CHAPTER V

THE JUNTA AND THEIR ALLIES

Many influences had during the preceding years been co-operating to

form what may almost be described as a cabinet of the Trade Union

Movement. The establishment of such great trade friendly societies as

the Amalgamated Engineers had created, in some sense, a new school

of Trade Union officials, face to face with intricate problems of

administration and finance. The presence in London of the headquarters

of these societies brought their salaried officers into close personal

intimacy with each other. And it so happened that during these years

the little circle of secretaries included men of marked character and

ability, who were, both by experience and by temperament, admirably

fitted to guide the movement through the acute crisis which we shall

presently describe.

Foremost in this little group--which we shall hereafter call the

Junta--were the general secretaries of the two amalgamated societies

of Engineers and Carpenters, William Allan and Robert Applegarth,

whose success in building up these powerful organisations had given

them great influence in Trade Union councils. Bound to these in close

personal friendship were Daniel Guile, the general secretary of the old

and important national society of Ironfounders, Edwin Coulson, general

secretary of the “London Order” of Bricklayers, and George Odger, a

prominent member of a small union of highly skilled makers of ladies’

shoes, and an influential leader of London working-class Radicalism.

William Allan was the originator of the “New Unionism” of his

time.[373] We have already described how, with the aid of William

Newton, he had gathered up the scattered fragments of organisation in

the engineering trade, and had adapted the elaborate constitution and

financial system of an old-established society to the needs of a great

national amalgamation. In long hours of patient labour in the office

he had built up an extremely methodical, if somewhat cumbrous, system

of financial checks and trade reports, by which the exact position of

each of his tens of thousands of members was at all times recorded in

his official pigeonholes. The permanence of his system is the best

testimony to its worth. Even to-day the Engineers’ head office retains

throughout the impress of Allan’s tireless and methodical industry.

Excessive caution, red-tape precision, an almost miserly solicitude

for the increase of the society’s funds, were among Allan’s defects.

But at a time when working men “agitators” were universally credited

with looseness in money matters and incapacity for strenuous and

regular mental effort, these defects, however equivocal may have been

their ultimate effect on the policy and development of the Amalgamated

Society of Engineers, produced a favourable impression on the public.

Allan, moreover, though not a brilliant speaker, or a man of wide

general interests, was a keen working-class politician, whose temper

and judgement could always be depended on. And he has left behind him

the tradition, not only of absolute integrity and abnormal industry,

but also of a singular freedom from personal vanity or ambition.

Whilst Allan aimed at transforming the “paid agitator” into the

trusted officer of a great financial corporation, Robert Applegarth

sought to win for the Trade Union organisation a recognised social

and political status. Astute and lawyer-like in temperament, he

instinctively made use of those arguments which were best fitted to

overcome the prejudices and disarm the criticisms of middle-class

opponents. Nor did he limit himself to justifying the ways of Trade

Unionists to the world at large. He made persistent attempts to enlarge

the mental horizon of the rank and file of his own movement, opening

out to those whose vision had hitherto been limited to the strike

and the tap-room, whole vistas of social and political problems in

which they as working men were primarily concerned. Hence we find

him, during his career as general secretary, a leading member of the

famous “International,”[374] and an energetic promoter of the Labour

Representation League, the National Education League, and various

philanthropic and political associations. Political reformers became

eager to secure his adhesion to their projects: he was, for instance,

specially invited to attend the important conferences of the National

Education League at Birmingham as the special representative of the

working classes; and it was owing to his reputation as a social

reformer that he was in 1870 selected to sit on the Royal Commission

upon the Contagious Diseases Acts, thus becoming the first working

man to be styled by his Sovereign “Our Trusty and Well-beloved.”

Open-minded, alert, and conciliatory, he formed an ideal representative

of the English Labour Movement in the political world.[375]

The permanent officials of the Ironfounders and the London Bricklayers

were men of less originality than Allan or Applegarth. Guile was a man

of attractive personality and winning manner, gifted with a certain

rugged eloquence. Coulson is described by an opponent as being “stolid

and obstinate,” and again as “bricky and stodgy”; but the expansion,

under his influence, of the little London Society of Bricklayers into

a powerful Union of national scope, proves him to have possessed

administrative ability of no mean order. The special distinction of

all four alike was their business capacity, shown by the persistency

and success with which they pursued, each in his own trade, the policy

originated by Newton and Allan, of basing Trade Union organisation

upon an insurance company of national extent. George Odger brought to

the Junta quite other qualities than the cautious industry of Allan

or the lawyer-like capacity of Applegarth. Of the five men we have

mentioned he was the only one who continued to work at his trade, and

who retained to the last the full flavour of a working-class leader. An

orator of remarkable power, he swayed popular meetings at his will, and

was the idol of Metropolitan Radicalism. But he was no mere demagogue.

Beneath his brilliant rhetoric and emotional fervour there lay a large

measure of political shrewdness, and he shared with his colleagues the

capacity for deliberately concerted action and personal subordination.

His dilatory and unbusinesslike habits made him incapable of building

up a great organisation. Had he stood alone, he would have added little

to the strength of Trade Unionism; as the loyal adherent of the great

officials and their popular mouth-piece to the working-class world,

Unionist and non-Unionist alike, he gave the movement a wider basis,

and attracted into its ranks every ardent reformer belonging to the

artisan class.[376]

It is difficult to-day to convey any adequate idea of the extraordinary

personal influence exercised by these five men, not only on their

immediate associates, but also as interpreters of the Trade Union

Movement, upon the public and the governing classes. For the first time

in the century the working-class movement came under the direction,

not of middle and upper class sympathisers like Place, Owen, Roberts,

O’Connor, or Duncombe, but of genuine workmen specially trained for the

position. For the first time, moreover, the leaders of working-class

politics stood together in a compact group, united by a close personal

friendship, and absolutely free from any trace of that suspiciousness

or disloyalty which have so often marred popular movements. They

brought to their task, it is true, no consistent economic theory or

political philosophy. They subscribed with equal satisfaction to the

crude Collectivism of the “International,” and the dogmatic industrial

Individualism of the English Radicals. This absence of a definite basis

to their political activity accounts, we think, for the drying up of

Trade Union politics after their withdrawal. We shall have occasion

hereafter to notice other “defects of their qualities,” and the way in

which these subsequently stunted the further development of their own

movement. But it was largely their very limitations which made them,

at this particular crisis, such valuable representatives of the Trade

Union Movement. They accepted, with perfect good faith, the economic

Individualism of their middle-class opponents, and claimed only that

freedom to combine which the more enlightened members of that class

were willing to concede to them. Their genuine if somewhat restrained

enthusiasm for political and industrial freedom gave them a persistency

and determination which no check could discourage. Their understanding

of the middle-class point of view, and their appreciation of the

practical difficulties of the situation, saved them from being mere

demagogues. For the next ten years, when it was all-important to obtain

a legal status for trade societies and to obliterate the unfortunate

impression created by the Sheffield outrages, their qualities exactly

suited the emergency. The possession of good manners, though it

may seem a trivial detail, was not the least of their advantages.

To perfect self-respect and integrity they added correctness of

expression, habits of personal propriety, and a remarkable freedom

from all that savoured of the tap-room. In Allan and Applegarth, Guile,

Coulson, and Odger, the traducers of Trade Unionism found themselves

confronted with a combination of high personal character, exceptional

business capacity, and a large share of that official decorum which the

English middle class find so impressive.

Round these central personalities grouped themselves in London a number

of men of like temperament and aims. We have already had occasion to

mention T. J. Dunning, of the Bookbinders, grown old in the service of

Trade Unionism. The building trades contributed a younger generation,

John Prior, George Howell, Henry Broadhurst, and George Shipton. The

whole group were in touch with certain provincial leaders, who adhered

to the new views, and acted in close concert with the Junta. Of these,

the most noteworthy were Alexander Macdonald, then busily organising

the Miners’ National Union, John Kane,[377] of the North of England

Ironworkers, William Dronfield, the Sheffield compositor, and Alexander

Campbell, the leading spirit of the Glasgow Trades Council.

