In a letter to the Times of Wednesday Mr. Arthur
Cohen, K.O., who was a member of the Royal Commission on Trade Disputes, recalls the history of the Trade Disputes Act of 1906. The Royal Commission in their majority report strongly recommended that the Taff Vale decision—that a trade union which does wrong should be held liable for the wrong—should not be interfered with. At the same time it was recommended that unions should be protected against improper actions at law. Sir Lawson Walton, the Liberal Attorney-General in 1906, announced the approval of the Government of this view of the Taff Vale decision. But the Government yielded miserably to pressure from the Labour Party and from members who had pledged them-
selves in their constituencies, and trade unions, as every one knows, were placed above the law. Mr. Arthur Cohen in summing up the effect of this disastrous Act well says :—
" A contract between workmen and their employers is negotiated and sanctioned by the officials of a trade union, and yet the trade union, which exercises almost an unlimited power of influencing the workmen, can with complete immunity order or procure them to break the contract, although made under its directions and with its sanction. Again, a trade union may, through its authorized officials, order or procure any person to commit a tort causing any amount of injury, and the injured person is precluded from re- covering any compensation whatever from the funds of the trade union. These provisions thus give to trade unions and their agents privileges and immunities of a most abnormal character such as have never boon accorded to any other association, and it is utterly impossible to discover any principles of justice, equity, or public policy by which those provisions can be justified."
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