The First |

ive a Congress of our own

Trade Union Congress
—- and the men

who brought it to birth

The Osborne Judgement : an ominous new
threat to the whole labour Movement

Sir Charles Dilke, independent-minded
Liberal politician who, with his wife,
became one of the most ardent advocates
of the women trade unionists’ cause. From
the early days when the T.U.C. had
consulted him about the legal aspects of
the Taff Vale Judgement he maintained

a long and friendly association with the
Parliamentary Committee.

Lord Halsbury, a former Conservative Lord Chancellor, who was one of the Law
Lords responsible for upholding the Court of Appeal’s Osborne Judgement. The
effect of this judgement was to make it illegal for trade unions to apply any part of
their funds to the support of one of their own Parliamentary candidates, or to his
maintenance if he were returned as a Member of Parliament.

THE OSBORNE Judgement arose out
of a case brought, in 1908, by Mr. W.V.
Osborne, secretary of the Walthamstow
Branch of the Amalgamated Society of
Railway Servants, who claimed that it
was illegal for the A.S.R.S. to impose a
“political” levy on its members for the
support of its sponsored candidates who
were elected to Parliament. Osborne
initially lost his action; but Mr. Justice
Neville’s decision was later reversed by
the Court of Appeal, and the House of
Lords in due course confirmed that’
reversal, on the grounds that no pro-
vision for political activities or the
political use of trade unions fund had
been made in the Trade Union Act of
1876. Therefore, declared Lord Halsbury,
“what is not within the ambit of that
Statute is, I think, prohibited both to a
corporation and a combination.”

At this, a huge majority of delegates to

the 1910 Trades Union Congress were
up in arms, demanding that legislation
to reverse the situation created by the
Osborne Judgement should be intro-
duced immediately, so that trade unions
should be legally entitled to spend their
own funds in whatever way they wished.

But the reversal process took some time.
The situation was not, in fact, put right
until 1913—and then only partially;
because the Trade Union Act of that
year placed a number of restrictions on
a trade union’s right to contribute the
proceeds of its political levy to the party,
or candidate, or M.P. of its choice.
Meanwhile Labour M.P.s who, unlike
Conservative and Liberal Members, had
no private means, were enabled just to
subsist by virtue of the new State pay-
ments to Mémbers of the House of
Commons, which had been introduced
by Lloyd George.

_Part Twelve —