The distinctive policy of the Junta was the combination of extreme

caution in trade matters and energetic agitation for political

reforms. It is indeed somewhat doubtful how far Allan and Applegarth,

Coulson and Guile shared the popular belief that trade combinations

could effect a general rise of wages or resist a general reduction

in a falling market. They had more faith in the moral force of great

reserve funds, by the aid of which, dispensed in liberal out-of-work

donations, one capitalist, or even a whole group of capitalists, might

be effectually prevented from obtaining labour at anything but the

standard conditions. Their trade policy was, in fact, restricted to

securing for every workman those terms which the best employers were

willing voluntarily to grant. For this reason they were constantly

accused of apathy by those hotter spirits whose idea of successful

Trade Unionism was a series of general strikes for advances or against

reductions. The Junta were really looking in another direction for the

emancipation of the worker. They believed that a levelling down of all

political privileges, and the opening out of educational and social

opportunities to all classes of the community, would bring in its train

a large measure of economic equality. Under the influence of these

leaders the London Unions, and eventually those of the provinces, were

drawn into a whole series of political agitations, for the Franchise,

for amendment of the Master and Servant law, for new Mines Regulation

Acts, for National Education, and finally for the full legalisation of

Trade Unions themselves.

Practical difficulties hampered the complete execution of the Junta’s

policy. The use of the Trade Union organisation for Parliamentary

agitation, on which Macdonald, Applegarth, and Odger based all their

expectations of progress, came as a new idea to the Trade Union

world. The rank and file of Trade Unionists, still excluded from the

franchise, took practically no interest in any social or political

reform, and regarded their trade combinations exclusively as means of

extorting a rise of wages or of compelling their fellow-workmen to

join their clubs. This was especially the case with the provincial

organisations, where the officials usually shared the obscurantism

of their members. The “Manchester Order” of Bricklayers and the

General Union of Carpenters (headquarters, Manchester) were, like the

Midland Brickmakers and the Sheffield Cutlers, still wedded to the

old ideas of secrecy and coercion, whilst the powerful society of

Masons, then centred at Leeds, held aloof from the general movement.

But this resistance was not confined to the older societies, nor to

those of any particular locality. All the Unions of that time, even

those of the Metropolis, retained a strong traditional repugnance to

political action. In many cases the rules expressly forbade all mention

of politics in their meetings. And although the societies could be

occasionally induced to take joint action of a political character

in defence of Trade Unionism itself, not even the great influence of

the Junta upon their own Unions sufficed to persuade the members to

turn their organisations to account for legislative reform. The Junta

turned, therefore, to the newly established Trades Councils and made

these the political organs of the Trade Union world.

The formation between 1858 and 1867 of permanent Trades Councils in the

leading industrial centres was an important step in the consolidation

of the Trade Union Movement. Local delegate meetings, summoned to

deal with particular emergencies, had been a feature of Trade Union

organisation, at any rate since the beginning of the nineteenth

century. In early times every important strike had its committee of

sympathisers from other trade societies, who collected subscriptions

and rendered what personal aid they could. But the most notable of

these committees were those which started up in all the centres of

Trade Unionism when the movement was threatened by some particular

legal or Parliamentary danger. Such joint committees had in 1825

contributed powerfully to defeat the re-enactment of the Combination

Laws, in 1834 to arouse public feeling in the case of the Dorchester

labourers, and in 1838 to conduct the Trade Union case before the

Parliamentary Committee of that year. But these earlier committees were

formed only for particular emergencies, and had, so far as we know, no

continuous existence. By 1860 permanent councils were in existence in

Glasgow, Sheffield, Liverpool, and Edinburgh, and their example was, in

1861, followed by the London trades.[378]

Like many provincial organisations, the London Trades Council

originated in a “Strike Committee.” During the winter of 1859-60

weekly meetings of delegates from the Metropolitan trades had been

held to support the Building Operatives in their resistance to the

“document.” “At the termination of that memorable struggle,” states the

Second Annual Report of the London Trades Council, “it was felt that

something should be done to establish a general trades committee so

as to be able on emergency to call the trades together with despatch

for the purpose of rendering each other advice or assistance as the

circumstances required.”[379] In March 1860 the provisional committee

formed with this object issued an “Address” to the trades, which

resulted, on July 10, 1860, in the first meeting of the present London

Trades Council.

It is interesting to notice that the Council, at the outset, was

composed mainly of the representatives of the smaller societies. The

Executive Committee elected at its first meeting included no delegates

from the engineers, compositors, masons, bricklayers, or ironfounders,

who were then the most influential of the London Trade Societies. The

first action of the young Council affords a significant indication

of the feeling of isolation which led to its formation. In order to

facilitate communications with other trade societies throughout the

kingdom it resolved to compile a _General Trades Union Directory_,

containing the names and addresses of all Trade Union secretaries.

This praiseworthy enterprise took up all the attention of the new

body for the first year, and the printing of two thousand copies of

the result of its work crippled its finances for long afterwards. For,

unfortunately, the _General Trades Union Directory_, published at one

shilling per copy, did not sell and was, we fear, soon consigned to

the pulping mill, as we have, after exhaustive search, been able to

discover only two copies in existence.[380]

But the direction of the Council was falling into abler hands. In 1861

George Howell became secretary, to be succeeded in the following year

by George Odger, who for the next ten years remained its most prominent

member. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers joined in 1861, and the

veteran Dunning brought over the old-established Union of Bookbinders.

By 1864, at any rate, the new organisation was entirely dominated by

the Junta. The two “amalgamated” societies of Engineers and Carpenters

supplied, in some years, half its income. The great trade friendly

society of Ironfounders and the growing “London Order” of Bricklayers

sent their general secretaries to its meetings. The Council became,

in effect, a joint committee of the officers of the large national

societies. In the meetings at the old Bell Inn, under the shadow of

Newgate, we have the beginnings of an informal cabinet of the Trade

Union world.

Meanwhile war had again broken out between the master builders and

their operatives, caused partly by a renewed agitation for the Nine

Hours Day, and partly by the employers’ desire to substitute payment

by the hour for the previous custom of payment by the day.[381] For

the historian of the general movement the dispute is chiefly important

as furnishing the occasion of the first intervention of the talented

group of young barristers and literary men who, from this time forth,

became the trusted legal experts and political advisers of the leaders

of the Trade Union Movement. The workmen had totally failed to make

clear their objection to the Hour System, or even to obtain a hearing

of their case. Their position was, for the first time, intelligibly

explained in two brilliant letters addressed to the newspapers by eight

Positivists and Christian Socialists, which did much to bring about the

tacit compromise in which the struggle ended.[382]

Of more immediate interest to us is the action taken by the newly

formed London Trades Council. Among the building operations suspended

by the dispute was the construction, by a large contractor, of the

new Chelsea barracks. The War Department saw no harm in permitting him

to engage the sappers of the Royal Engineers to take the place of the

men on strike. A similar course had been taken by the Government in

strikes of 1825 and 1834. But the Trade Unions were now too powerful

to allow of any such interference in their battles. A delegate meeting

of the London trades, comprising representatives of fifty industries

and fifty thousand operatives, sent a deputation to the War Office.

Sir George Cornwall Lewis returned at first an equivocal answer, but

the new Trades Council proved the efficacy of Parliamentary agitation

by getting questions put to the Minister in the House of Commons, and

stirring up enough feeling to compel him to withdraw the troops.

The minute-books of the London Trades Council from 1860 to 1867 present

a mirror of the Trade Union history of this period. Odger had the fare

gift of making his minutes interesting, and he describes, in his terse

but graphic English, all the varied events of the Labour Movement as

they were brought before the Council. In 1861-62, for instance, we see

the Council trying vainly to settle the difficult problem of “overlap”

between the trades of the shipwrights and the iron-shipbuilders; we

notice the shadow cast by the Lancashire cotton famine, and we read

indignant resolutions condemning the Sheffield outrages of those years.

