THE POSITION OF TRADE-UNIONS.
WE have no sympathy whatever with people who arei inclined to chuckle over the alarm exhibited at the Trade-Union Congress in regard to the possible results of the decision of the House of -Lords in the Taff Vale case. Undoubtedly the situation created by that decision is one fraught with reasonable anxiety even to the most sober friends of organised labour. It reverses what has for many years been generally understood to be the rule of law as to the non-liability of Trade-Union funds to outsiders in respect of injuries occasloned through illegal action taken on the part of the officials of Unions or under their authority. Nearly three-quarters of the nineteenth century had passed before Trade - Union funds enjoyed any security at all. Although the right of combination was conceded to workmen by the legislation of 1824-25. there were eminent Judges who held so late as 1869 that the support of strikes was an illegal object, as being ill restraint of trade, and that therefore Trade-Unions could not claim the protection of the law for their funds against peculation or embezzlement by dishonest officials. This state of injustice—for injustice it unquestionably was— was removed by that "workmen's charter," the Trade' Union Act of 1871, supplemented by other measures passed in 1875 and 1876. In the interesting review of this course of legislation which is contained in Messrs. Herma,nn Cohen and George Howell's text-book, published this year, on "Trade-Union Law and. Cases" (Sweet and Maxwell, 6s. net), a very confident, and, so far as it goes, opinion is expressed as to the intention of jament in the legislation just mentioned, with respect Parnnint not less important than that of the protection t ot union funds against dishonest treasurers or trustees. ogius' ed—as, by the Acts of 1871 and those which followed it, Trade-Unions expressly were—as pursuing objects against which no legal presumption should neces- sarily lie, and thus brought, like other associations of law- abiding citizens, within the defences supplied by the law „rainst thievish depredations on their funds, what position it designed that they should occupy, as bodies -holding property, in relation to outsiders ? In a word, was it meant that Trade-Unions as such should be capable of suing and being sued ? Mr. Howell gives an emphatically negative answer. No man now living, he says—and we entirely accept his statement—had more to do than he with the negotiations respecting the enactment of the Trade-Union Acts, 1871 and 1876, during their passage through both Houses of Parliament. The question just mentioned was very often raised and discussed among the representatives of Labour and officials of Trade-Unions, and while some few were in favour of embodying the power to sue and be sued' in the Trade-Union Bill, "the vast preponderating opinion was averse to it." Of that opinion Mr. Howell was the authorised mouthpiece in discussions, public and. private, with members of the Government, and. in resisting the introduction of any clause which would "open the door to litigation" he was supported by such eminent and enlightened, friends of Labour at the late Judge Hughes and the late Mr. Mundella. The Home Secretary, Mr. Bruce (afterwards Lord Aberdare), took the same view decidedly, and "the Government concurred. The absence, therefore, of any express power enabling a tnion to sue or be sued was intentional on the part of the authors of the measure, and that intention was endorsed in the passage of the Bill through Parliament."
Very good evidence this, as fax as it goes ; but., of course, it does not follow that all Peers and Members of the House of Commons who were parties to the passage of the Act in the form in which it stands on the statute- hook agreed with the Labour point of view, or believed that in that form it would preclude the existence of the power (and liability) in question. And now, after thirty rears, in our odd English fashion, it has been definitely 'decided by the House of Lords that there is nothing in the Act of 1871 imparting any immunity on the part of Trade-Unions as such from pecuniary liability for the actions, where illegal, of their officials and members. The case arose in connection with the dispute between the Taff Vale Company and their servants a year ago. That dispute was, happily, arranged without any prolonged cessation of work, and towards the settlement the moderating and conciliatory action of Mr. Richard Bell, the secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Rail- way Servants (to which the workmen concerned, or many of them, belonged), sensibly contributed. But in the course of the brief strike which did take place the Great Western Railway Station at Cardiff, the railway works, and other places were picketed, with a view to preventing other workmen from taking the places of the servants of the Taff Vale Company who were standing out. Thereupon the Company applied for an injunction, not only against Mr. Bell and Mr. Holmes (another official of the Amalga- mated Society of Railway Servants) personally, but against the Union itself, to restrain them from "watching or besetting, or causing to be watched or beset," the Cardiff Station and other places, "for the purpose of persuading or otherwise preventing persons from working for the plaintiffs, or for any purpose except merely to obtain or communicate information, and from procuring any persons who may bare or may enter into contracts with the plaintiffs to commit a breach of such contracts." Of course, this application implied that the picketing carried on at Cardiff was of an illegal character, which is not the case with regard to au picketing. Section 7 of the Conspiracy and Proteetion of Property Act of 1875, in which the question of picketing is dealt with, expressly states that "attending at or near" any place, "in order merely to obtain or com- municate information, shall not be deemed a-watching or besetting within" the prohibitory language of the earlier Part of the section. But at the hearing of the Taff :Vale Company's application. for an injunction the legality of the picketing practised at Cardiff was not gone into, the great question of interest being whether. supposing the pickets to have exceeded the limits of the law. the Railway Servants' Society could as a Union ba held responsible for their excesses. The Society pleaded that they were "neither a corporation nor an individual," and could not be sued in a quasi-corporate or any other capacity. It was this point which Mr. Justice Farwell decided against their contention a year ago, and on which, contrary to the view of the Master of the Rolls and Lords Justices Collins and Stirling in the Court of Appeal, which —on grounds in part technical—dissolved, the original injunction, Mr. Justice Farwell's opinion has been unani- mously reaffirmed by the House of Lords.
