the law remained in a state of collective laissez faire, encouraging voluntarism for agreement and dispute settlement between industrial partners. The 1920s and 1930s were economically volatile. In 1926 a General Strike against coal miners' pay cuts paralysed the country, though was broken by Winston Churchill, by then the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 was subsequently passed to prohibit any secondary action. The Labour Party had formed Parliamentary majorities in 1924 and 1929, but achieved little in the way of reform, particularly after the onset of the Great Depression. New Ministries and Secretaries Act 1916, created the Ministry of Labour Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 (c 22) Trade Boards and Road Haulage Wages (Emergency Provisions) Act 1940 c. 7 Truck Act 1940 c. 38 Workmen's Compensation and Benefit (Byssinosis) Act 1940 c. 56 Workmen's Compensation (Supplementary Allowances) Act 1940 c. 47 Post-war consensus By the Second World War and the Labour government of Clement Attlee, trade union membership was well established and collective agreements covered over 80 per cent of the workforce. With the British Empire in rapid dissolution and immigration from Commonwealth countries, combined with record levels of female workplace participation, the character of Britain's workforce was changing fast. Though the common law was sometimes comparatively progressive, sometimes not, the first statutes to prohibit discrimination focused on gender and race emerged in the 1960s as the Civil Rights Act was passed in the United States. Discrimination in employment (as in consumer or public service access) was formally prohibited on grounds of race in 1965, gender in 1975, disability in 1995, sexual orientation and religion in 2003 and age in 2006. A complicated and inconsistent jamboree of Acts and statutory instruments was placed into a comprehensive code in the Equality Act 2010. Much discrimination law is now applicable throughout the European Union, to which the UK acceded in 1972. While the prominence of labour issues in the early European Treaties and case law was scant, it was not until the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty was drafted that labour issues were formally incorporated into the EU's jurisprudence. Wages Councils Act 1945 Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1946 c. 52 Control of Engagement Order, 1947 Wages Councils Act 1948 c. 7 Employment and Training Act 1948, employment service Workmen's Compensation (Supplementation) Act 1951 c. 22 Industrial and Provident Societies Act