But the special interest of these minutes lies in their unconscious

revelation of the way in which the Council became the instrument of

the new policy of participation in general politics. Under Odger’s

influence the Council took a prominent part in organising the popular

welcome to Garibaldi, and in 1862 it held a great meeting in St.

James’s Hall in support of the struggle of the Northern States against

negro slavery, at which John Bright was the principal speaker. In

1864 the Junta placed itself definitely in opposition to the “Old

Unionists,” who objected to all connection between the Government and

the concerns of working men. W. E. Gladstone, who was then Chancellor

of the Exchequer, had introduced a Bill enabling the Post Office to

sell Government Annuities for small amounts. Against this harmless

project George Potter, the leading opponent of the Junta, summoned

great public meetings of the London trades, enlisted on his side

the Operative Stonemasons and other provincial organisations, and

vehemently denounced the Bill as an insidious attempt to divert the

savings of working men from their Trade Unions and benefit societies

into an exchequer controlled by the governing classes. The London

Trades Council sent an influential deputation to Gladstone publicly

to disavow the action of Potter, and to welcome the proposal of the

Government to utilise the administrative organisation for the advantage

of the working class. Of more significance was the alteration of the

Council’s policy with regard to political reform. The early members

had set themselves against the introduction of politics in any guise

whatsoever, and during the years 1861-62 Howell and Odger strove in

vain to enlist the Council in the agitation for a new Reform Bill.

But in 1866, under the influence of Odger and Applegarth, Allan

and Coulson, the Council enthusiastically threw itself into the

demonstration in favour of the Reform Bill brought in by the Liberal

Government, and took a leading part in the agitation which resulted

in the enfranchisement of the town artisan.[383] In the same year the

Council agreed to co-operate with the “International” in demanding

Democratic Reform from all European Governments.

The widely advertised public action of the London Trades Council

excited considerable interest in provincial centres of Trade Unionism.

We see the Council in frequent correspondence with similar bodies at

Glasgow, Nottingham, Sheffield, and other provincial towns, and often

exercising a kind of informal leadership in general movements. But it

would be unfair to ascribe the whole initiative in legislative reform

to the London officials. Under the brilliant leadership of Alexander

Macdonald, whose work we shall hereafter describe, the force of the

coal-miners was being marshalled for Parliamentary agitation; and

Macdonald’s friend, Alexander Campbell, was bringing the Glasgow Trades

Council round to the new policy. And it was Campbell and Macdonald,

working through these organisations, who carried through the most

important Trade Union achievement of the next few years, the amendment

of the law relating to master and servant.

It is difficult in these days, when equality of treatment before the

law has become an axiom, to understand how the flagrant injustice

of the old Master and Servant Acts seemed justifiable even to a

middle-class Parliament. If an employer broke a contract of service,

even wilfully and without excuse, he was liable only to be sued for

damages, or, in the case of wages under £10, to be summoned before a

court of summary jurisdiction, which could order payment of the amount

due. The workman, on the other hand, who wilfully broke his contract

of service, either by absenting himself from his employment, or by

leaving his work, was liable to be proceeded against for a criminal

offence, and punished by three months’ imprisonment. This inequality

of treatment was, moreover, aggravated by various other anomalies. It

followed by the general law of evidence that, whilst a master sued by

a servant could be witness in his own favour, the servant prosecuted

by his employer could not give evidence on his own behalf; and it

frequently happened that no other evidence than the employer’s could

be produced. It was in the power of a single justice of the peace, on

an information on oath, to issue a warrant for the summary arrest of

the workman, who thus found himself, when a dispute occurred, suddenly

seized, even in his bed,[384] and haled to prison at the discretion of

a magistrate, who was in many cases himself an employer of labour. The

case was heard before a single justice of the peace, and the hearing

might take place at his private house. The only punishment that could

be inflicted was imprisonment, the law not allowing the alternative of

a fine or the payment of damages. From the decision of the justice,

however arbitrary, there was no appeal. Finally, it must be added, the

sentence of imprisonment was no discharge for a debt, so that a workman

was liable to be imprisoned over and over again for the same breach of

contract.[385]

Early in 1863 Alexander Campbell[386] brought the Master and Servant

Law under the notice of the Glasgow Trades Council. A Parliamentary

Return was obtained showing that the enormous number of 10,339 cases

of breach of contract of service came before the courts in a single

year. A committee was formed to agitate for the amendment of the law,

and communication was opened up, not only with the London leaders, but

also with sympathisers in other provincial towns. The Trades Councils

of London, Bristol, Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, and Edinburgh

were formally invited to unite in a combined movement. In Leeds and

elsewhere local Trades Councils were established for the express

purpose of forwarding the agitation; and 15,000 copies of a “Memorial

of Information intended for the use of such workmen as fall under

the provisions of the Statute 4 Geo. IV. c. 34”[387] were circulated

to all the leading workmen throughout the country. At the instance

of Campbell and Macdonald, the Glasgow Trades Council convened a

conference of Trade Union representatives to consider how the object of

the agitation could best be secured. This Conference, which was held

in London during four days of May 1864, marks an epoch in Trade Union

history. For the first time a national meeting of Trade Union delegates

was spontaneously convened by a Trade Union organisation to discuss

a purely workman’s question, in the presence of working men alone.

The number of delegates did not exceed twenty, but these included the

leading officials of all the great national and amalgamated Unions.[388]

The transactions of the Conference were thoroughly businesslike.

Three members of the Government were asked to receive deputations; a

large number of members of Parliament were “lobbied” on the subject

of an immediate amending Bill; and finally a successful meeting of

legislators was held in the “tea-room” of the House of Commons itself,

at which the delegates impressed their desires upon all the friendly

members. The terms of the draft Bill were settled; Cobbett agreed to

introduce it in the House of Commons, and the Glasgow Trades’ Committee

was authorised to support it by an agitation on behalf of all the Trade

Unions of the kingdom.

The Bill introduced by Cobbett never became law; but a vigorous

agitation kept the matter under the notice of Parliament, and in 1866

a Select Committee was appointed to inquire into the subject. Upon

its report Lord Elcho[389] succeeded, in 1867, in carrying through

Parliament a Bill which remedied the grossest injustice of the law.

The Master and Servant Act of 1867 (30 & 31 Vic. c. 141), the first

positive success of the Trade Unions in the legislative field, did much

to increase their confidence in Parliamentary agitation.

But whilst the Junta and their allies were, by the capture of the

Trades Councils, using the Trade Union organisation for an active

political campaign, their steady discouragement of aggressive strikes

was bringing down upon them the wrath of the “Old Unionists” of the

time. It was one of the principal functions of the London Trades

Council to grant “credentials” to trade societies having disputes on

hand, recommending them for the support of workmen in other trades.

As these credentials were not confined to London disputes, the custom

placed the Council under the invidious necessity of either giving

its sanction to, or withholding approval from, practically every

important strike in the kingdom--an arrangement which quickly brought

the Council into conflict with the more aggressive societies. In two

cases especially the divergence of policy raised serious and heated

discussions. A building trades strike had broken out in the Midlands

at the beginning of 1864, initiated by the old Friendly Society (now

styled the General Union) of Operative Carpenters. The men’s action was

strongly disapproved by Applegarth and the Executive of the Amalgamated

Society of Carpenters. The London Trades Council unhesitatingly took

Applegarth’s view, thereby alienating whole sections of the building

trades, whose local trade clubs and provincial societies had retained

much of the spirit of the Builders’ Union of 1834. But the internal

dissension arising from the carpenters’ dispute fell far short of

that brought about by the strike of the Staffordshire puddlers. It is

unnecessary to go into the details of this angry struggle against a 10

per cent reduction. The conduct of the men in refusing the arbitration

offered by the Earl of Lichfield met with the disapproval of the

London Trades Council. The hotter spirits were greatly incensed at

the Council’s moderation. George Potter, in particular, distinguished

himself by addressing excited meetings of the men on strike, advising

them to stand firm.

