without notice, but also to persuade men from going into the master's employment.

In the case of Lyons v. Wilkins (1896, 1 Ch. 84) an aggrieved employer invoked the aid of the Chancery side of the High Court of Justice. Chancery remedies have always been in request in order to prevent the repetition of injurious actions, but it was a daring innovation when an injunction was issued to restrain picketing which was so carried on as to amount in the eyes of the Judges who granted the injunction to the offence of "watching or besetting," and when this injunction was granted not at the trial of an action but at a separate preliminary proceeding. By this procedure the Trade Union officials were tried without a jury on a matter of fact, and were thus deprived of a recognised safeguard.

The culminating point was reached in the Taff Vale Case (1901, A.C. 426), when it was held that a Trade Union could be sued in its registered name, although the Legislature, as has already been said, had expressly refrained from incorporating it, and it was a body with a fluctuating membership. It follows that the funds held by trustees on behalf of this fluctuating body of men could be made to answer for the wrongful acts of its agents and officers. This was in effect to give a Trade Union the liability of a corporate body without its privileges. The practical importance of this decision can hardly be exaggerated, for damages given against more or less impecunious officials of a Trade Union were of little pecuniary value, while damages given against the accumulated funds of a Union were recoverable except in the event of the entire depletion of its funds, when the Union itself would be no longer a fighting force.

These somewhat surprising decisions and dicta crippled almost entirely the collective action of Trade Unions, and led to an agitation by the Trade Unions for a restoration to the legal position which they had formerly been supposed to occupy. This agitation led to the passing of the Trade Disputes Act, 1906.

Section I of that Act enacts that "an act done in pursuance of an agreement or combination by two or more persons shall, if done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade

dispute, not be actionable unless the act, if done without any such agreement or combination, would be actionable."

This clearly overrules the dictum in Quinn v. Leatham, and releases Trade Unionists from the last trammels of the doctrine of conspiracy.

Section 3 of the Act enacts that "an act done by a person in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute shall not be actionable on the ground only that it induces some other person to break a contract of employment, or that it is an interference with the trade, business, or employment of some other person, or with the right of some other person to dispose of his capital or labour as he wills."

For example, A and B, Trade Unionists, in a dispute with their master hand in their notices, but C, a non-Unionist, does not do so. When A and B leave work at the expiration of their notices they persuade C to come out with them. C is personally liable for his breach of contract, but A and B are not liable for C's act, and under the next section, if A and B are acting as agents for their Union, the Union is not liable. In the same way, if A and B persuade D, who is about to act as a blackleg, not to take C's place, A and B are not liable for so doing.

It should be noticed that the operation of these sections is limited to acts done in contemplation and furtherance of a trade dispute.

Section 4 repeals the decision in the Taff Vale Case. It is as follows: "An action against a Trade Union, whether of workmen or masters, or against any member or officials thereof on behalf of themselves and all other members of the 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." The phrase 'tortious act' is the legal equivalent of what has been called in this chapter a civil wrong.'

Under these sections it is now possible for a strike to be carried on (a) without exposing the Union itself to any liability for wrongful acts; (b) without exposing the strikers to any liability by way of damages for conspiracy when the conspiracy consists in their doing together things which,

done by each member alone, would be innocent; (c) without exposing the strikers to any liability by way of damages, if in the course of the dispute they induce persons to break contracts of employment (but without prejudice to any remedy against such persons themselves arising out of their breaches of contract), or interfere with the trade, business, or employment of other persons or with their general rights to dispose of their capital or labour as they please.

This Act does not alter the criminal liability of strikers under the Act of 1875 except in one respect. Section 2 of the Act of 1906 extends the definition of legal' watching and besetting,' or, as it is generally called, of 'peaceful picketing.' It runs as follows: "It shall be lawful for one or more persons, acting on their own behalf, or on behalf of a Trade Union or of an individual employer or firm in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, to attend at or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on business or happens to be, if they so attend merely for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working." The words in italics constitute the addition to the provision already contained in the Act of 1875.

