TRADE DISPUTES ACT 1906. fro TED EDITOR' OP TIM "ErzeTkron."1
SIR,—The effect of the Trade Disputes Act 1906 through- out the country has been so marked in encouraging strife and strikes that some information as to what various Judges have said on its provisions may be of interest. The following are extracts from Judgments contained in various Law Reports and are of considerable weight.
Mr. Justice Darling, on March 16th, 1908, in the ease of Bung v. Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and Bell, said it was notorious that the Act was passed to reverse the law laid down in the case of the Taff Vale Railway Co. v. Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, where the Society had contended that the Legislature had authorized the creation of numerous bodies of men capable of earn- ing great wealth and of acting by agents with absolutely no responsibility for the wrongs that they might do to other persons by the use of that wealth and the employment of those agents, and in that case Lord (then Mr.) Justice Farwell had decided against the Society. Mr. Justice Darling then proceeded to state that from the humiliating position of being on a level with other lawful associations of his Majesty's subjects the statute of 1906 had relieved all registered trade unions, and they were now super legem, just as the medieval Emperor was super grammaticam.
In the later case of Rickards v. Bartram, Mr. Justice Darling referred to the immunity which the Legislature had given to trade unions from any penalty for doing that which no other of his Majesty's subjects could do without punishment, and said it was true that Parliament had enacted that if trade unions did certain things they should have, as trade unions, absolute immunity. They had it—no one else had.
In the case of Conway v. Wade the Master of the Rolls (Sir H. H. Cozens-Hardy) stated that the main object of the Trade Disputes Act 1906 was to put trade unions in a peculiar and preferential position and to treat trade disputes differently from all other disputes.
in the same ease Lord Justice Farwell stated that it was common knowledge that trade unions were dissatisfied with the law of conspiracy and with their position under the Judg- ment in Taff Vale Railway Co. v. Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and desired to obtain for themselves, in addition to that capacity for holding property and acting by agents which they had, the unrestricted capacity for injuring other people by the use of that capacity which they had not, a privilege possessed by no other person or corporation in the realm. The general nature of the Act was in entire contra- diction of those doctrines of personal freedom and equality before the law which had hitherto been its main aim and object. He also stated that it was possible for the Courts in former years to defend any individual liberty against the aggression of kings and barons, because the defence rested on the law which they administered; it was not possible for the Courts to do so when the Legislature altered the laws so as to destroy liberty, for they could only administer the law. The Legislature could not make evil good, but it could make it not actionable.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Loreburn) in Conway v. Wade said that if the Act was to be interpreted or applied in the view that stirring up strife was the aim and object of any part of it then, indeed, it would be a fountain of bitter waters.
In the case of Osborne v. Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton said that in examin- ing the Trade Disputes Act he found that trade unions were placed in a wholly exceptional position in the eyes of the law, and that Section 4 freed trade unions from liability in all actions in tort.
If the provisions of an Act of Parliament are of such a nature as to receive condemnation at the hands of so many Judges then surely the need for its amendment or repeal is
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