Note 653 — Chapter X

For half a century after the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824-25 the controversy as to the legal position of Trade Unionism was always muddled up, in the minds of lawyers as well as economists and the public, with that of physical violence. Because angry strikers here and there committed assaults, and occasionally destroyed property, it was habitually assumed, as it still is by some people thinking themselves educated, that Trade Unionism practically depended on, and inevitably involved, personal molestation of one sort or another. This led magistrates, right down to 1891, occasionally to regard as a criminal offence, under the head of “intimidation,” any threat or warning uttered by a Trade Unionist to an employer or a non-unionist workman, even if the consequences alluded to were of the most peaceful kind. In 1891 a specially constituted Court of the Queen’s Bench Division definitely laid it down that “intimidation,” under the Act of 1875, was confined to the threat of committing a criminal offence against person or tangible property (Memorandum by Sir Frederick Pollock in Appendix to Report of Royal Commission on Labour, C. 7063; see also Law Quarterly Review, January 1892; Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. Webb, Appendix I., 1897; Gibson v. Lawson, and Curran v. Treleaven, 1891, 2 Q.B. 545).

Magistrates continued, however, for some time to treat unfairly such breaches of public order as “obstructing the thoroughfare” or committing acts of annoyance to the public, when committed in connection with a strike of which they disapproved, which would not be proceeded against as criminal if they had been done by an excited crowd of stockbrokers in the City, by the audience of a street-corner preacher, or by a gathering of the Primrose League. Such discrimination by the police or the magistrate is unjust.