Trade Unions and Political Objects.-The most recent legislation on Trade Unions, the Trade Union Act, 1913, was passed under the following circumstances. Trade Unions of workers discovered that intervention in politics and elections was sometimes a means of improving the position of labour without resorting to strikes. It is not necessary to discuss here the relative merits of political action and strikes, it is sufficient for the present purpose that as a matter of fact English Trade Unions adopted both. Finally it became usual for a Trade Union to make a compulsory levy on its members for the purpose of procuring the election and securing the maintenance of members of Parliament to support the interests of the Union in Parliament. These members formed a Labour Party in the House of Commons. A member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, who felt that the Labour Party did not represent his political

views, resolved to test the legality of the compulsory levy made by his Society upon him. He brought an action against the Society, and in the final hearing before the House of Lords (Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants v. Osborne, 1910, A.C. 87) it was decided that it was not within the powers of a Trade Union registered under the Trade Union Acts, 1871 and 1876, to maintain out of its funds members of Parliament for the support of the interests of the Union. By implication the decision also affected the rights of a Trade Union to promote the election of friendly persons to local governing bodies. This decision caused a good deal of feeling amongst Trade Unionists, who felt that while a compulsory levy might be unfair to a dissentient minority, yet the absence of any power for even the majority to take collective action for parliamentary and other similar purposes was an unnecessary and harmful limitation of Trade Union activity.

By the 1st Section of the Trade Union Act, 1913, the objects mentioned in the Act of 1876, namely, the regulation of the relations between workmen and masters, or between workmen and workmen, or between masters and masters, or the imposing of restrictive conditions on the conduct of any trade or business, and also the provision of benefits to members, are put in a class by themselves and called 'statutory objects.'

The objects or powers of a Trade Union are then put on a wider basis by enacting that the fact that a combination has under its constitution objects or powers other than statutory objects is not to prevent the combination being a Trade Union under the Acts of 1871 and 1876, so long as the combination is a Trade Union as defined by the Act of 1913, and subject to the provisions of the Act of 1913 as to the furtherance of political objects; any such Trade Union shall have power to apply the funds of the Union for any lawful objects or purposes for the time being authorised under its constitution.

By Section 2, a combination is a Trade Union for the purposes of the Acts of 1871, 1876, and 1913, if it is a combination, whether temporary or permanent, the principal objects of

which are under its constitution statutory objects. Thereupon follows various provisions as to the registration by the Registrar of Friendly Societies of such combinations only as have, in the Registrar's opinion, statutory objects for their principal objects, and for the granting by the Registrar to unregistered Trade Unions of certificates that they are Unions within the meaning of the Act of 1913, if they comply with a similar condition.

Section 3 is a very long section, containing the provisions restricting the application of Trade Union funds for political purposes.

Before the funds of a Trade Union can be applied either directly or in conjunction with any other Trade Union, Association, or body, or otherwise indirectly, in the furtherance of certain enumerated political objects, the following conditions must have been complied with.

First, the furtherance of these objects must have been approved as an object of the Union by a resolution for the time being in force passed by a majority of the members voting on a ballot of the members of the Union taken in the prescribed manner.

Secondly, where such a resolution is in force there must also be in force rules, to be approved, whether the Union is registered or not, by the Registrar of Friendly Societies, providing

(a) That any payments in the furtherance of those objects are to be made out of a separate fund ('the political fund'), and for the exemption of any member of the Union from any obligation to contribute to such a fund if he gives the prescribed notice that he objects to contribute.

(b) That a member who is exempt from the obligation to contribute to the political fund shall not be excluded from any benefits of the Union, or placed in any respect either directly or indirectly under any disability or at any disadvantage as compared with other members of the Union (except in relation to the control or management of the political fund) by reason of his being so exempt, and that contribution to the political fund of the Union shall not be made a condition for admission to the Union.