Clause 3. — (Prevention of intimidation, etc.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Bill. – in the House of Commons at on 24 May 1927.

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Photo of Mr John Bromley Mr John Bromley , Barrow-in-Furness

I will promise not to keep the Committee many minutes in what I have to say, but I want to repeat to the Attorney-General the question which I put when I was privileged to take part in the general survey of this Bill. It has to do with an incident which occurred in connection with myself some years ago. Before coming directly to that question, I should like to suggest this. If as some of the speakers from the opposite side of the Committee have indicated, this Clause only aims at preventing mass attacks on the homes, etc., of the wives and children of workers who are blacklegging their fellows, they would get a great deal more sympathy in the country. I suggest that such happenings are very few and far between, and I cannot help resenting, as a, servant of trade unionism, the suggestions that all striking trade unionists must necessarily and naturally be a lot of howling Dervishes or hooligans. I say, without desiring to be offensive and without any appearance of being offensive, that I have this very week sitting in this City a conference of my own union, with delegates from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, dealing with very great problems. I, sitting in front of them and looking at them, would say that they have quite as good an appearance of intelligence as right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen opposite, and that they are as full of human understanding and natural kindness as any body of men can be. Ordinarily, trade unionists would not desire any such brutality as has been suggested, or anything of that sort.

Undoubtedly this Bill as a whole is designed, not to prevent national or general strikes or mass attacks on blacklegs during a strike; it is designed absolutely to smash into ineffectiveness trade unions of every description. This very Sub-section ends with the words: apprehension of injury' includes an apprehension of boycott, or loss of any kind, or of exposure to hatred, ridicule, or contempt. A previous part of the Bill deals with the assembly or the visiting at or near a house of one or two persons. The case which I put was that of my own when an organiser of my union, not at the end of the strike as the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson) indicated, when men were suffering from the pangs of hunger and were very likely under very great mental stress, but on the very first day of the strike. An engine-driver had been prevailed upon by his locomotive superintendent to work a certain mail train that night. I was asked to go and see him, and I went to his house quite peaceably. I put the, question to him, and his sympathy with his fellows overcame his promise to his superintendent, and he stood with his fellows. I want to put this to the Attorney-General. If this Bill becomes law, as I suppose it inevitably will owing to the numbers—not to the arguments—on the Government Benches, would it be possible, not only for a permanent officer or an organiser peacefully to visit a man's 10.0 p.m. house, but for a local officer among his friends to visit him at the request of his fellows, and in a courteous and friendly manner to ask him if he would stand with his fellows or not? Would it not be possible under that wide distinction in regard to picketing and intimidation for that individual to say that he was held up to what, in his mind, made him have an apprehension of injury in the manner described in this Sub-section? Would not that render his fellow-workmen liable to the penalties laid down—a £20 fine, or three months' imprisonment? That is what I understand this Sub-section inflicts. If that be so, I put it to the right hon. Gentleman and to all Members on the opposite side of the Committee, that that is not substituting freedom for tyranny but tyranny for freedom, and is making a, peaceful approach to a man who is working, even on the first day of a strike, absolutely suppressible by law.