16 JAMES AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUGDMENT (vi) provided no machinery whereby the applicants can challenge either the validity of or the justification for the deprivation, or the principles upon which the compensation is to be calculated, once only it is established that the tenancy is within the ambit of the Act; (vii) made arbitrary distinctions between the properties of which they can be deprived, and those of which they cannot. A. General considerations 35. The applicants maintained that since their grievance concerned in substance the effect of the legislation on the ownership of specific properties formerly belonging to them, each individual act of enfranchisement before the Court should be examined on its merits for compliance with Article 1 (P1-1). In its report, the Commission rejected this approach. It noted that the particular matters of which the applicants complained resulted from transactions between private individuals for which the United Kingdom was responsible qua legislator but not otherwise. For the Commission, although account must be taken of the practical effects of the legislation, the essential issue for decision is whether the respondent State has breached the applicants’ rights under the Convention by empowering tenants to acquire their property on the terms and conditions laid down in the legislation; and this issue has to be determined by considering whether the legislation is compatible with the Convention rather than by separate scrutiny of the individual transactions. The Government adopted the same approach as the Commission. 36. The Court has frequently stated the principle that, without losing sight of the general context of the case, it must, in proceedings originating in an individual application, confine its attention, as far as possible, to the concrete case (see, as the most recent authority, the Ashingdane judgment of 28 May 1985, Series A no. 93, p. 25, para. 59). In the present case, however, the essence of the applicants’ complaint is directed against the terms and conditions of the contested legislation. It does not relate to the manner of execution of the law by a State authority, be it administrative or judicial. Indeed, one of the applicants’ criticisms was that the legislation does not allow scope for discretionary and variable implementation according to the particular circumstances of each individual property. The Court must therefore, like the Commission, direct its attention primarily to the contested legislation itself, in order to determine whether that legislation is compatible with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (P1-1). This does not mean that the Court will examine the legislation in abstracto. The individual enfranchisements complained of are illustrative of the impact in practice of the reform it introduced and, as such, material to the issue of its compatibility with the Convention. In this respect, the