Note 552 — Chapter VII

The “Fair Trade” attack had arisen in the following manner. At the Bristol Congress in 1878, certain delegates, who were strongly suspected of being the paid agents of the organisation then agitating for the abolition of the foreign bounties on sugar, attempted to force this question upon the Congress, and made a serious disturbance. These delegates afterwards became the paid representatives of the “Fair Trade League,” an association avowedly composed of landlords and capitalists with the object of securing a reimposition of import duties. The Front Bench steadfastly refused to allow the Congress to be used for promotion of this object, and were exposed in return to what the Congress in 1882 declared to be “a cowardly, false, and slanderous attack, ... an attempt at moral assassination.” Instead of fighting the question of Free Trade versus Protection, the emissaries of the Fair Trade League developed an elaborate system of personal defamation, directed against Broadhurst, Howell, Shipton, and other leaders. For instance, Broadhurst’s administration of the Gas Stokers’ Relief Fund in 1872 was made the pretext for vague insinuations of malversation which were scattered broadcast through the Trade Union world. At the Congress of 1881 the “Fair Trade” delegates were expelled, on it being proved that their expenses were not paid by the Trade Union organisations which they nominally represented. A renewed attack on the Congress of 1882 ended in the triumphant victory of the Parliamentary Committee, the complete exoneration of Broadhurst and his colleagues, and the final discomfiture of the “Fair Trade” delegates. See Henry Broadhurst: the Story of his Life, by himself, 1901; History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.