ing such repeal, were rapidly adopted by Parliament in the Combination of Workmen Act of 1824. This statute repeals all the Acts restraining combinations already referred to, and proceeds, in terms, to enact that persons who shall enter into any combination to obtain an advance or fix a rate of wages or lessen or alter the hours of working, or induce another to depart from his service before the end of the time for which he is hired or to refuse to enter into work or employment or ! to regulate the mode of carrying on any trade, shall not therefore be liable to any prosecution for conspiracy or other criminal punishment under the common law or statute law.

2

The effects of this Act were immediately felt, trade unions came into being in large numbers and many strikes occurred or were threatened. As a consequence, in 1825, the legislature, by statute," amended the first Combination Repeal Act, after another committee had considered the matter. By this second Act, while collective bargaining and combination remained lawful, specific offences of "threats, intimidation, molestation and obstruction" were created.

The growth of trade unions continued, and ambitious schemes for vast National Associations were again set on foot. A committee was appointed and proposals were made for restrictive legislation against trade unions, and, although no legislation resulted, new doctrines of illegality arose, centering around the notion of molestation as defined in the

1

5 George IV, c. 95.

26 George IV, c. 129.

8 See Trade Unionism, 2nd Ed., Slesser (Methuen), Ch. 2.

2

| Act of 1825 rather than that of combination. Thus in 1832 in the case of R. v. Bykerdyke,' it was held to be a criminal combination to "molest" within the meaning of the 1825 Act, for trade unionists to write to an employer to say that a strike would take place; moreover the Acts of 1797 and 1819 against unlawful oaths, already mentioned, were put into force. In one case, in 1802, Lord Ellenborough held that an oath administered by journeymen shearmen came within the earlier Act, and the oathbound Grand National Trade Union was affected in the case of R. v. Lovelace and others, the notorious case of the six Dorchester Labourers, charged with administering unlawful oaths' which came before Baron Williams. This was in 1834. In 1835 four workmen were convicted of " intimidation" on the evidence of employers that they had advanced their prices in consequence of the interference of the defendants, who had acted as plenipotentiaries for the men-no threat in terms being proved.

The statute law of master and servant was still unrepealed. To leave work unfinished was still a criminal offence, and the statute also made it possible to prosecute for industrial combination as in the case of the seventeen tanners at Bermondsey.* Picketing was also considered to be an intimidation, even when it was peaceful. In 1847, however, in the case of R. v. Selsby,' we find Baron Rolfe confining intimidation under the 1825 Act to threats of personal violence, and, at page 498, 1 I Moo. and Rob., 170. 2 R. v. Marks, 3 East. 157. 36C. and P. 596. 4 Times, 1834, Feb. 27th. 5 Southwark Shoemakers' case, 1832. 65 Cox C.C. 495.

speaking of persuasion, he says, "it is doubtless lawful for people to agree among themselves not to work upon certain terms; that being so, I am not aware of any illegality in their peacefully trying to persuade others to adopt the same view." Under the 1825 Act the question of threats, intimidation, molestation or obstruction were for the jury and, in Selsby's case, it was nevertheless decided by the jury that to say to workmen " you had better not go there, you will repent it" was an unlawful threat. In 1851 there were several prosecutions, namely, the cases of R. v. Hewitt,' in which it was held that to support a strike to procure the dismissal of a member who refused to pay a fine was unlawful; R. v. Duffield,' a case in which a trade union secretary persuaded employees not to enter into employment; held to be a "threat" but no "intimidation," that is a threat to the employer; though in that case Erle J. affirmed the right to strike so long as no efforts were made to induce others to join, and defined a threat as threatening a man either with personal injuries or with the loss of comfort in any way. It is to be noticed that this definition of a threat agrees closely with the view of Mr. Justice Astbury in the recent case of Valentine v. Hyde. In the important case of R. v. Rowlands, decided the same year as Duffield's case, Erle J. held that workmen may combine to raise wages, where the purpose is to obtain a benefit for themselves, but that to combine to force an employer to agree to wages is unlawful, 3 Page 432. [1919] 2 Ch.

1 5 Cox C.C. 162. 129. 517 Q.B. 671.

2 Ibid. 404.

where unlawful means, such as intimidation or threats are used, and, apparently, a threat to call men out is such an unlawful threat, as it is to say to men “ if you work there we shall strike against you, or to follow a workman home.”1

Despite these many prosecutions, strikes were plentiful in the middle of the last century, and the year 1850 saw the institution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, among many other trade unions; again House of Commons Committees. were instituted in 1856 and 1859, and, in the latter year, there was passed the Molestation of Workmen Act, which redefined the terms "molestation and obstruction ” in the 1825 Act, which in the past had substantially been treated as questions of fact, as follows, "no workman or other person, whether actually in employment or not, shall, by reason merely of his entering into an agreement with any workmen or persons for the purpose of fixing remuneration at which they should work or by reason merely of endeavouring peaceably and in a reasonable manner and without threat or intimidation, direct or indirect, to persuade others to cease or abstain from work in order to obtain the rate of wages or the altered hours of labour so fixed upon, shall be deemed or taken to be guilty of molestation or obstruction within the meaning of the 1825 Act." There was a proviso that nothing therein contained should authorize any workman to break any contract or attempt to induce any other person to do so.

This proviso, no doubt, had reference to the

1 See also R. v. Perham, 1859, 5 H. and N. 30. 22 Vict., c. 34.

still subsisting Master and Servants Acts, under which an employer who broke a contract with a workman could be sued for damages, whereas the workman could be imprisoned for three months. Imprisonment, moreover, did not of itself discharge the workman's debt.' It was not until 1867 that these criminal provisions were repealed.'

The first judicial interpretation of the 1859 Act is to be found in the case of Walsby v. Anley,' in which it was held, under facts similar to those in the recent case of White v. Riley, in the Court of Appeal, namely, a letter sent to an employer of a resolution of men threatening to strike unless a certain man was discharged, that such an act still constituted a criminal threat and molestation. The views of the two learned Judges, Lord Justice Cockburn and Mr. Justice Crompton, are worthy of consideration. The former distin

guished, as did Mr. Justice Astbury lately, in Valentine v. Hyde, between a combination of men who gave the employer the alternative of dismissing them or the objected persons, with a combination who really were masters of the situation and so by threatening one employer with loss could force his hand; while Mr. Justice Crompton thought it was criminal to combine to compel the discharge of a fellow workman by the threat of a strike. In O'Neil v. Longman, it was held to be a "molestation " to threaten to turn a man out of a union and send his name round the country.

1 Unwin v. Clark, 1 Q.B.D. 417.

3

(1861) 3 E. and E. 516.

4

2 30 and 31 Vict., c. 141.

(1863) 4 B. and S. 376.