TRADE-UNIONS AND LAW. T HE Government's Trade Disputes Bill passed its
second reading on Wednesday without a division. But the Bill which passed the House is not the Bill which is really at issue, for the Solicitor-General, following the example of the Prime Minister last month, announced that the Government were prepared to accept the proposal contained in. Mr. Hudson's Bill for giving the Trade- Unions immunity from actions at law. When the Government measure was first introduced we had certain criticisms to make as to details, but we agreed in the main with the principles at the back of it. To the measure as amended in deference to Labour demands we are resolutely opposed. Our opposition is in no way. based upon any dislike or suspicion of the Trade-Unions. We agree with every word which Sir William Robson said in their praise. During the last thirty years they have been a most potent instrument of industrial peace. By providing an official organisation with which masters can negotiate, by introducing into labour quarrels men who are experts in economic history and can take long views, and by increasing the self-confidence and the economic stability of the worker, they have lessened the number of strikes, and given a decency and order to such as were inevitable. They have made mistakes, but, con- sidering the difficulty of the work, their record is singularly free from blunders. They have been managed by men who brought to the task a high degree of intelligence, good feeling, and good sense. They have kept themselves con- spicuously aloof from any doctrinaire Socialistic experi- ments, and have never outraged, till now, that sense of fair dealing which is the only support in the last resort for a policy or an institution. But the merits of the „Trade- Unions do not seem to us to affect the question at all. That a body of men are habitually well conducted is no reason for singling them out from other citizens and giving them special privileges. Still , less reason is there when such a body of men are a fighting organisation, banded together to defend their rights and secure their wishes as against some other class.. In this case preferen- tial treatment is a breach of the first condition of civilised society. It does not matter whether Trade-Unionists are one-seventh or six-sevenths of the working population ; it is sufficient that they are a class within the State, and not the State itself.
The threefold disability under which Trade-Unionists labour—to cover again familiar ground—is the present condition of the law as to conspiracy, picketing, and agency. The new Bill proposes to remove all three by the most summary methods. With the first reform we have no quarrel. The freedom from criminal proceedings given by the Act of 1875 should clearly be extended to the civil side. On the second point, too, we readily admit that the law stands in need of change. A strike can only Ice conducted by the strikers exercising their.personal influ- ence and their powers of persuasion upon their comrades. If we permit strikes, then we must permit the methods by which alone they can be conducted. The Government measure proposes to do this by reviving some sentences of an Act of 1859 which legalises persuasion "peaceably, and in a reasonable manner, and without threats, direct or indirect." We agree with the policy contained in these words—protecting the non-Union labourer against violence without coddling him unduly—but we think the drafting might be better, since the phrase "in a reason- able manner" opens up a long vista of diverse judicial interpretations. We should have preferred the proposal of the Royal Commission, which offered less scope for tion. Mr. Hudson's Bill, on the other hand, gives full permission to any number of persons to attend at a man's house, provided that their purpose is only to persuade or obtain information. We trust that the Government do not intend to yield on this point, for it would in effect legalise what would otherwise, be a nuisance. or a trespass, and would open the way to a very real intimidation. "Peaceful persuasion" which consists in inspiring fear and creating discomfort is as much to be repudiated in the case of Trade-Unionists as in that of officers of the Guards. As we argued before, we are strongly in favour of some pro- vision by which the number of pickets would be limited in proportion to the hands usually employed in the works, and their names and addresses registered. If the object of the Trade-Unions is really to persuade and inform, it can be accomplished more readily by half-a-dozen workmen than by a mob.
