nd the men w

Lord Elcho, appointed a member of the
Royal Commission of Inquiry into Trade
Unions, after serving, in 1866, as chairman
of the Select Committee on the reform

of the Master and Servant Law.

oy On ea

Henry Broadhurst, the Stonentasons’ leader who took over
from Howell in 1875. He insisted at the 1877 Congress
that the less they “interfered with the differences arising
between trade and trade, and industry and industry, the
better would it be...”

Frederic Harrison, in later life. The
Junta’s nominee on the Royal
Commission. “The unions have serious

thereto’’.

IN THE FULLNESS of time, the Royal
Commission of Inquiry into Trade
Unions was delivered oftwo Reports. The
Majority Report proposed that certain
steps should be taken to legalise the
position of trade unions in certain
limited respects. The Minority Report,
signed by Hughes, Harrison and Lord
Lichfield, simply recommended the com-
plete legalisation of trade unions, and
called for the total repeal of the restric-
tions of the 1825 Act.

In the event, the Government legislation
which followed consisted of two contra-
dictory measures. The Trade Union
Act of 1871 legalised the status of trade
unions and accorded protection to their
funds. But the clauses on picketing and
intimidation of the Criminal Law
Amendment Act, which was part of the
same year’s package, left trade unionists
as vulnerable to criminal prosecution as
they had been before.

The Government of the day may have
assumed that they had now made a final
solution of the prickly trade union
problem. But, as Henry Crompton
pointed out in a document called

faults”, he declared, ‘‘but I still believe
them necessary as I do railways, and
capable of improvement.”

Sir William Erle, a former Chief Justice,
who was appointed chairman of the Royal
Commission, with instructions to “‘report
on the organisation and rules of trades -
unions, and the several matters relating

George Howell, who became the first secretary of the
T.U.C.’s Parliamentary Committee, which was set up, by the

1871 Congress to lobby M.P.s for the amendment of the
Criminal Law Amendment Bill.

First fruits of the TUC’s efforts:
the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Ac

“Digest of Labour Laws”, which he
wrote with Frederic Harrison, and
which was issued by the T.U.C.’s
Parliamentary Committee in 1875, “‘the
Judges declared 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.”

So... the Trades Union Congress
organised itself and the members it
represented to remedy that “remedial
statute”. And the campaign which
resulted, in 1875, in the Repeal of the
Criminal Law Amendment Act proved
to be by far the most important of the
comparatively few effective operations
which the T.U.C. was able to initiate in
the whole period 1868-1900.

John Ruskin, whose book “Unto this
Last” helped to jolt the public’s
preconceptions about the sanctity of
classical political economy, and
consequently about the valid role of trade
unions in a country’s economic life.