On Tuesday the House of Lords by a unanimous decision
affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeal that a Trade- Union cannot legally impose a levy on its members for the payment of Parliamentary representatives. The majority of the Judges found that the levy was ultra vires. Lord Shaw in his judgment held that the constitution of the Labour Party was fundamentally illegal, adding that " it needed little imagination to figure the peril in which Parlia- mentary government would stand if, either by the purchase of single votes or by subsidies for regular support, the pubic well-being were liable to betrayal at the command or for the advantage of particular individuals or classes." In the face of such a judgment, the alteration of the -law, as the Daily Chronicle remarks, is neither probable nor desirable. We cannot help hoping that it may tend to open the eyes of Trade-Unionists to the virtues of that independence for which Messrs. Burt and Fenwick have so manfully contended.
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