A BILL TO END STRIKES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3378, 13 June 1927, Page 2

A BILL TO END STRIKES.

A BOOMERANG FOR DIEHARDS

LONDON, April 5, . The long-expected Tory Trade Union Bill has at last been published, arid while many who are not of the same political complexion as the present Government would like to see some reform of the present legal standing of the Trade Unions, there are few except Mr Baldwin’s diehards —to whom the Bill is a surrender —who will sec any profit iu this Bill. It will, indeed, do precisely what these Diehards least desire, it will consolidate Labour ranks. Tire Labour Party as a vHrolo, therefore, feel it may do them good except insofar as their extremists may find it in reason for excited and illconsidered agitation. In fact, there seems little doubt but that .this drastic Bill, if persisted in, will boomerang its supporters, unless as in the case of its abortive forerunner, Mr Macquisteu’s Bill'levelled against the political levy, Mr Baldwin sees fit to throw over Macquistcn and his Diehard crew and follow the saner industrialists iu his party who realise that this is simply playing into the hands of the Bolshevist minority in the Labour ranks. The Bill attacks all of the points •which formed the centre of excited controversy,, and adds to the Macquistcn theme the forbidding of picketing and substitutes for the existing practice of contracting out of the political levy, contracting in, i.e,, it denies the right of a trade union to claim subscriptions to, th’o political levy except from members who have signified their willingness in a prescribed way. It is, of course, possible to find at least good intent in the Bill, for the majority of the Trade Union leaders and the rank and file see nothing good in the general strike, which finds support only among the Communist minority. But this Bill proposes to remove the strike weapon entirely from Labour, which regards the right _to strike as its main weapon iu obtaining industrial rights. The ‘ ‘ Manchester Guardian” comment is that of most moderates: “There will be many who profoundly distrust the weapon of the general strike who will still More profoundly distrust or perhaps any legislative attempt to prohibit its use. The difficulty is mainly one of definition.. The Government withdraws the protection of the Trades Dispute Act from strikes designed to coerce the Government or to intimidate the community or any substantial portion of the community when these strikes are outside the trade in which there is a dispute. The sympathetic strike, which is at present lawful, thus becomes unlawful in certain circumstances. Since among twelve men chosen at random contradictory and violently hold opinions would almost certainly bo held as to whether these circumstances in fact arose in the general strike of last May, it seems probable that the obscurities of the existing law would actually he intensified under the Bill.” The most that can be said for the Bill is that it means well, but it is likely to provoke much more harm than good, for its good intentions are marred by its needlessly provocative tone. While this is the language natural to the Diehard, it is little likely to bA helpful at a moment whefl industrial peace is what, above all else, the world and world industry wants. 1 Competent authorities regard it as brimful of legal pitfalls and it has been pointed out that when the courts are called upon to decide whether a strike is an illegal strike one jury might decide one way and the next day another jury on exactly the same facts might quite probably decide the other way. Another example of this loose drafting is to bo found in the clause dealing with illegal strikes. A strike outside the industry where the trade. dispute exists is illegal if ‘it is designed or calculated to -coerce the Government or to intimidate the community or any substantial portion of the community. In the first place, what is

the difference between “ designed” and “calculated®” Both .words signify intention. It is suggested that by “calculated” the Government draftsmen mean simply “likely,” but one can hardly imagine the court* rending the intention through a misused word. In any case, at what point does a sympathetic strike, which is not apparently illegal in itself, becomes illegal by its supposed intention or possibly by its magnitude?

* All this ambiguity will result in leaving Labour entirely in the dark as to when it is acting illegally.

What, for example, is the difference between a political and an industrial strike? The definition in this Bill is hut a hussy guide. The same objection is to be found against the definition of “intimidation” in picketing. Intimidation is what wo should all-like to prevent, hut how is a strike picket to know what will cause in the mind of his hearer an “apprehension -of exposure to hatred and contempt”? What, in short, this Bill seems fated to do is to provide lots of work for the Courts and put money in. lawyers’ pockets. Its harmfulness, luckily, is seen by the younger, more active of the Tories, and even Mr Austin Hopkiuson, Conservative M.P., and coal owner, who does not love Labour, is so opposed to it that he is, so it is rumoured, to move the rejection of the Bill.

But the Labour view, as expressed by gMr Thomas, is “If ever the Government did anything to unite alt sections of the Labour movement they have done it in this Bill”; by Mr Arthur Henderson is. “The Bill is a direct attack upon the present position of tire trade unions, and the organised workers (will cherish noillusions about the intentions and effects of the measure. It is a challenge to the workers’ organisations. The proposed changes in trade union law represent a definite invasion of the elementary rights of combination as these have been exercised by the trade unions for nearly a century.

Another Labour leader says: “It is not simply the battle of tbo year it is the battle of the century,.” , “The Bill represents an unwise ambition to pass legislation which can never be effective. It will involve Trade Unions in endless litigation. It will invite them to cease to function as trade unions and to become more or less secret societies.” says Mr W. A. Appleton, Secretary of the. General Federation of Trade Unions, known for his dislike of the fashionable confusion between political and industrial agitation. The “New Statesman'” says.: “The Government appears as yet to have almost no idea of the hornets’ nest which it has stirred up. . . . But that is not the main point. It is the gesture that is important. It does not very much matter whether this open attack upon the working class is likely to he successful, because in any case, i.f pa; seed, it must soon be repealed. Wbat d res matter is that such an attack should have been launched at all. There is ; meanness and petty malice in nearly every, clause. . . . “Sane Labour opinion, on i’uo Bill hardly knows whether to scold or to- laugh, ho much of it can obiously neve r be enforced. How, for example, aro tb ? provisions against picketing to be enforced in a mining v’ilage? Is the whole village to be

sent to prison ? The legislation of picketing was a very valuable right when it was first granted to the Trade Unions, but nowadays non-Union blacklegs are in most industries so few that it really would not matter vei'y much to the” Unions if picketing were abolished altogether. It would not, that is to say, appreciably affect the success of- failure of any ordinary strike. In Labour circles the Bill has already been dubbed the ‘Blacklegs’ Charter,’ and as such it will no doubt come to be known, but it is not likely that it will help the blackleg very much. In Left-wing quarters there is naturally a desire that the Government may pass the Bill just as it is —and then see what happens; but the more moderate Labour leaders sec in it the end of their oft-expressed hopes of industrial peace.”