It is not necessary for us to concern ourselves with anything before the Trade Union Act, 1871.

The second section of that Act takes away from membership of a Trade Union its former character of criminal conspiracy. "The "The purposes of any Trade Union shall not, by reason merely that they are in restraint of trade, be deemed to be unlawful, so as to render any member of such Trade Union liable to criminal prosecution for conspiracy or otherwise."

The third section enables Courts of Law to recognise the agreements with outsiders and the trusts to which a Trade Union may be a party. "The purposes of any Trade Union shall not, by reason merely that they are in restraint of trade, be unlawful so as to render void or voidable any agreement or trust."

Agreements between the members themselves, as distinguished from agreements made between the Trade Union and outsiders, are not enforceable by legal proceedings, and to carry out its purposes a Trade Union has to rely on the voluntary allegiance of its members. Three classes of these agreements are mentioned in the Act as being unenforceable at law, viz.:

(1) Any agreement between members of a Trade Union as such concerning the conditions on which any members for the time being of such Trade Union shall or shall not sell their goods, transact business, employ or be employed.

In other words, adherence to the terms of the 'collective bargain' is purely voluntary.

(2) Any agreement for the payment by any person of any subscription or penalty to a Trade Union.

In other words, the final remedy against a member in default is expulsion from the Union.

(3) Any agreement for the application of the funds of a Trade Union

(a) To provide benefits to members, and

(b) To provide strike-pay, etc., to non-Unionists.

If a Union does not keep faith with its members it will naturally lose them, but it incurs no penalty which can be enforced in a Court of Law.

All this is very different to the relationship which exists between a company or a corporate body and its constituent members. In fact, no attempt was made to incorporate Trade Unions, and they are expressly forbidden to register themselves under the Friendly Societies Act, as such registration would make them corporate bodies. The Act, however, provides for the registration of Trade Unions, and imposes certain obligations and confers certain privileges on registered Trade Unions. Every registered Trade Union must have a registered office, and must make annual returns to the Registrar of Trade Unions. By registration it obtains the privilege of holding land, not exceeding one acre, and buildings for the purposes of the Union, and of vesting its property in trustees; it can also recover in a Court of Law from its treasurer or other officers money or property of the Union when wrongly withheld.

Amendment of the Criminal Law.-Side by side with the Trade Union Act, 1871, a Criminal Law Amendment Act (an Act to amend the Criminal Law relating to violence, threats, and molestation) was passed dealing with offences arising out of strikes, but this Act gave little or no satisfaction to the workmen. Its effect was to make the trade object of the strike not illegal, but if the means employed to carry on the strike were calculated to coerce the employers, they were illegal means, and a combination to do a legal act by illegal means was a criminal conspiracy. It seemed to come to this that while a strike was lawful, practically anything done in pursuance of a strike was still criminal. In 1875 the workmen secured the passing of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875. The main enactment (Section 3) of this Act is that an agreement or combination by two or more persons to do or procure to be done any act in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute shall not be indictable as a conspiracy, if such act committed by one person would not be punishable as a crime. For example, the miners at X mine resolve to go on strike. If each miner gives the legal notice necessary to put an end to his contract of service, he is acting lawfully and is not committing a crime. The agreement of all the

miners to hand in their notices is therefore not a criminal conspiracy. If the miners leave work without handing in their notices, then each of them breaks his contract and exposes himself to a civil action for damages for breach of contract, but here again neither the individual miners, nor the miners acting in combination, have committed any crime. Accordingly the strikers, whether they have given notice or not, are not punishable for going on strike.

On the other hand, in the case of persons employed in the public supply of gas or water, or to whose charge is specially committed the care of human life or of valuable property, wilful and malicious breach of the contract of service is by Sections 4 and 5 made a punishable offence. The exact wording of these new provisions is as follows:

(a) Where a person employed by a municipal authority or by any company or contractor upon whom is imposed by Act of Parliament the duty, or who have otherwise assumed the duty of supplying any city, borough, town, or place, or any part thereof, with gas or water, wilfully and maliciously breaks a contract of service with that authority or company or contractor, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the probable consequences of his so doing, either alone or in combination with others, will be to deprive the inhabitants of that city, borough, town, place, or part, wholly or to a great extent of their supply of gas or water; or

(b) Where any person wilfully and maliciously breaks a contract of service or hiring, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the probable consequences of his so doing, either alone or in combination with others, will be to endanger human life, or cause serious bodily injury, or to expose valuable property, whether real or personal, to destruction or serious injury,

he shall on conviction thereof by a Court of Summary Jurisdiction or on indictment as hereinafter mentioned, be liable either to pay a penalty not exceeding £20, or to be

imprisoned for a time not exceeding three months, with or without hard labour.

It should be noticed that in all these provisions, the question whether there is an offence or there is not an offence does not turn on there being two or more persons acting in combination. If an act is innocent if done by one person, it remains innocent if done by two or more persons in combination; if an act is punishable under the sections just quoted, it is just as punishable when done by one person as when done in combination with others. In other words, the element of 'conspiracy' is no longer material.

The question of molestation and obstruction in the course of a strike was dealt with by Section 7 as follows:

Every person who, with a view to compel any other person to abstain from doing, or to do any act which such other person has a legal right to do or abstain from doing, wrongfully and without legal authority,

(1) Uses violence to or intimidates such other person or his wife or children, or injures his property; or (2) Persistently follows such other person about from place to place; or

(3) Hides any tools, clothes, or other property owned or used by such person, or deprives him of or hinders him in the use thereof; or

(4) Watches or besets the house or other place where such

other person resides, or works, or carries on business, or happens to be, or the approach to such house or place; or

(5) Follows such other person with two or more other persons in a disorderly manner in or through any street or road,

becomes liable to the same penalties as are set out above in the case of malicious breaches of contract, but it is expressly provided that attending at or near the house or place where a person resides, or works, or carries on business, or happens to be, or the approach to such house or place, in order merely to obtain or communicate information, shall not be deemed a watching or besetting.

This section has been set out verbatim as the exact

phraseology is of considerable importance, but the portions in italics contain a summary sufficient for most purposes.

The Trade Disputes Act, 1906.-For nearly twenty years Trade Unionists thought that these two Acts gave them all the protection that was necessary to make collective bargaining feasible, and to enable them to carry out a strike in a peaceable and law-abiding manner. After a time, however, the ingenuity of lawyers discovered an unsuspected incompleteness in these provisions.

In Quinn v. Leatham (1901, A.C. 495) the doctrine was propounded in the House of Lords that an action by two persons might be a civil wrong, when a similar action by one only would not be actionable. In other words, while Section 3 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875, was sufficient to put an end to the criminal consequences of combined action, where individual action would be innocent, yet the section had no application to civil actions for damages brought by a person who had suffered loss from such combined action. On this principle, persons who promoted a strike could be made to pay damages for injuries sustained by the person or persons against whom the strike was directed. This doctrine was not necessary for the actual decision of Quinn v. Leatham, as there was in that case an infringement by Trade Union officials of a right of the plaintiff, which it seems would have been actionable even if there had been no combination, and the acts complained of had been done by one person only.

The whole object of a strike is to interfere with the master's business in the hope of getting better terms out of him. If the master could sue the Trade Union for the loss caused by the strike, then a strike was a blow which turned back on those who gave it.

In the case of Temperton v. Russell (1893, 1 Q.B. 715) the principle had been laid down that it was actionable, not merely maliciously to procure a breach of contract—that had for long been recognised as a principle quite independently of Trade Union action-but also to procure that persons should not enter into contracts. In other words, it would be actionable not merely to persuade men to throw up their work