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 —