The Supreme Court approved an interim injunction against Chris Furbert, Nicholas Tweed and the Bermuda Industrial Union last Friday, according to recently published court documents.

According to an Ex Tempore Ruling, the Ministry of Home Affairs sought an interim injunction from the court in a hearing last week to restrain the parties from “inciting, commencing, encouraging, persuading or influencing any person to take part in, or otherwise act in furtherance of a strike or irregular industrial action short of a strike”.

Rev Tweed and Mr Furbert have consistently described the demonstration as a “withdrawal of labour” rather than an industrial action.

The application was supported by a draft affidavit by Michael Fahy, the Minister of Home Affairs, stating that both Mr Tweed and Mr Furbert had called for a work stoppage in protest of Pathways to Status legislation, which was set to be debated yesterday.

Noting that demonstrations were taking place on the day of the hearing, Chief Justice Ian Kawaley wrote in the ruling: “The evidential background is primarily supported in terms of the BIU and Mr Furbert by a letter of March 8, 2016 from the Union threatening to call on ‘all people’ to protest the proposed legislation by withdrawing their labour. “It is supplemented by newspaper articles which suggest that, although initially on or about March 9 a call to action was withdrawn by both the union and the People’s Campaign, the call to action was reinstated at some point on Thursday.”

The Ministry argued that the Labour Relations Act had already been breached, stating that the legislation renders industrial action unlawful if it has any objective other than the furtherance of a labour dispute within the industry or trade of those taking the action, or if it is designed to influence government by inflicting “severe hardship” on the community.

Dr Justice Kawaley wrote: “In this case I have been concerned to avoid granting an injunction to restrain action that might be construed to be civic and/or political action which falls without the scope of the Labour Relations Act.

“However, I am satisfied that the scope of relief sought is indeed narrowly focused and aimed to prevent the withdrawal of labour which, it seems to me to be very strongly arguable, constitutes a breach of section 34 of the Act in circumstances where it has no connection to a labour dispute.

“And although the inciting words complained of are not explicitly directed towards Union members alone, it seems clear that calling on persons to withdraw labour is very arguably contrary to the Act, whether the persons called upon to withdraw labour are unionised or not.

“In these circumstances I am satisfied that this is an appropriate case for granting the interim injunction sought.

“I should just add that I accept that this is a case of urgency and that some attempts to give notice to the respondents has been made, and, that it is appropriate to proceed on the basis that the respondents are likely to be given an early return date of next week Thursday and would in any event be at liberty to apply on short notice to be heard.”