Potter, who figures largely in the newspapers of this time, was in

fact endeavouring to work up a formidable opposition to the policy of

the Junta. After the building trades disputes of 1859-60, in which

he had taken a leading part, he had started the _Beehive_, a weekly

organ of the Trade Union world. Himself a member of a tiny trade club

of London carpenters, he was bitterly opposed to Applegarth and the

Amalgamated Society, and from 1864 onward we find him at the head of

every outbreak of disaffection. An expert in the arts of agitation

and of advertisement, Potter occasionally cut a remarkable figure, so

that the unwary reader, not of the _Beehive_ only, but also of the

_Times_, might easily believe him to have been the most influential

leader of the working-class movement. As a matter of fact, he at no

time represented any genuine trade organisation, the “Working Men’s

Association,” of which he was president, being an unimportant society

of nondescript persons. However, from 1864 to 1867 we find him calling

frequent meetings of delegates of the London trades to denounce the

Junta, and their instrument, the London Trades Council. The minutes of

the latter body contain abundant evidence of the bitter feelings caused

by these attacks, and make clear the essential difference between

the two policies. At a special meeting called to condemn Potter’s

action, Howell, Allan, Coulson, and Applegarth enlarged upon the evil

consequences of irresponsible agitation in trade disputes; and Danter,

the outspoken president of the Amalgamated Engineers, emphatically

declared that Potter “had become the aider and abettor of strikes. He

thought of nothing else; he followed no other business; strikes were

his bread-and-cheese; in short, he was a strike-jobber, and he made

the _Beehive_ newspaper his instrument for pushing his nose into every

unfortunate dispute that sprang up.”[390]

Responsible and cautious leadership of the Trade Union Movement was

becoming increasingly necessary. The growth of the great national

Unions, alike in wealth and in membership, and the manner in which

they subscribed in aid of each other’s battles, had aroused the active

enmity of the employers. To counteract the men’s renewed strength, the

employers once more banded themselves into powerful associations, and

made use of a new weapon. The old expedient of the “document” had,

since its failure to break down the Amalgamated Engineers in 1852,

and to subdue the building operatives in 1859, fallen somewhat into

discredit. It was now reinforced by the general “lock-out” of all the

men in a particular industry, even those who accepted the employer’s

terms, in order to reduce to subjection the recalcitrant employees of

one or two firms only.[391] The South Yorkshire coal-owners especially

distinguished themselves during those years by their frequent use of

the “lock-out.” One Yorkshire miner complained in 1866 that he had been

“locked out about twenty-four months in six years.”[392] During the

year 1865 it seemed as if the lock-outs were about to become a feature

of every large industry, the most notable instances being those of

the Staffordshire ironworkers, to which we have already alluded, and

the shipbuilding operatives on the Clyde. In both these cases large

sections of the men were willing to work at the employers’ terms, but

were either known to belong to a Union or suspected of contributing to

the men on strike. But though this practice of “locking out” created

great excitement among working men, it did not achieve the employers’

aim of breaking up the Unions. Nothing but absolute suppression by law

appeared open to those who regarded trade combinations as “a poisonous

plant” and an “anomalous anachronism,” and who were vainly looking

to “the happy period,” both for masters and men, when the questions,

“What is the price of a quarter of wheat?” and “What is the price of a

workman’s day wage?” shall be settled on the same principles.[393]

Nor were the employers the only people who began to talk once more of

putting down Trade Unions by law. The industrial dislocation which the

lock-outs, far more than the strikes, produced occasioned widespread

loss and public inconvenience. The quarrels of employer and employed

came to be vaguely regarded as matters of more than private concern.

Unfortunately a handle was given to the enemies of Trade Unionism by

the continuance of outrages, committed in the interest of Trade Unions,

which began to be widely advertised by the press. Isolated cases of

violence and intimidation, restricted, as we shall hereafter see, to

certain trades and localities, were magnified by press rumours into a

systematic attempt on the part of the Trade Unions generally to obtain

their ends by deliberate physical violence. In the general fear and

disapproval the public failed to discriminate between the petty trade

clubs of Sheffield and such great associations as the Amalgamated

Engineers and Carpenters. The commercial objection to industrial

disputes became confused with the feeling of abhorrence created by

the idea of vast combinations of men sticking at neither violence

nor murder to achieve their ends. The “terrorism of Trade Unions”

became a nightmare. “On one side,” says a writer who represents the

public feeling of the time, “is arrayed the great mass of the talent,

knowledge, virtue, and wealth of the country, and, on the other, a

number of unscrupulous men, leading a half-idle life, and feeding on

the contributions of their dupes, and on a tax levied on such of the

intelligent artisans as are forced into their ranks, but who would be

only too happy to throw off their thraldom and join the supporters of

law and justice, did these but offer them adequate protection.”[394]

The Trade Unions world seems to have been quite unconscious of the

gathering storm. In June 1866 138 delegates, representing all the great

Unions, and a total membership of about 200,000, met at Sheffield to

devise some defence against the constant use of the lock-out. The

student of the proceedings of this conference will contrast with wonder

the actual conduct of the Trade Union leaders with the denunciations

to which these “few unscrupulous men” were at this time exposed.

Nothing could be more worthy, even from the middle-class point of

view, than the discussions of these representative workmen, who

denounced with equal energy the readiness with which their impetuous

followers came out on strike and the arbitrary lock-out of the masters,

and whose resolutions express their desire for the establishment

of Councils of Conciliation and the general resort to arbitration

in industrial disputes.[395] Meanwhile, in order to meet the great

federations of employers, they formed “The United Kingdom Alliance

of Organised Trades,” to support the members of any trade who should

find themselves “locked out” by their employers.[396] Unfortunately

the conference utterly failed to decide what constituted a “lock-out,”

as distinguished from a strike; and the “Judicial Council” of the

Alliance, consisting of one delegate from each of the nine districts

into which the kingdom was divided, found itself continually at

issue with its constituents as to the disputes to be supported. This

friction co-operated with the increasing depression of trade in causing

the calls for funds to be very unwillingly responded to; and the

Executive Committee, sitting at Sheffield, had seldom any cash at its

command. The Alliance lingered on until about the end of 1870, when

the defection of its last important Unions brought it absolutely to

an end.[397] In 1866, however, the Alliance was young and hopeful.

It received its first blow in October of this year, when it and the

Trade Union Conference were forgotten in the sensation produced by the

explosion of a can of gunpowder in a workman’s house in New Hereford

Street, Sheffield.

This outrage was only one of a class of crimes for which Sheffield was

already notorious. But in the state of public irritation against Trade

Unionism, which had been growing during the past few years of lock-outs

and strikes, the news served to precipitate events. On all sides

there arose a cry for a searching investigation into Trade Unionism.

The Trade Unions themselves joined in the demand. As no clue to the

perpetrators of the last crime could be discovered by the local police,

the leaders of the Sheffield trade clubs united with the Town Council

and the local Employers’ Association in pressing for a Government

inquiry. The London Trades Council and the Executive of the Amalgamated

Engineers sent a joint deputation to Sheffield to investigate the case.

The deputation discovered no more than the local police had done about

the perpetrators of the crime, and therefore innocently reported that

there was no evidence of Trade Union complicity; but they accompanied

this report by a strong condemnation of “the abominable practice of

rattening, which is calculated to demoralise those who are concerned

in it, and to bring disgrace on all trade combinations.”[398] Public

meetings of Trade Unionists were held throughout the country, at

which the leaders expressed their indignation both at the outrage

itself and at the common assumption that it was a usual and necessary

incident of Trade Unionism. These meetings invariably concluded with a

demand on behalf of the Trade Unionists to be allowed an opportunity

of refuting the accusations of the enemies of the movement. Robert

Applegarth saw the Home Secretary on the subject, and suggested a

Commission of Inquiry. The appointment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry

was officially announced in the Queen’s Speech of February 1867. That

the Government meant business was proved by the prompt introduction

of a Bill empowering the Commission to pursue its investigations by

exceptional means. The inquiry was to extend to all outrages during

the past ten years, whether in Sheffield or elsewhere. Not only were

accomplices in criminal acts promised an indemnity, provided that

they gave evidence, but the same privilege was extended to the

actual perpetrators of the crimes. The investigation, moreover, was

not restricted to the supposed criminal practices of particular trade

clubs, but was to embrace the whole subject of Trade Unionism and its

effects.

