The History of Trade Unionism / (Revised edition, extended to 1920)

by Sidney Webb; Beatrice Webb

The Trade Union Act of 1913

It is an instance of the failure of both the governing class and the party politicians to appreciate the workman’s standpoint, or to understand the temper of the Trade Union world, that this crippling judgement remained for nearly four years unreversed. The Liberal and Conservative Parties were, during 1910 and 1911, quarrelling about the Budget and the exact powers to be exercised by the House of Lords; and two successive General Elections were fought without bringing the Trade Unions any redress. Meanwhile, up and down the country discontented or venal Trade Unionists were sought out by solicitors and others acting for the employers; and were induced to lend their names to proceedings for injunctions against their own Unions, prohibiting them from subscribing to the Labour Party, from contributing towards the election expenses of candidates, from taking action in municipal elections, from subscribing to educational classes, and from taking shares in a “Labour” newspaper. It may have seemed a skilful political dodge, during the elections of 1910, to hamstring in this way the growing Labour Party; but the resentment caused by such behaviour makes it doubtful whether action of this kind is, in the long run, politically advantageous. In the first place, the House of Commons, in 1911, felt itself compelled, as an alternative to restoring Trade Union liberties, to concede the payment of £400 a year to all Members of Parliament. Finally, in 1913, the Cabinet, after a severe internal struggle, brought itself to introduce a Bill giving power generally to any Trade Union to include in its constitution any lawful purpose whatever, so long as its principal objects were those of a Trade Union as defined in the 1876 Act; and to spend money on any purpose thus authorised. It was, indeed, provided that before the financing of certain specified political objects could be undertaken, including the support of Parliamentary or Municipal candidates or members, or the publication or distribution of political documents, [673] a ballot of the members was to be held in a prescribed form, and a simple majority of those voting secured; the payments were to be made out of a special political fund, and any member was to be entitled to claim to be exempt from the special subscription to that political fund. These restrictive provisions were opposed by the Labour Members in the House of Commons; but with slight amendment the measure was passed into law as the Trade Union Act of 1913. [674]

It is not easy to sum up the whole effect of the legal assaults upon Trade Unionism between 1901 and 1913. Politically, the result was to exasperate the active-minded workmen, and greatly to promote, though with some delay, the growth of an independent Labour Party in the House of Commons. On the other hand, it must not be overlooked that the temporary crippling of Trade Unionism seemed to be of financial advantage to that generation of employers. It was, perhaps, not altogether an accident that the brunt of the attack had to be borne by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, a Union then struggling for “recognition” in such a position as to make effective its claims to better remuneration and shorter hours of labour for the whole body of railwaymen. It may fairly be reckoned that the railwaymen were, by means of the two great pieces of litigation to which their Union was subjected, held at bay for something like a decade, during which the improvement in their conditions, in spite of a slowly-increasing cost of living, was (mainly through the evasions of the railway companies by their silent “regrading” of their staffs) extremely small.[675] A rise of wages to the extent of only a penny per hour for the whole body of railwaymen would have cost the railway companies, in the aggregate, something like five or six million pounds a year. If any such advance was, by means of the Taff Vale Case and the Osborne Judgement, staved off for ten years, the gain to the whole body of railway shareholders of that generation might be put as high as fifty or sixty millions sterling—a sum worth taking a little trouble about and spending a little money upon, in items not revealed in the published accounts. But the crippling effect of the litigation was not confined to the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, which spent, altogether, nearly £50,000 in law costs in defending the pass for the whole Trade Union Movement. If, in the temporary set-back to trade in 1903-5, and in the revival that immediately followed it; or in the recurring set-back of 1908-9, and the great improvement of the ensuing years, the whole body of wage-earners in the kingdom lost only a penny per hour from their wages, or gained less than they might otherwise have done to the extent of no more than a penny per hour, their financial loss, in one year alone, would have amounted to something like a hundred million pounds. And whatever they forwent in this way, they lost not during one year only, but during at least several years, and many of them for a whole decade. There is no doubt that the capitalist employers, thinking only of their profits for the time being, regarded even a temporary crippling of the Trade Union Movement as well worth all that it might cost them. The historian, thinking more of the secular effort upon social institutions, will not find the balance-sheet so easy to construct. The final result of the successive attempts between 1901 and 1913 to cripple Trade Unionism by legal proceedings was to give it the firmest possible basis in statute law. The right of workmen to combine for any purpose not in itself unlawful was definitely established. The strike, with its “restraint of trade,” and its interference with profits and business; peaceful picketing even on an extensive scale; the persuasion of workmen to withdraw from employment even in breach of contract, and the other frequent incidents of an industrial dispute were specifically declared to be, not only not criminal, but actually lawful. The right of Trade Unions to undertake whatever political and other activities their members might desire was expressly conceded. Finally, a complete immunity of Trade Unions in their corporate capacity from being sued or made answerable in damages, for any act whatsoever, however great might be the damage thereby caused to other parties, was established by statute in the most absolute form.[676] The Trade Unions, it must be remembered, had not asked for these sweeping changes in their position. They had been, in 1900, content with the legislation of 1871-76. It was the successive assaults made upon them by the legal proceedings of 1901-13 that eventually drove the Government and Parliament, rather than formally concede to Trade Unionism its proper position in the government of industry, and effect the necessary fundamental amendment of the law, once more to create for the workmen’s organisations an anomalous status.