[408]Ibid., August 28, 1869.
[409]Beehive, January 26, 1867.
[410]Fortnightly Circular, June 1868.
[411]See, for instance, Some opinions on Trade Unions and the Bill of 1869, by Edmund Potter, M.P., 1869, 45 pp.; also the Observations upon the Law of Combinations and Trades Unions, and upon the Trades Unions Bill, by a Barrister, 1869, 64 pp.
[412]In his Letters to the Working Classes, 1870, Professor Beesly gives a graphic account of the shuffling of the Government, and advises political action. The annual report of the General Union of House Painters (the “Manchester Alliance”) for 1871 shows how eagerly the advice was received: “Away with the cry of no politics in our Unions; this foolish neutrality has left us without power or influence.” See also, for the whole episode, Robert Applegarth, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912, pp. 138-170; Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 156-172.
[413]32 and 33 Vic. c. 61 (1869). This provisional measure was bitterly opposed in the House of Lords by Earl Cairns, who argued that its universal protection of the funds of all Unions alike, without requiring the abandonment of their objectionable rules, was in direct opposition to the majority report of the Royal Commission. No such surrender to the Trade Unions was, in his opinion, necessary, as their funds had, in the previous year, been incidentally protected by an “Act to amend the law relating to larceny and embezzlement” (31 and 32 Vic. c. 116), passed at the instance of Russell Gurney, the Recorder of London. This act had no reference to Trade Unions as such, but it enabled members of a co-partnership to be convicted for stealing or embezzling the funds of their co-partnership. Its possible application to defaulting Trade Union officials was perceived by Messrs. Shaen, Roscoe & Co., who have for three generations acted as solicitors of the leading Unions. At their instance a case was submitted to the Attorney-General of the time (Sir John Karslake), who advised that a Trade Union could now prosecute in its character of a partnership. Criminal proceedings were accordingly taken by the Operative Bricklayers’ Society against a defaulting officer who had set the Executive at defiance, with the result that the prisoner was, in December 1868, sentenced to six months’ hard labour. This successful prosecution was widely advertised throughout the Trade Union world, and was frequently quoted as showing that no further legislation was needed. But, as was forcibly pointed out by Frederic Harrison and other advisers of the Junta, Russell Gurney’s Act, though it enabled Trade Unions to put defaulting officials in prison, gave them no power to recover the sums due, or to take any civil proceedings whatever, and did not remove the illegality of any combinations of workmen “in restraint of trade.” See Harrison’s article, “The Trades Union Bill,” in Fortnightly Review, July 1, 1869, and the leaflet published by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, on Russell Gurney’s Act, December, 1868.
[414]See, for instance, the report of the Leeds meeting of the Master Builders’ Association to object to the Bill, Beehive, March 11, 1871.
[415]A short Act had been passed in 1859 (22 Vic. c. 34) which excluded from the definition of “molestation” or “obstruction” the mere agreement to obtain an alteration of wages or hours, and also the peaceful persuasion of others without threat or intimidation to cease or abstain from work in order to obtain the wages or hours aimed at. The Act was passed without discussion or comment, probably with reference to some recent judicial decisions, but its actual origin is not clear. The Stonemasons’ Society refused to have anything to do with it, and referred sneeringly to its promoters as busybodies. Alexander Macdonald alluded to it in his speech on the Employers and Workmen Bill on June 28, 1875 (Hansard, vol. 225, pp. 66-7), as having been enacted at the instance of himself and others in order to permit men to persuade others to join combinations, and that it had had a most beneficial effect. An obscure pamphlet, entitled Letters to the Trades Unionists and the Working Classes, by Charles Sturgeon, 1868, 8 pp., gives the only account of its origin that we have seen. “Some of the judges had decided that the liberty to combine was only during the period he was not in the employ of any master (i.e. while on tramp). So obvious a misreading, under which the working men were getting imprisoned, while their masters combined at their pleasure, created numerous petitions for relief, which lay as usual on the table; however, the Executive of the National Association of United Trades assembled in my rooms in Abingdon Street, and we drew a little Bill of nine lines in length to explain to the judges how they had failed to explain the views of the legislator.... I introduced our friends to the late Henry Drummond, Thomas Duncombe, and Joseph Hume, two Radicals and an honest Tory, and, strange to say, they worked well together when in pursuit of justice. After fighting hard against the great Liberal Party for four or five years, we passed our little Bill (22 Vic. c. 34), to the great joy of the working classes and chagrin of the Manchester Radicals.” But the decision of the R. v. Druitt and R. v. Bailey in 1867 showed that it did not serve to protect pickets from prosecution.
[416]Henry Crompton gives the following account of the practice of picketing:—“Picketing is generally much misunderstood. It occurs in a strike when war has begun. The struggle, of course, consists in the employer trying to get fresh men, and the men on strike trying to prevent this. They naturally do their best to induce all others to join them. Very often the country is scoured by the employers, and men brought long distances who never would have come if they had known there was a strike. Men do not wish to undersell their fellows. A man is posted as a picket, to give information of the grievances complained of, and to urge the fresh comers not to defeat the strike that is going on.
“Not only is this justifiable, but it is far better that this should be legal and practised in full publicity than that it should be illegal and done secretly, for, if done secretly, then bad practices are sure to arise. No doubt it is done with a view to coerce the employers, just as the lock-out is with a view to coerce the employed.