The Trade Union movement thus found itself for the third time at the

bar of a Parliamentary inquiry at a moment when public opinion, as

well as the enmity of employers, had been strongly excited against it.

At the very height of this crisis, which had been brought about by

the violence of some of the old-fashioned Unions, the new Amalgamated

Societies themselves received a serious check from a decision of the

Court of Queen’s Bench.

The formation of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, with its large

accumulated funds, had renewed the anxiety of the Trade Union officials

as to the extent to which a trade society enjoyed the protection of the

law. Although the Act of 1825 had made trade societies, as such, no

longer unlawful, nothing had been done to give them any legal status,

or to enable them to take proceedings as corporate entities. But in

1855 a “Metropolitan Trades Committee” succeeded in getting a clause

intended to relate to Trade Unions inserted in the Friendly Societies

Act of that year. By the 44th section of this Act it was provided

that a society established for any purpose not illegal might, by

depositing its rules with the Registrar of Friendly Societies, enjoy

the privilege of having disputes among its own members summarily dealt

with by the magistrates. Under this provision several of the larger

societies had deposited their rules, believing, with the concurrence

of the Registrar, that this secured to them the power to proceed

summarily against any member who should, in his capacity of secretary

or treasurer, detain or make away with the society’s funds.[399] So

thoroughly has the legality of their position been accepted by all

concerned, that on the establishment by Gladstone of the Post Office

Savings Banks in 1861, he had, at the request of the Trade Union

leaders, expressly conceded to the Unions, equally with the Friendly

Societies, the privilege of making use of the new banks.

This feeling of security was, in 1867, completely shattered. The

Boilermakers’ Society had occasion to proceed against the treasurer

of their Bradford branch for wrongfully withholding the sum of £24;

but the magistrates, to the general surprise of all concerned, held

that the society could not proceed under the Friendly Societies Act,

being, as a Trade Union, outside the scope of that measure. The case

was thereupon carried to the Court of Queen’s Bench, where four judges,

headed by the Lord Chief Justice, confirmed the decision, giving the

additional reason that the objects of the Union, if not, since 1825,

actually criminal, were yet so far in restraint of trade as to render

the society an illegal association. Thus the officers of the great

national Trade Unions found their societies deprived of the legal

status which they imagined they had acquired, and saw themselves once

more destitute of any legal protection for their accumulated funds.

The grounds of the decision went a great deal further than the decision

itself. As was pointed out to the workmen by Frederic Harrison, “the

judgement lays down not merely that certain societies have failed

to bring themselves within the letter of a certain Act, but that

Trade Unions, of whatever sort, are in their nature contrary to

public policy, and that their object in itself will vitiate every

association and every transaction into which it enters.... In a word,

Unionism becomes (if not according to the suggestion of the learned

judge--criminal) at any rate something like betting and gambling,

public nuisances and immoral considerations--things condemned and

suppressed by the law.”[400]

Trade Unionism was now at bay, assailed on both sides. It was easy to

foresee that the employers and their allies would make a determined

attempt to use the Royal Commission and the Sheffield outrages to

suppress Trade Unionism by the criminal law. On the other hand, the

hard-earned accumulations of the larger societies, by this time

amounting to an aggregate of over a quarter of a million sterling, were

at the mercy of their whole army of branch secretaries and treasurers,

any one of whom might embezzle the funds with impunity.

The crisis was too serious to be dealt with by the excited delegate

meetings of the London Trades Council. For over four years we hear of

only occasional and purely formal meetings of this body. Immediately

on the publication of the decision of the judges in January 1867

Applegarth convened what was called a “Conference of Amalgamated

Trades,” but what consisted in reality of weekly private meetings

of the five leaders and a few other friends. From 1867 to 1871 this

“conference” acted as the effective cabinet of the Trade Union

Movement. Its private minute-book, kept by Applegarth, reveals to the

student the whole political life of the Trade Union world.

The first action of the Junta was to call to their councils those

middle-class allies upon whose assistance and advice they had learned

to rely. We have already noticed the adhesion of the “Christian

Socialists” to the Amalgamated Engineers in 1852, and the intervention

of the Positivists in the Building Trades disputes of 1859-61. Frederic

Harrison and E. S. Beesly were now rendering specially valuable

services as the apologists for Trade Unionism in the public press.

“Tom Hughes” was in Parliament, almost the only spokesman of the men’s

whole claim. Henry Crompton was bringing his acute judgement and his

detailed experience of the actual working of the law to bear upon the

dangers which beset the Unions in the Courts of Justice. Applegarth’s

minutes show how frequently all four were ready to spend hours in

private conference at the Engineers’ office in Stamford Street, and how

unreservedly they, in this crisis, placed their professional skill

at the disposal of the Trade Union leaders. It would be difficult to

exaggerate the zeal and patient devotion of these friends of Trade

Unionism, or the service which they rendered to the cause in its hour

of trial.[401]

It is obvious from the private transactions of the conference that the

main object of the Junta was to gain for Trade Unionism that legal

status which was necessary alike to the security of the funds and

to the recognition of the Trade Union organisation as a constituent

part of the State. But the first thing to be done was to defeat

the employers in their endeavour to use the Royal Commission as an

instrument for suppressing Trade Unionism by direct penal enactment.

The Junta had therefore not only to dissociate themselves from the

ignorant turbulence of the old-fashioned Unions, but also to prove that

the bulk of their own members were enlightened and respectable. It was,

moreover, of the utmost importance to persuade the public that the

Junta and their friends, not the strike-jobbers or the outrage-mongers,

were the authorised and typical representatives of the Trade Union

Movement. All this it was necessary to bring out in the inquiry by the

Royal Commission before which Trade Unionism was presently to stand on

its defence. The composition of the Commission was accordingly a matter

of the greatest concern for the Junta. The Government had resolved

to select, as Commissioners, not representatives of each view, but

persons presumably impartial, with Sir William Erle, who had lately

retired from the Lord Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas, as their

chairman. In this arrangement representatives of the employers were to

be excluded; and the appointment of working men was not dreamed of. The

Commission was to be made up chiefly from the ranks of high officials,

with four members from the two Houses of Parliament, and the chairman

of a great industrial undertaking. The active part which Thomas Hughes

had taken in the debates secured him a seat on the Commission, though

he felt that single-handed he could do little for his friends. All

possible pressure was accordingly brought to bear on the Government

with a view to the appointment of a Trade Unionist member; but the idea

of a working-man Royal Commissioner was inconsistent with official

traditions. The utmost that could be obtained was that the workmen and

the employers should each suggest a special representative to be added.

For the workmen a wise and extremely fortunate choice was made in the

person of Frederic Harrison, the Junta obtaining also permission for

representative Trade Unionists to be present during the examination of

the witnesses.[402]

The actual conduct of the Trade Unionist case was undertaken by

Harrison and Hughes, in consultation with Applegarth, whom the Junta

deputed to attend the sittings on their behalf. The ground of defence

was chosen with considerable shrewdness. The policy of the Junta and

their allies was to focus the attention of the Commissioners upon the

great trade friendly societies in contradistinction to the innumerable

little local trade clubs of the old type. The evidence of Applegarth,

who was the first witness examined, did much to dispel the grosser

prejudices against the Unions. The General Secretary of the Amalgamated

Society of Carpenters was able to show that his society, then standing

third in financial magnitude in the Trade Union world, far from

fomenting strikes, was mainly occupied in the work of an insurance

company. He was in a position to lay effective stress on the total

absence of secrecy or coercion in its proceedings. He disclaimed, on

behalf of its members, all objection to machinery, foreign imports,

piecework, overtime, or the free employment of apprentices. The

fundamental position upon which he entrenched his Trade Unionism was

the maintenance, at all hazards, of the Standard Rate of Wages and the

Standard Hours of Labour, to be secured by the accumulation of such a

fund as would enable every member of the Union effectually to set a

reserve-price on his labour. William Allan, who came up on the third

day, followed Applegarth’s lead, though with some reservations; and the

evidence of these two officers of what were primarily national friendly

societies made a marked impression on the Commission.

