The voluntary amendments 'Of the - Government which C recorded last
week were followed on Thursday, firSt..da.Y. of the Bill in Committee —by her unportint conceision. Captain O'Connor had proposed the day before that in the case of a strike found by the Courts to be illegal the rank and tile should be liable to civil penalties, but not to criminal prosecution. The Attorney-General willingly accepted this suggestion. It will be provided that men who merely take part in a strike because' they are compelled shall not be liable ; only the leaders will be liable. We arc thus saved from the grotesque possibility of the prisons being filled to overflowing with men whose responsibility for a strike is purely passive. Captain O'Connor stated his case with earnestness and ability. His was a little triumph in the art of constructive criticism, and he set an example to the Labour Party which ought, if it did not, to have both shamed and braced them. Captain O'Connor's triumph, however, creates a paradox of which the humour seems so far to have escaped the Government. Here we have a Bill the aim of which is " to declare " various actions illegal, and by so doing to want off the innocent and the weak. Yet it now declares that the mass of strikers will not be punished !