It was, in our opinion, highly unbecoming on the part of Mr. Bowerman, the President of the Trade-Union Congress, to speak of this decision as a "semi-political" one,—therebr implying that the distinguished Law Lords—the Lord Chancellor and Lords Macnag,hten, Lindley, Shand, and Brampton—who were parties to it were actuated by something else than a desire to interpret the existing law with absolute fairness and correctness. It was the more unbecoming seeing that in the report of the Parliamentary Committee of the Congress, of which Mr. Bowerman is Chairman, attention had been called to decisions of the House of Lords uniformly favourable to the interests of the workmen in cases arising out of the Compensation Act passed a, few years ago. The only excuse, and a very poor one, for Mr. Bowerman's language is panic, and for panic there is, as we hold, no ground. It is startling, no doubt, to find that funds which had been supposed almost sacred in their security against attack through legal process from outside enjoy no such exemption, and it is, of course, conceivable that, as seems to be apprehended, ill-conditioned masters may attempt in various ways, by actions taken openly on their own behalf, or inspired and sup- ported by them, to deplete the resources of Unions against which they have a grudge. But we are satisfied that public opinion would emphatically condemn any such proceedings, and that any considerable amount of resort to them would result both in a flow of material support to -Unions unjustly attacked, and in a demand, to which Parliament would inevitably defer, for a clearer and fairer definition of Trade-Union liabilities. The people of England have not seldom criticised unfavourably the action of some Trade-Unions, and they have viewed with satisfac- tion, in particular, any disconifiture of attempts to restrict the production of individual workmen and machines. This attitude, we hope and believe, will be firmly main- tained. But there is no general indisposition to recognise the services which Unionism has rendered in putting work- men within some measurable distance of economic equality with their employers, or the wisdom and self-restraint with which on the whole the policy of many Unions has been' led. Nor would there be any sympathy with attempts at "Union-smashing" based upon the law as now declared. Very wisely the Congress, acting on the suggestion of their legal adviser as adopted by the Parliamentary Com- mittee, have pronounced in favour of taking a test case up to the House of Lords, in order to ascertain how far picketing may be carried on without infring- ing the law and. rendering the funds of the Societies liable for damages. Recent decisions, especially one of the Appeal Court in 1896, have seemed to place somewhat severe restrictions even upon "peaceful picketing," and it is very desirable that the country should know on the highest authority what the law as it now stands really allows in that respect. If it should prove that peaceful persuasion, apart from coercion, direct or indirect, open or disguised, cannot be legally used to induce outsiders not to defeat the object of a strike by taking the empty places, then, as it seems to us, public opinion would rightly demand a modification of the law in the direction of freedom. On the other hand, freedom to bully will never be sanctioned by the feeling of the English people. Picketing has, no doubt, too often taken a, bullying form, and we cannot regret that, in view of the Lords' decision as to their pecuniary liability for illegal action by their members, Unions will now have to take care that such bullying is never practised. On the face of it, the. principle of the decision is reasonable. It will involve closer supervision of agents during disputes. It will involve the careful apportionment of Union funds as between bellicose and benevolent purposes. But these will be good modifications, and we are very doubtful whether in the long run organised Labour will have any reason to bear a grudge against the Lords.
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