The employers were not as well served as the men. It is true that

they succeeded, in spite of Applegarth’s disclaimers, in persuading

the Commission that some of the most powerful Unions strenuously

objected to piecework and sub-contract in any form whatsoever, and

in some instances even to machinery. In other cases it was proved

that attempts were made to enforce a rigid limitation of apprentices.

Owing to the energy of the Central Association of Master Builders,

the restrictive policy of the older Unions in the building trades was

brought well to the front; and this fact accounts, even to-day, for

most of the current impression of Trade Unionism among the middle

and upper classes. But the employers did not discriminate in their

attack. Almost with one accord they objected to the whole principle

of Trade Unionism. They reiterated with a curious impenetrability the

old argument of the “individual bargain,” and protested against any

kind of industrial organisation on the part of their employees. All

attempts by the men to claim collectively any share in regulating the

conditions of labour were denounced as “unwarrantable encroachments on

their rights as employers.” The number of apprentices, like indeed

the whole administration of industry, was claimed as of private

concern, the settlement of which “exclusively belongs to the employer

himself; a matter in which no other party, much less the operatives,

have got anything to do.” And they objected even more to the centrally

administered national society with extensive reserve funds than to the

isolated local clubs whose spasmodic outbursts they could afford to

disregard. But the confusion between the small local bodies with their

narrow policy of outrage and violence, and the amalgamated societies

with their far-reaching power and accumulated wealth, effective as it

had been in alarming the public, proved disastrous to the employers

when their case was subjected to the acute cross-examination of

Frederic Harrison. The masters, by directing their attack mainly on the

great Amalgamated Societies and the newly-formed local Trades Councils,

played, in fact, directly into the hands of the Junta. It was easy for

Allan and Applegarth to show that the influence of central Executive

Councils and the formation of a public opinion among trade societies

tended to restrain the more aggressive action of men embittered by a

local quarrel. The combination of friendly benefits with trade objects

was destined to be hotly attacked twenty years later by the more ardent

spirits in the Trade Union world, as leading to inertia and supineness

in respect of wages, hours, and conditions of labour. The evidence

adduced in 1867-8, read in the light of later events, reveals that this

tendency had already begun; and it was impossible for the Commissioners

to resist the conclusion that they had, in the Amalgamated Engineers

and Carpenters, types of a far less aggressive Trade Unionism than

such survivals as the purely trade societies of the brickmakers or the

Sheffield industries.

Foiled in this attempt the employers fell back upon an indictment of

the Amalgamated Unions considered as friendly societies. The leading

actuaries were called to prove that neither the Amalgamated Engineers

nor the Amalgamated Carpenters could possibly meet their accumulating

liabilities, and that these must, in a few years, inevitably bring

both societies to bankruptcy. The whole of this evidence is a striking

instance of the untrustworthiness of expert witnesses off their own

ground. Neither Finlaison nor Tucker, who were called as actuaries

on behalf of the employers, ever realised that a Trade Union, unlike

a Friendly Society, possesses and constantly exercises an unlimited

power to raise funds by special levies, or by increased contributions,

whenever it may seem good to the majority of the members. But even had

the actuarial indictment been completely warranted, it was a mistake

in tactics on the part of the employers. The Commissioners found

themselves shunted into an inquiry, not into the results of Trade

Unionism upon the common weal, but into the arithmetical soundness of

the financial arrangements which particular groups of workmen chose to

make among themselves.

Meanwhile the primary business of the Commission, the investigation

into the Sheffield outrages, had been remitted to special “examiners,”

whose local inquiry attracted far less attention than the proceedings

of the main body. At first the investigation elicited little that was

new; but in June 1867 the country was startled by dramatic confessions

on the part of Broadhead and other members of the grinders’ trade

clubs, unravelling a series of savage crimes instigated by them, and

paid for out of Club funds. For a short time it looked as if all the

vague accusations hurled at Trade Unionism at large were about to be

justified; but the examiners reported that four-fifths of the societies

even of the Sheffield trades were free from outrages, and that these

had been most prevalent from 1839 to 1861, and had since declined. The

only other place in which the Commissioners thought it necessary to

make inquiry into outrages was Manchester, where the Brickmakers’ Union

had committed many crimes, but where no complicity on the part of other

trades was shown. It was made evident to all candid students that

these criminal acts were not chargeable to Trade Unionism as a whole.

They represented, in fact, the survival among such rough and isolated

trades as the brickmakers and grinders of the barbarous usages of a

time when working men felt themselves outside the law, and oppressed by

tyranny.[403]

The success with which the case of the Trade Unionists had been

presented to the Commission was reflected in a changed attitude on

the part of the governing class, a change expressly attributed to

the “greater knowledge and wider experience” of Trade Unions which

had been gained through the Royal Commission. “True statesmanship,”

declared the _Times_, “will seek neither to augment nor to reduce

their influence, but, accepting it as a fact, will give it free scope

for legitimate development.”[404] Thus the official report of the

Commission, from which the enemies of Trade Unionism had hoped so much,

contained no recommendation which would have made the position of any

single Union worse than it was before. An inconclusive and somewhat

inconsistent document, it argued that trade combination could be of no

real economic advantage to the workman, but nevertheless recommended

the legalisation of the Unions under certain conditions. Whereas the

Act of 1825 had excepted from the common illegality only combinations

in respect of wages or hours of labour, the Commissioners recommended

that no combination should henceforth be liable to prosecution for

restraint of trade, except those formed “to do acts which involved

breach of contract,” and to refuse to work with any particular person.

But the privilege of registration, carrying with it the power to obtain

legal protection for the society’s funds, was to be conferred only on

Unions whose rules were free from certain restrictive clauses, such

as the limitation of apprentices or of the use of machinery, and the

prohibition of piecework and sub-contract. The employers’ influence on

the Commission was further shown in a special refusal of the privilege

of registration to societies whose rules authorised the support of the

disputes of other trades.

So far the result of the Commission was purely negative. No hostile

legislation was even suggested. On the other hand, it was obvious that

no Trade Union would accept “legalisation” on the proposed conditions.

But Harrison and Hughes had not restricted themselves to casting out

all dangerous proposals from the majority report. Their minority

report, which was signed also by the Earl of Lichfield, exposed in

terse paragraphs the futility of the suggestions made by the majority,

and laid down in general terms the principles upon which all future

legislation should proceed. It advocated the removal of all special

legislation relating to labour contracts, on the principle, first,

that no act should be illegal if committed by a workman unless it was

equally illegal if committed by any other person; and secondly, that

no act by a combination of men should be regarded as criminal if it

would not have been criminal in a single person. To this was appended

a detailed statement, drafted by Frederic Harrison, in which the

character and objects of Trade Unionism, as revealed in the voluminous

evidence taken by the Commission, were explained and defended with

consummate skill. What was perhaps of even greater service to the

Trade Union world was a precise and detailed exposition of the various

amendments required to bring the law into accordance with the general

principles referred to. We have here a striking instance of the

advantage to a Labour Movement of expert professional advice. The Junta

had been demanding the complete legalisation of their Unions in the

same manner as ordinary Friendly Societies. They had failed to realise

that such a legalisation would have exposed the Amalgamated Society of

Engineers to be sued by one of its members who might be excluded for

“blacklegging,” or otherwise working contrary to the interests of the

trade. The whole efficacy, from a Trade Union point of view, of the

amalgamation of trade and friendly benefits would have been destroyed.

