ANOTHER OSBORNE CASE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7300, 2 December 1910, Page 4

ANOTHER OSBORNE CASE

We are not at all confident that the cable message published in our news columns this morning correctly states the judgment of Mr Justice Warrington in the action Osborne against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. If it does, the judgment certainly seems to open up a new field for strife, having effects much more far-reaching than even the'weighty decision of . the Lords of Appeal which has by common consent borne Mr Osborne's name. Though the later case arises but of the other, the circumstances are quite dissimilar. After Mr Osborne obtained from , the highest - court the judgment against compulsory, levy by trades unions for political purposes,: he was , expelled from the. Railwaymen’s Society - ? and the Walthamstow branch, of which he was secretary, was dissolved. Mr Osborne sough* a declaration that these acts of \the society were illegal. M!r Justice Warrington has dismissed this application, on .the ground (so the cable says) that “the agreement members ohtered into in joining the, society was illegal, as being in restraint of trade.'’ We presume this to mean -that -the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants is, in the view of Mr Justice Warrington, an illegal combination, and that Mr Osborne, in becoming a member of that society had placed himself in a position .of illegality, and , consequently had no status at law. No doubt this judgment will be submitted to , the test of a higher tribunal, for the plainiiff has shown himself to bo an unusually persistent man. - If the railwayman's society is declared an illegal body, \acting in restraint of trade, this will also *bo found to apply to numerous other trade unions, aud a vast amount of trouble is at once assured. Assuming Mr Justice Warrington to bo correctly reported in the message we have received, it appears to us that he is making, a'new law. : It is, of course, possible that trade unionism in certain forms does tend to restrain trade; but Parliament, not the: judiciary, is the only authority with the power to decide this point. Almost anything may in argument be held to operate in restraint of trade—a port charge on shipping, for example—but, as we say, there is only one power in a land that may be permitted to make law. If the judgment under notice can be established as sound, it seems rather surprising, and greatly to bp regretted, that the illegality of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants was not -discovered during, the exhaustive litigation, extending over a couple of years, in the famous Osborne case now familiar to the public. The whole point of that judgment lay in the illegality of enforcing payment of money for the support of a member of Parliament pledged to a certain line ■of political action. Even this decision was come to with a good deal of hesitancy, and there were three dissenting Law Lords. If the broad position of the society is illegal, surely the discovery would have been made when its,, rules and objects were under the scrutiny of the Lords of Appeal. We fully expect to hear more of Mr Justice Warrington’s judgment.