Belfast Harbour Commissioners,' held that attending at or near a place to give information does not authorize any trespass upon the premises themselves, and that, in any event, the act done during a trade dispute of persuasion may in reality be picketed for political or personal motives so as to lose the protection of that section, and the tendency of the House of Lords to construe the Trades Disputes Act, 1906, very strictly has made it impossible to say that the "Watching and Besetting" section of the 1875 Act is entirely obsolete.

There remain to be considered certain criminal responsibilities of the officials of registered trade unions under the Trade Union Act of 1871 for failing to make the required returns under the Act, together with provisions as to the prosecution of officers and others by a summary process provided in the Act of 1871.

Taking the liability of the official first, a trade union failing to give any notice which the statute requires to be sent to the Registrar in the case of a union carrying on business in more than one country, or in case of change of name or amalgamation or dissolution, and every officer bound by the rules to give the same, unless proved to have been ignorant at the time of the action, is liable to a penalty not less than £1 and not more than £5, recoverable summarily before the magistrates at the suit of the Registrar or of any person aggrieved, and to a default penalty of a like amount for each week during which the action continues.'

1 [1908] 2 I.R. 214.

2 Trade Union Act (Amendment) Act, 1876, section 15.

2

It is a misdemeanour to give a member or intending member of a registered trade union a copy of rules which are not the existing rules with intent to mislead or to deceive, and there is also an obligation to make annual returns to the Registrar, the failure of which also renders the trade union and officers liable to a £5 fine, and to make a false return involves a liability not exceeding £50.1

Finally we come to the machinery for suing members who, by false representation or imposition, have obtained possession of the property of the union or have wilfully withheld or fraudulently misapplied the same. This section, it may be remembered, arose out of the case of Hornby v. Close and the consequent Trade Union Funds Protection Act, 1869. On complaint to a court of summary jurisdiction the court may order the delivery of all the property or the return of the monies misapplied, together with an additional £20 and costs not exceeding 1. In default of demand the court may order imprisonment for three months.

3

The procedure is peculiar. It is only available where there is fraud or dishonesty. For in other cases there is a remedy given in section 7 of the 1871 Act. If an officer is ordered to pay and is subsequently fined for failure, he cannot afterwards be sued for the recovery of the amount, and in Verdun v. Watson,* Lord Halsbury pointed out, at page 290, that, had the statute been confined 1 Trade Union Act, 1871, S. 16, 18. 2 Madden v. Rhodes [1906] 1 K.B. 543. 3 See Barrett v. Markham (1872) L.R. 7 C.P. 405, and Knight v. Whitmore (1885), 53 L.T. 233. 4 [1891] 2 Q.B.D. 288.

to criminal proceedings alone, a civil action for the debt could have been maintained, but in so far as an order to pay is made by the magistrate previous to the penalty the imprisonment is an execution for the satisfaction of the civil debt. In the United Builders' Labourers Union v. Stephenson, Farwell J. ordered the payment of the amount taken by an official of a registered trade union after he had been convicted and imprisoned under the Falsification of Accounts Act, 1875, a procedure which would bind both a registered and an unregistered trade union, and a similar course was taken in Agnew v. Addison. It would appear, therefore, that if the amount is at all large it is unwise to have regard to the Trade Union Act of 1871, and better to proceed under the Larceny Act or the Falsification of Accounts Act, as in such a case the decision in Verdun v. Watson would not apply, and the debt might subsequently be recovered. In any event the summary provisions above stated apply to a registered trade union only, but the more general consequences of registration will be reserved for discussion in a later lecture.

$ 2.-TRADES DISPUTES ACT.

The Trades Disputes Act, 1906, contains provisions in section 4 which tend to exclude trade unions, as such, from the whole common law liability for tortious acts. That section provides, in terms, that "an action against a trade union whether of workmen or masters or against any member or official thereof on behalf of themselves

1 [1906] Times, Feb. 7th. 2 20 Rettie 19.

or other members of a trade union in respect of any tortious act alleged to have been committed by or on behalf of the trade union shall not be entertained by any court." There follows in subsection 2 the following curious provision that "nothing in this section shall affect the liability of the trustees of a trade union to be sued in the events provided by the Trade Union Act, 1871, Section 9, excepting in respect of any tortious act done by or on behalf of the trade union in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute."

In considering the extent of this unparalleled restriction of the Courts' power to deal with tortious acts we must assume, as was pointed out by Mr. Justice Astbury in the case of Valentine v. Hyde,' that the Act effects a material alteration in the common law and ought to be construed strictly. Construing the act thus strictly, it will be noticed, in the first place, that the protection of section 4 is limited to cases of a trade union "whether of workmen or of masters," and the difficult question arises, a question which has never in fact been before the Courts: What is the position of a trade union which is neither one of workmen or of masters?

The word "workman" is defined in the Trades Disputes Act as all persons employed in trade or industry. How far do these words extend? In the case of Dallimore and Williams, a case of an alleged tortious act by the officials of a trade union of musicians, the point was never taken for

1

1 [1919], 2 Ch. 129, at p. 153. 2 See Larkin v. Long [1915] A.C. 814, 832, 833, 834. 3 Sec. 5, sub-sec. 3. 4 (1912) 29 T.L.R. 67.

the plaintiff that a musician is not employed in trade or industry.

It will be remembered that in the definition of a trade union, in addition to organizations for regulating the relations of masters and workmen, workmen and workmen, and masters and masters, the Act includes combinations which have for their purposes the imposing of restrictions on the conduct of any trade or business, and such a trade union would appear not to be a trade union either of masters or of workmen simpliciter; thus, it may well be, though the point has never in terms been decided, that the Trades Disputes Act, section 4, gives no protection to such a regulative association.

Before we pass to consider the scope of the statutory protection the provisions of the second subsection as to the liability of the trustees to be sued must be considered, together with the personal, liability of officials of the union. As to the second point there are two cases to which attention should be drawn in particular. The first is that of Bussy v. Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and Bell.' It was an action of malicious prosecution against a trade union and its secretary. Mr. Justice Darling held that, in so far as the words of section 4 applied to all torts, whether the union was engaged in a trade dispute or not, the union as such was immune, a view which was subsequently confirmed in the case of Vacher v. London Society of Compositors, but the learned judge went on to hold that Mr. Bell, the official, was

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1 (1908) 24 T.L.R. 437. 2 [1912] 3 K.B.D. 547. [1913] A.C. 107.