The bare legalisation would have brought the Trades Unions under the

general law, and subjected them to constant and harassing interference

by Courts of Justice. They had grown up in despite of the law and the

lawyers; which as regards the spirit of the one and the prejudices of

the other were, and still are, alien and hostile to the purposes and

collective action of the Trades Societies. The danger of any member

having power to take legal proceedings, to worry them by litigation and

cripple them by legal expenses, or to bring a society within the scope

of the insolvency and bankruptcy law, became very apparent. The Junta

easily realised, when their advisers explained the position, that mere

legalisation would place the most formidable weapon in the hands of

unscrupulous employers. To avoid this difficulty Harrison proposed the

ingenious plan of bringing the Trade Union under the Friendly Societies

Acts, so far as regards the protection of its funds against theft or

fraud, whilst retaining to the full the exceptional legal privilege

of being incapable of being sued or otherwise proceeded against as

a corporate entity. Had a Trade Union official been selected as the

sole representative of the Unions on the Commission, such detailed and

ingenious amendments of the law would not have been devised and made

part of an authoritative official report. The complete charter of Trade

Union liberty, which Harrison and his friends had elaborated, became

for seven years the political programme of the Trade Unionists. And it

is a part of the curious irony of English party politics that whilst

the formation of this programme, and the agitation by which it was

pressed on successive Parliaments, were both of them exclusively the

work of a group of Radicals it was, as we shall see, a Conservative

Cabinet which eventually passed it into law.[405]

The effective though informal leadership of the movement which the

Junta had assumed during the sittings of the Royal Commission had

not gone entirely unquestioned. Those who are interested in the

cross-currents of personal intrigues and jealousies which detract from

the force of popular movements can read in the pages of the _Beehive_

full accounts of the machinations of George Potter. The _Beehive_

summoned a Trade Union Conference at St. Martin’s Hall in March 1867,

which was attended by over one hundred delegates from provincial

societies, Trades Councils, and the minor London clubs.[406] The Junta,

perhaps rather unwisely, refused to have anything to do with a meeting

held under Potter’s auspices. But many of their provincial allies came

up without any suspicion of the sectional character of the conference,

and found themselves in the anomalous position of countenancing

what was really an attempt to seduce the London Trades from their

allegiance to the Junta and the London Trades Council. The Conference

sat for four days, and made, owing to Potter’s energy, no little stir.

A committee was appointed to conduct the Trade Union case before the

Commission, and Conolly, the President of the Operative Stonemasons,

was deputed to attend the sittings. But although special prominence

was given by the _Beehive_ to all the proceedings of this committee,

we have failed to discover with what it actually concerned itself. An

indiscreet speech by Conolly quickly led to his exclusion from the

sittings of the Commission; and the management of the Trade Union case

remained in the hands of Applegarth and the Junta.

Apart, however, from jealousy and personal intrigue, there was some

genuine opposition to the policy of the Junta. The great mass of

Trade Unionists were not yet converted to the necessity of obtaining

for their societies a recognised legal status. There were even many

experienced officials, especially in the provincial organisations

of the older type, who deprecated the action that was being taken

by the London leaders, on the express ground that they objected to

legalisation. “The less working men have to do with the law in any

shape the better,” was the constant note of the old Unionists. This

view found abundant expression at the Congresses convened in 1868 by

the Manchester Trades Council, and in 1869 by that of Birmingham. But

in spite of the absence of the Junta from the Manchester Congress,

their friend, John Kane, of the North of England Ironworkers’

Association, succeeded in inducing the delegates to pass a resolution

expressing full confidence in the policy and action of the Conference

of Amalgamated Trades.[407] And at the Congress of 1869, Odger and

Howell, as representatives of the Junta, managed to get adopted a

series of resolutions embodying Frederic Harrison’s proposals.[408]

Meanwhile a change had come over the political situation. At the

outset of the crisis Frederic Harrison had urged upon the Trade Union

world the necessity of turning to the polling booth for redress.

“Nothing,” he writes in January, 1867, “will force the governing

classes to recognise [the workmen’s] claims and judge them fairly,

until they find them wresting into their own hands real political

power. Unionists who, till now, have been content with their Unions,

and have shrunk from political action, may see the pass to which this

abstinence from political movements has brought them.”[409] Within a

few months of this advice the Reform Bill of 1867 had enfranchised the

working man in the boroughs. The Trade Union leaders were not slow to

use the advantage thus given to them. The Junta, under the convenient

cloak of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades, issued, in July, 1868,

a circular urging upon Trade Unionists the importance of registering

their names as electors, and of pressing on every candidate the

question in which they were primarily interested. The Trades Councils

throughout the country followed suit; and we find the Junta’s electoral

tactics adopted even by societies which were traditionally opposed to

all political action. The Central Committee of the Stonemasons, for

instance, strongly urged their members to vote at the ensuing election

only for candidates who would support Trade Union demands.[410]

By the beginning of 1869 Frederic Harrison had drafted a comprehensive

Bill, embodying all the legislative proposals of his minority report.

This was introduced by Mundella and Hughes, and although its provisions

were received with denunciations by the employers,[411] it gained some

support among the newly elected members, and was strongly backed up

outside the House. The Liberal Government of that day, and nearly all

the members of the House of Commons, were still covertly hostile to

the very principles of Trade Unionism, and every attempt was made to

burke the measure.[412] But the Junta were determined to make felt

their new political power. From every part of the country pressure

was put upon members of Parliament. A great demonstration of workmen

was held at Exeter Hall, at which Mundella and Hughes declared their

intention of forcing the House and the Ministry to vote upon the hated

measure. Finding evasion no longer possible, the Government abandoned

its attitude of hostility and agreed to a formal second reading, upon

the understanding that the Cabinet would next year bring in a Bill of

its own. A provisional measure giving temporary protection to Trade

Union funds was accordingly hurried through Parliament at the end of

the session pending the introduction of a complete Bill.[413] The Junta

had gained the first victory of their political campaign.

The next session found the Government reluctant to fulfil its promise

in the matter. But the Trade Unionists were not disposed to let the

question sleep, and after much pressure Henry Bruce (afterwards Lord

Aberdare), who was then Home Secretary, produced, in 1871, a Bill which

was eagerly scanned by the Trade Union world. The Government proposed

to concede all the points on which it had been specially pressed by the

Junta. No Trade Union, however wide its objects, was henceforth to be

illegal merely because it was “in restraint of trade.” Every Union was

to be entitled to be registered, if its rules were not expressly in

contravention of the criminal law. And, finally, the registration which

gave the Unions complete protection for their funds was so devised as

to leave untouched their internal organisation and arrangements, and to

prevent their being sued or proceeded against in a court of law.

The employers vehemently attacked the Government for conceding, as

they said, practically all the Trade Union demands.[414] But from the

men’s point of view this “complete charter legalising Unions” had a

serious drawback. The Bill, as was complained, “while repealing the

Combination Laws, substituted another penal law against workmen” as

such. A lengthy clause provided that any violent threat or molestation

for the purpose of coercing either employers or employed should be

severely punished. All the terms of the old Combination Laws, “molest,”

“obstruct,” “threaten,” “intimidate,” and so forth, were used without

any definition or limitation, and picketing, moreover, was expressly

included in molestation or obstruction by a comprehensive prohibition

of “persistently following” any person, or “watching or besetting” the

premises in which he was, or the approach to such premises. The Act

of 1859, which had expressly legalised peaceful persuasion to join

legal combinations, was repealed.[415] It seemed only too probable

that the Government measure would make it a criminal offence for two

Trade Unionists to stand quietly in the street opposite the works of

an employer against whom they had struck, in order to communicate

peacefully the fact of the strike to any workmen who might be ignorant

of it.

It does not appear that Bruce’s fiercely resented “Third Clause”

was intended to effect any alteration in the law. Its comprehensive

prohibition of violence, threats, intimidation, molestation, and

obstruction did no more than sum up and codify the various judicial

decisions of past years under which the Trade Unionists had suffered.

