The Trade Disputes Bill
THE Government have laid the foundations for some perilous building in the next session. . The Trade Disputes Bill and the Electoral Reform Bill have, indeed, almost a common foundation. They are closely. joined, as the Government giye the Liberals the Alternative Vote—which nobody very much wants, not even the Liberals themselves, though they take it for lack of something better—in return for the Liberal undertaking to support the Government. But " supporting the Government " means, of course, helping them to redeem their particular promise to the Trade Unions that the Trade Disputes Act of 1927 shall be amended.
It is admitted that there is no written contract between the Government and the Liberals ; there is not even, it is said, a " pact "—whatever the exact definition of a pact in this context may be. There is, however, undoub- tedly an understanding, and upon this understanding will be reared the double structure of the Trade Disputes Bill and the Electoral Reform Bill. It is not known even now how many_ Liberals will support the Government. It is believed that Sir John Simon is stoutly opposed to all amendment of the Trade Disputes Act and that an appreciable minority of Liberals agree with him. The Liberals will not decide what to do till January 21st, the second day of the next session. On the whole, it seems probable that there will be enough Liberals ready to ensure the second reading of the Trade Disputes Bill on the ground, that though the Bill is at present unin- telligible in parts (and open to objection in some of those parts where it can be understood) the second reading will be justified. There will be plenty of opportunities, they think, to overhaul the Bill in Committee.
The complaint that parts of the Bill are unintelligible is not an exaggeration. There have been many protests against " legislation by reference," but this Bill is one of the worst examples we have seen of this particular vice. It contains so many references to previous legisla- tion that no one could make head or tail of it without having at least the Act of 1927 before him. It may well be believed that the Government would not have intro- duced this Bill unless they had been under a solemn pledge, and had been continually reminded of that pledge by the Trades Union Congress.
If the popular memory is not shorter than usual it will be generally remembered that when Mr. Baldwin's Government had passed the Act of 1927 (the 'sense of which was " There shall never again be a General Strike like that of 1926. We will make it illegal to hold the Government up to ransom ") the Trade Unions declared
jeltad. They said that the Act-was purely malicious," that it deprived them of their only means of persuasion, withdrew their vital rights of bargaining,' and, as a final stroke of meanness, depleted their political funds. It was announced that the first step of the Labour Govern- ment would be to repeal this atrocious Act. An attempt was made to beat up opinion by carrying the fiery cross of Trade Unionism round the country. Much to the general surprise—certainly to ours—that campaign fell absolutely flat. The ordinary Trade Unionist did not seem to care. His tepidity suggested that secretly he was pleased to be relieved of the rule that he must pay' the political levy of his union unless he preferred to become a marked man by contracting out of the obliga- tion.
The chief clause in the new Bill, so far as we can under- stand it, legalizes sympathetic strikes, though it maintains the illegality of a general " political " strike. This is a distinction which could hardly be a distinction in practice. No doubt in a certain sense sympathetic strikes which involved every manual worker in the country could not be pronounced illegal. There are strikes, however extensive, with which the law could not even pretend to deal. Thus, if by some miracle—. which we imagine as conceivable only for the .purpose of argument—all the workers simultaneously stopped working although there was no visible and nameable organization directing them, the law could do nothing. In a free country it would be quite open to every man to say that he did not wish to work. What the Act of 1927 did was to prohibit any directing organization (like the General Council of the Trades Union Congress) from arranging strikes " designed or calculated to coerce the Government either directly or by inflicting hardship upon the community."
It is obvious that a strike of that sort is necessarily " political," and is and ought to remain illegal. It goes far beyond the proper function of Trade Unions of obtaining better industrial terms for themselves by collective action. A strike which aims at bringing the normal life of the country to a standstill is bound to paralyse the Government as well as every other institution in the country. If the organization at the head of such a strike should succeed it would find itself in the position of a victorious general on the field of battle who alone has command of the situation. The strike organization alone could dictate terms. If the General Strike of 1926 had succeeded the General Council of the Trades Union Congress would have been the only Government left in the country. It was for that reason that Mr: Asquith laid it down that no Liberal interpretation of Constitutionalism could tolerate any pretence that such a strike was legal. The real question raised by the new Bill is whether such a strike as that of 1926 would be legalized if the Government passed their Bill in its present form.
The first thing to notice is that the Bill actually does propose to legalize some strikes which were made illegal by the 1927 Act. It legalizes any strike for " furthering purposes connected with the employment or non- employment, or the terms of the employment, or with the conditions of labour, of any person (whether or not employed in the trade or industry in which the strike or lock-out takes place)." It also removes the provisions which protect the community frOni hardship and the Government from coercion. That is to say, if the strikers contended—as they naturally would contend—. that their object was "industrial," not "political,'4. the Trades Union Congress would apparently be free to organize such a strike as that of 1926, and the funds
of the Tisde Unions could be used in support of it: -
The 1927 Act provides that an injunction against the use of Trade Union funds for an illegal strike .earn be granted by the High Court at the instance of the Attorney-General. The new Bill retains this 'provision, but makes the addition that no such injunction Shall be granted " unless the Attorney-General is a party to the proceedings." We cannot feel quite sure about' the meaning of this, but the suggestion seems to be that nothing can be done from first to last without the sanction of the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General, hmiever, is a member of the Government and usually a member of the Cabinet. It has often been .pointed Out that if the functions of the Judiciary and the Executive are to be kept strictly apart it is undesirable to *make the Attorney-General a Cabinet Minister. It is difficult
to imagine circumstances more likely to give 'point to . - that argument than the principle of making a Law Officer who is a Cabinet Minister the final judge of the legality or illegality of a strike.
Other matters, though important, are less important. The Bill waters down the definition of intimidation by confining it to violence to the person or damage to property. Yet everybody knows that the real sting of what is called " intimidation " lies not in an occasional injury to a person or his property, but in the threats to a man and his family and in the familiar, ingenious means of preventing a man from earning his living. Next, the Bill restores the contracting-out character of the political levy of the Trade Unions. Every Trade Unionist will have to subscribe unless he declares in writing that he wishes to abstain. It was stated in the House of Commons the other day that under the present Act only forty-three per cent. of Trade Unionists are
subscribing to the political fund. Lastly, the Bill restores to Civil Servants their right to be affiliated to political organizations, and reverses the clause of the 1927 Act which prohibits local authorities from requiring their employees to be Trade Unionists.
As we have said, the Bill needs much amendment. There is no desire whatever among responsible people to weaken Trade Unions which have justly earned respect by their care for the interests of the workers and are now among the great assets of the nation. If, however, the Bill does not open the door to the dangers which we have mentioned the fact must be made clear. Amendment or elucidation is essential. The nation would not tolerate for a moment the idea of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress appearing again as a junta and issuing permits without which no ordinary citizen could conduct his normal business.
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