The third grievance is the crucial one in the present discussion. We wish to see the law of agency so limited in its application as to apply equitably to the peculiar organisation of a Trade-Union : the Trade-Unions ask that they be enfranchised from it altogether. We willingly admit the difficulties which a large, loose, decentralised organisation has in controlling its agents, and the hard- ship that funds created by the small contributions of thousands of poor men as a provision against age and sick- ness should be liable in damages merely because some half- accredited local agitator has chosen to break the law. But the remedy is surely not a repeal of the law, unless that law is clearly inequitable ; and no one has ever maintained • such a charge against the law of agency. The remedy is a reformed organisation and certain statutory powers of self-protection. We think the provisions in the original Government measure went too far, but there is no objection to making a Union responsible only •for the acts of its specified agents, and immune in the case of a quasi-independent agent if his acts are promptly repudiated. Nor can we see why the militant and benevo- lent funds should not be strictly separated, and the former alone made liable for damages. The plea of accounting difficulties in the way may be dismissed at once as without foundation. The true reason is that the Unions want all their funds for a contest, and argue that if they ear- mark and separate their benevolent funds, they will be put at a disadvantage as compared with the employers, who are not obliged to devote part of their funds to benevolent objects. The argument seems to us to have no weight. Superior individual wealth, with the freedom it entails, is one of the assets of employers in the struggle, just as an immense numerical majority is one of the assets of the men. The Trade-Unions might as well argue that before a strike could be fairly conducted the masters must be reduced to the same minimum of subsistence as the workers.
The Government, however, have chosen to disregard the most cherished principle of the English law, its dis- respect of persons, and to embark upon class legislation. A Trade-Union's funds are to be exempt from damages for the misdeeds of its agents. A Union in its corporate capacity will be able to break the law, to incite its agents to destroy private property, to inflict irre- parable wrongs upon the public, but the Union in its corporate capacity will not be called upon to pay for it. Actions will lie against individual agents, who, being poor men, will not be worth proceeding against, while the rich -Union, whose central executive are responsible for the whole mischief, will go free. We do not, of course, say that the Trade-Unions will pursue such a course, any more than we assume that the Bench of Bishops will commit breaches of the law. In both cases all the assumptions are against their doing so. But if either Trade-Unions or Bishops yield to temptation, we desire that they shall be held accountable for their wrongful acts. Sir W. Robson's ingenious argument altogether fails to con- vince us of the justice of the proposal. His grounds, as we understand him, are two,—that the Courts are • always unfriendly to Trade-Unions, since working men do not sit on special juries ; and that it is unfair to make the Unions suable when they cannot sue. As to the first, it is not an argument which should be heard from the lips of an English lawyer. As well might railway companies, who complain that they can never get a verdict, ask to be put above the law, because it is only by the rarest chance that a railway director happens to be on the jury. ' The law cannot be adapted to 'every "hard case," especially when the hard case in question is simply the assumption of a prejudice. The answer to the second argument is that if a Union wishes to have the right to sue, it can easily gain it by incorporation. But the Union in its corporate capacity does not wi:th for the power. It would be of no use to it, and, in the form of the right to enforce contracts against members, it would be bitterly resented by the members themselves. Sir W. Robson drew a lurid picture of what the Unions might do after incorporation ; but it is highly doubtful if his view of their legal powers in such a contingency is correct. In any case, the question is a practical one. The inability of the wronged citizen to sue a Trade-Union, and the inability of a Trade-Union to sue in return, are not in pari materia. The one is a grievance, because it is arbitrarily denied ; the other is not, because the right to sue is voluntarily relinquished.
We are not greatly concerned for the employers, who are well able to look after themselves. What is given to the men must be given to the masters, and if industrial disputes are to be largely carried on outside the law, the advantage will certainly not be with the Trade-Unions. We are much more concerned for the future of organised Labour, which in demanding an extra-legal status is destroying its own chief security, and prejudicing its case in the eyes of the country. The Trade-Unionists maintain that they are not asking for preference, but only for equality, and we believe, with Mr. Balfour, that they are perfectly sincere in their professions. Unfortunately, their definition of " equality ' is like Mr. Chamberlain's definition of Free-trade : it involves preference. We appeal to their leaders to reflect whether it is worth while to purchase victory at the expense of that principle which is the poor man's bulwark,—that no individual, class, or association may do wrong without having to pay the penalty.
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