But the law had hitherto been obscure and conflicting; both the

statutes and the judicial decisions had proceeded largely from a

presumption against the very existence of Trade Unionism which was

now passing away; and the workmen and their advisers not unreasonably

feared the consequences of an explicit re-enactment of provisions which

practically made criminal all the usual methods of trade combination. A

recent decision had brought the danger home to the minds of the Trade

Union leaders and their legal friends. In July 1867 a great strike had

broken out among the London tailors, in which the masters’ shops had

been carefully “picketed.”[416] Druitt, Shorrocks, and other officers

of the Union were thereupon indicted, not for personal violence or

actual molestation, but for the vague crime of conspiracy. The Judge

(Baron, afterwards Lord, Bramwell) held that pickets, if acting in

combination, were guilty of “molestation” if they gave annoyance only

by black looks, or even by their presence in large numbers, without any

acts or gestures of violence, and that if two or more persons combined

to do anything unpleasant and annoying to another person they were

guilty of a common law offence. The Tailors’ officers and committeemen

were found guilty merely of organising peaceful picketing, and it

became evident that, if the elastic law of conspiracy could thus be

brought to bear on Trade Union disputes, practically every incident

of strike management might become a crime.[417] Nor did Druitt’s case

stand alone. Within the memory of the Junta men had been sent to prison

for the simple act of striking, or even for a simple agreement to

strike.[418] Indeed, merely giving notice of a projected strike, even

in the most courteous and peaceful manner, had frequently been held

to be an act of intimidation punishable as a crime.[419] In 1851 the

posting up of placards announcing a strike was held to be intimidation

of the employers.[420] The Government Bill, far from accepting Frederic

Harrison’s proposed repeal of all criminal legislation specially

applying to workmen, left these judicial decisions untouched, and,

by re-enacting them in a codified form, proposed even to make their

operation more uniform and effectual.

There was, accordingly, some ground for the assertion of the Trade

Unionists that the Government was withdrawing with one hand what it was

giving with the other. It seemed of little use to declare the existence

of trade societies to be legal if the criminal law was so stretched

as to include the ordinary peaceful methods by which these societies

attained their ends. Above all, the Trade Unionists angrily resented

the idea that any act should be made criminal if done by them, or in

furtherance of their Unions, that was not equally a crime if committed

by any other person, or in pursuance of the objects of any other kind

of association.

A storm of indignation arose in the Trade Union world. The Junta sat

in anxious consultation with their legal advisers, who all counselled

the utmost resistance to this most dangerous re-enactment of the law. A

delegate meeting of the London trades was summoned to protest against

the criminal clauses of Bruce’s Bill. But it was necessary to attack

the House of Commons from a wider area than the Metropolis. With this

view the Junta determined to follow the example set by the Manchester

and Birmingham Trades Councils in 1868 and 1869 by calling together a

national Trade Union Congress.[421]

The meeting of the Congress was fixed for March 1871, by which time

it was rightly calculated that the obnoxious Bill would be actually

under discussion in the House of Commons. The delegates spent most of

their time in denouncing the criminal clauses of the Bill, and came

very near to opposing the whole measure. But it was ultimately agreed

to accept the legalising part of the Bill, whilst using every effort

to throw out the Third Section. A deputation was sent to the Home

Secretary. Protest after protest was despatched to the legislators, and

the Congress adjourned at half-past four each day, in order, as it was

expressly declared, that delegates might “devote the evening to waiting

upon Members of Parliament.” But neither the Government nor the House

of Commons was disposed to show any favour to Trade Union action in

restraint of that “free competition” and individual bargaining which

had so long been the creed of the employers. The utmost concession that

could be obtained was that the Bill should be divided into two, so

that the law legalising the existence of trade societies might stand

by itself, whilst the criminal clauses restraining their action were

embodied in a separate “Criminal Law Amendment Bill.” This illusory

concession sufficed to detach from the opposition many of those who had

at the General Election professed friendship to the Unions. In the main

debate Thomas Hughes and A. J. Mundella stood almost alone in pressing

the Trade Unionists’ full demands; and though a few other members were

inclined to help to some extent, the second reading was agreed to

without a division. The other stages were rapidly run through without

serious opposition. In the House of Lords the provisions against

picketing were made even more stringent, “watching and besetting” by a

single individual being made as criminal as “watching and besetting”

by a multitude. In this unsatisfactory shape the two Bills passed

into law.[422] Trade Societies became, for the first time, legally

recognised and fully protected associations; whilst, on the other

hand, the legislative prohibition of Trade Union action was expressly

reaffirmed, and even increased in stringency.

In the eyes of the Trade Unions this result amounted to a defeat; and

the conduct of the Government caused the bitterest resentment.[423]

The Secretaries of the Amalgamated Societies, especially Allan and

Applegarth, had, indeed, attained the object which they personally had

most at heart. The great organisations for mutual succour, which had

been built up by their patient sagacity, were now, for the first time,

assured of complete legal protection. A number of the larger societies

promptly availed themselves of the Trade Union Act, by registering

their rules in accordance with its provisions;[424] and in September

1871 the Conference of Amalgamated Trades “having,” as its final

minutes declared, “discharged the duties for which it was organised,”

formally dissolved itself.

The wider issue which remained to be fought required a more

representative organisation. In struggling for legal recognition

the Junta had, as we have seen, represented the more enlightened

of the Trade Unionists rather than the whole movement. But, by the

Criminal Law Amendment Act, the Government had deliberately struck

a blow against the methods of all trade societies at all periods.

The growing strength of the organisations of the coalminers and

cotton-spinners, and the rapid expansion of Trade Unionism which marked

this period of commercial prosperity, had for some time been tending

towards the development of the informal meetings of the Junta into a

more representative executive. The dissolution of the Conference of

Amalgamated Trades left the field open; and the leadership of the Trade

Union Movement was assumed by the Parliamentary Committee which had

been appointed at the Trades Union Congress in the previous March, and

which included all the principal leaders of the chief metropolitan and

provincial societies of the time.

The agitation which was immediately begun to secure the repeal of

the Criminal Law Amendment Act became during the next four years the

most significant feature of the Trade Union world. Throughout all

the various struggles of these years the Trade Union leaders kept

steadily in view the definite aim of getting rid of a law which they

regarded, not only as hampering their efforts for better conditions

of employment, but also as an indignity and an insult to the hundreds

of thousands of intelligent artisans whom they represented. The

whole history of this agitation proves how completely the governing

classes were out of touch with the recently enfranchised artisans. The

legislation of 1871 was regarded by the Government and the House of

Commons as the full and final solution of a long-standing problem. “The

judges, however, declared,” as Henry Crompton points out, “that the

only effect of the legislation of 1871 was to make the trade object

of the strike not illegal. A strike was perfectly legal; but if the

means employed were calculated to coerce the employer they were illegal

means, and a combination to do a legal act by illegal means was a

criminal conspiracy. In other words, a strike was lawful, but anything

done in pursuance of a strike was criminal. Thus the judges tore up the

remedial statute, and each fresh decision went further and developed

new dangers.”[425] But Gladstone’s Cabinet steadfastly refused, right

down to its fall in 1874, even to consider the possibility of altering

the Criminal Law Amendment Act. It was in vain that deputation after

deputation pointed out that men were being sent to prison under this

law for such acts as peacefully accosting a workman in the street.

In 1871 seven women were imprisoned in South Wales merely for saying

“Bah” to one blackleg. Innumerable convictions took place for the

use of bad language. Almost any action taken by Trade Unionists to

induce a man not to accept employment at a struck shop resulted,

under the new Act, in imprisonment with hard labour. The intolerable

injustice of this state of things was made more glaring by the freedom

allowed to the employers to make all possible use of “black-lists” and

“character notes,” by which obnoxious men were prevented from getting

work. No prosecution ever took place for this form of molestation or

obstruction. No employer was ever placed in the dock under the law

which professedly applied to both parties. In short, boycotting by the

employers was freely permitted; boycotting by the men was put down by

the police.