CHAPTER VII.

TWO PHASES OF TRADES UNIONISM:-I. COERCION, INTIMIDATION, AND RATTENING. II. PICKETING, CONSIDERED IN ITS LEGAL, POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND PERSONAL ASPECTS.

I.-Intimidation.

§ 1. SCARCELY a week passes without some allusion in the press, or by public speakers, to cases of alleged intimidation, in one form or another, of non-union workmen by trade-unionists. Under these circumstances, a clear statement of the facts with regard to the whole class of 'offences against the liberty of the subject,' with especial reference to the personal freedom of workmen to work where and for whom they please, may be of some service both to employers and workmen, and not altogether without interest to the general public. In order to do this fairly we must draw a line between those acts which are positively unlawful in themselves, and which must be put down by the strong arm of the law by whomsoever committed, and 'picketing,' which may or may not involve undue influence or coercion, either in itself or by the attendant circumstances, and which, therefore, must be treated independently as separate and apart from actual intimidation. At present the first part of the subject will be dealt with, leaving the second for another paper.

§ 2. A good deal of misapprehension, and, in consequence thereof, of misrepresentation, has existed, and still exists, with regard to the alleged coercion of nonunionist workmen by trade-unionists. This was increased, rather than diminished, by the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1871, by reason of the mal-interpretation of the word 'coerce' in section I by the magistrates and judges before whom the several cases were tried. This was clearly pointed out to the Home Secretary, Mr. Bruce (now Lord Aberdare), at a deputation to the Home Office, on March 21, 1872, by the then Parliamentary Secretary of the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee, in the following words: The other term "coerce," as used by the Act, appears to mean "induce," and not what it is ordinarily supposed to mean, "compel." Surely this was never intended by the Government when draughting the Bill.' The Home Secretary at once nodded assent.

§ 3. Coerce, as defined in the dictionaries, means 'to restrain by force, to compel ;' it involves compulsion, or force of some kind other than moral suasion. Had the term been so construed by our courts of law, the objections urged against the use of that term would not have been valid on the part of trade-unionists. This was stated over and over again in public meetings, in deputations, in memorials to Ministers of State, and in petitions to Parliament; and yet, notwithstanding these constant iterations and reiterations, a certain section of the press, and many public men who were opposed to every kind of concession, repeatedly accused the unionist workmen of seeking, by Act of Parliament, for the power and the means by which to coerce their fellows in the shape of compulsion or force. This is even now repeated sometimes in journals of a special class. It is, however, satisfactory to be able to add that in the Conspiracy and

Protection of Property Act, 1874, section 7, the word compel' has been substituted for 'coerce,' so as to prevent as far as possible in the future any further misconstruction in courts of law of a word that had been so variously and technically interpreted. After this emphatic recognition by the Legislature of the justice of the demands made by the workmen, it surely ought to be no longer necessary to protest against the continual misrepresentation of their views by a section of the press and of the public, only that the repetition of these statements is too frequent to be passed by without some definite disclaimer on the part of the workmen.

§ 4. It may serve as a caution to those who so persistently misrepresent working men, by reminding them that in the future the safest way with which to deal with all such questions is first to ascertain precisely what the demands of the workmen are; and, secondly, the reasons for those demands, before they attempt to denounce the men who are deputed to seek for the modification or repeal of statutes which for so many centuries were enacted in the interest of a class, and that class not those who get their living by daily labour, but the employers, by whom also these laws have been too frequently interpreted and administered.

§ 5. One of the fundamental objections against the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1871, as stated in a memorial to the Home Office in March 1872, was, that it was founded upon the presupposition of criminal intentions on the part of that large section of her Majesty's subjects known as trade-unionists,' who, it was affirmed, 'were as peaceably disposed as any other portion of her Majesty's subjects, of openly or secretly violating either the letter or the spirit of the laws of the land.' It was further stated that this wrongful supposition of the Legislature 'was in itself an act of injustice

to the members of trade-unions, caused by an imperfect knowledge as to the aims, objects, and working of these societies;' and it was urged that every species of intimidation, either by individuals or in combination, was fully provided for by the general statute and common law, which dealt with ordinary cases of assault, and specially by the Offences against the Person Act, 24 & 25 Victoria, c. 100. But these representations did not stop here, for in a letter addressed to Mr. Gladstone on July 12, 1873, it was said that if it were found that these laws were insufficient to prevent molestation or intimidation, either by individuals or in combination, the general statute law should be so strengthened as to reach all offences and offenders in any and every such case.

§ 6. This view was absolutely adopted by the Legislature in 1875 by the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1871, which was a special enactment against a class, and by the substitution in lieu thereof of a law general in its character and its application; not levelled at unionists as a body, but directed against the person or persons who perpetrated the offences. The Legislature in this case was but fulfilling one of its most obvious functions—namely, providing for the liberty and freedom of every individual in the State, and the prevention of every species of molestation or tyranny in so far as it is possible to do so by Act of Parliament. Every right-thinking man, whatever his political and social creed, will aid in supporting such laws against the lawless few who would seek to evade them.

§ 7. It would be altogether unnecessary and superfluous for an Englishman to protest against acts of personal violence, were it not for the fact that a numerous class of workmen have been accused of aiding and abetting those who have been guilty of the grossest violations of all law and order, and indeed of outrages

and crimes the most atrocious and abominable. Whole pages could be filled with extracts from newspapers and speeches, published within the last ten years, in which cases of outrage and violence, committed by a few brutal and ignorant men, have been attributed to a whole class, and the aid of the Legislature has been invoked for the avowed purpose of putting down, not the outrages, but the unions by which it was alleged these outrages were committed. If the object had been to punish the offenders, all would have concurred in its reasonableness and need, but when it was found that its ulterior object was the suppression of the unions, the interference was resented and resisted by the powerful associations of workmen all over the country.

§ 8. In consequence of the inflammatory articles in the newspapers, and the speeches of a few men in Parliament, a general impression prevailed in 1865, 1866, and 1867 that gross personal violence and outrages were part and parcel of the organisation of trade-unions, and that the only way to repress such outrages was by the suppression of the unions, by the re-enactment of the old combination laws, with penal provisions more stringent, severe, and thorough than any of those which had been repealed. This feeling was so widely spread that the comparatively little band of men who in and out of Parliament were labouring for a modification of the law as it then existed, were assailed with every kind of vituperation and abuse. They ought to be hung up at the nearest lamp-post,' the writer once heard a 'gentleman' say. 'The unions must be stamped out as a public nuisance,' said a well-known London newspaper. § 9. Confident in the conviction that these accusations were unjust and false, and that any commission of inquiry would prove them to be so, the leaders of the unions demanded a full and fair inquiry into all the