A BALFOUR made a very good speech against the 1 second
reading of the Trade Disputes Bill, and his followers could listen to it with unalloyed pleasure, as he began by releasing them from the customary obligation of voting with their party. The plea on which he defended this relaxation of the ties that ordinarily bind Members to their leader was sufficiently ingenious. A vote on the second reading of a private Member's Bill may be regarded, he said, as merely "an abstract expression of opinion that the subject is one which deserves the attention of the House." If this is so—and we own to having some doubts about it—no one who is not a member of the Government need have voted with Mr. Balfour on Friday. He and his colleagues, indeed, were bound to vote against the Bill, since if the subject is really one which deserves the attention of the House, why have not the Government undertaken to deal with it ? But this obligation extends to no one else. On the theory that all that the division meant was that legislation of some kind is necessary, to vote for the Bill committed the private Member to nothing that he could possibly regret. The law as it stands is uncertain, and -there is a strong feeling among the working classes that it ought not to remain uncertain. It touches the working- man voter too closely to make it possible for him to leave candidates unhealed in regard to it. So long as this state of things is allowed to go on we shall see—as we saw yesterday week—men voting for a Bill which they really dislike rather than pledge themselves to the admission that the law relating to trade disputes wants neither definition nor amendment.
, The chief fault of Mr. Paulton's Bill is the way it deals with the law of conspiracy. It is quite possible that this law may need revision in the light of modern ideas. Con- sidering its history, it would be strange if it did not. But this revision ought not to be taken in hand with exclusive reference to a single elms of possible conspirators. By all means let us have a better definition of the law, and a clearer enumeration of the conditions which ought to govern its application. But Mr. Poulton does in effect give Trade-Unionists a dispensation to become con- spirators. He proposes to abolish the distinction between an act when done by one man and the same act when done by many. The objection to such legislation is that it ignores plain facts. One man may tread on your toe and cause nothing beyond a momentary twinge. But if a thousand men agree to step on your toe one after another, there will be no toe left to be trodden on long before the parties to the agreement have carried out their purpose. Mr. Poulton may plead that as to tread. on a man's toe is not a lawful act in itself, his Bill would not make it lawful when done by many. Then what are the acts which the Bill intends to make lawful? The power that a crowd has to annoy depends on the fact that there are many acts which are harmless when done singly and very hurtful when done by a multitude. In the very strictest sense, no doubt, these acts may be unlawful even when harmless. They belong to the class of merely constructive assaults. But as it would. be highly inconvenient to raise to the rank of positive offences a number of acts of which the law now takes no notice, it is better to recognise a distinction which is really a matter of common-sense, and to forbid unlawful acts when they, have become mischievous rather than while they are still harmless.
ca This argument also applies to one aspect of the picketing question. The Trade-Unions claim that they have a right to use peaceable persuasion in order to -prevent non-Unionists from taking the places of men who are on strike, and Mr. Paulton's Bill proposes to legalise this practice. Probably most people supposed that is was already lawful ; but recent decisions have placed a very strict interpretation on the words of the statute. It is lawful for Trade-Unionists to watch or beset a place in order to give information to other workmen or to receive infortaation from them. But they must not watch or -beset a place with a view to compel any person to do or -abstain from doing anything which he has a legal right to -do." -Then is persuasion addressed to the same end lawful • or unlawful ? For some time it was supposed to be lawful. But of late the Courts have construed the words relating to obtaining or communicating information more strictly. Persuasion, they have held, has nothing to do with information. The men who come to persuade and the men whom they seek to persuade are alike informed of all the facts of the case. Consequently, the object of watching and besetting having been already obtained, there is no more occasion for the use of these weapons. But then, as Mr. Atherley-Jones justly says in his excel- lent letter in the Times of Wednesday week, it is clear "that if Trade-Unionists may not peaceably attend at a public place for the purpose of advising, without menace or intimidation, workmen no't to enter upon an employment or to legally determine an existing employment, not the least effective part of their machinery for successful com- bination to promote the interests of their members is destroyed." We see no reason why peaceable persuasion should not be as lawful as giving or receiving information, and as this has been brought into doubt by the Law Courts, it is for Parliament to clear up the uncertainty. But picketing, however harmless in itself, may easily become harmful on the same principle which, as we have seen, ought to govern any rational law of conspiracy. Five men can obtain or communicate information or exercise peaceable persuasion just as effectively as five hundred. But the presence of the larger number may make all the difference to the person it is sought to persuade. What is persuasion when only five men are engaged in the opera- tion becomes, or easily may become, terrorism when it is the work of a crowd. But there can be no difficulty in the insertion of a limit to the number who shall be employed for this purpose. When there are many non- Unionist workmen arriving at the same time by boat or train, the Unionist deputation may consist of several groups of five, or whatever the legal number may be. But they should be compelled to act separately, and to address their arguments to different sections of the new arrivals.
The third grievance arises out of the decision of the House of Lords in the Taff Vale case, in which it was held that a Trade-Union is responsible for wrongful acts done by its agents acting in that character, though the executive may not have expressly authorised these acts, or even in..)wn that they were being done. This is nothing More, a a imagine, than a particular application of the general law of agency ; but Mr. Atherley-Jones shows good reason for thinking that the Trade-Unions have a real claim to some modification of the law based on the circumstances in which they are necessarily placed. "A great Trade- Union is divided into numerous branches scattered over a wide geographical area. Each of these branches has its appropriate officials, from the majority of whom, in the nature of things, no large measure of judgment or circum- spection can reasonably be expected." Consequently, however "discreet and temperate" the executive of the Union may be, they "can scarcely hope to escape disaster through the recklessness and folly of some subordinate branch official." This does seem to constitute a case for the interference of Parliament, but certainly not in the way proposed by Mr. Poulton. He would give Trade- Unions absolute impunity as regards the acts of their agents, thus placing them in a wholly exceptional position compared with all other classes of citizens. This is so obviously unreasonable that we wonder that the Bill was ever drafted in this form. Electioneering necessities may explain its being read a second time, but it would have been wiser, we think, in the Trade-Union leaders to cast it in the more moderate shape which it will ultimately 'assume. A measure limiting the responsibility of Trade-Unions to cases in which the elecutive, has authorised or approvel the acts of subordinate officials would merit very different treatment from one relieving them of that responsibility altogether: •
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