.

“The Trade Union Act is a major advance for the cause of union democracy” said the Secretary of State for Employment. Indeed it is, and no one can question the validity of this statement. It must be pointed out at the outset however, that, in advancing the cause of union democracy, the Trade Union Act, 1984 which is the third stage of the government's industrial legislation, has a twofold effect upon trade unions. First, it interferes indirectly with the internal affairs of the union. Second, it provides the means by which the trade union movement as a whole could be both strengthened and weakened. Both these will become apparent as the various sections of the Act are discussed.