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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 81

Chapter VIII. — The Lords and Labour

page 46

Chapter VIII.

The Lords and Labour.

Speaking of the House of Lords at Edinburgh in 1894, the late Lord Salisbury made a memorable confession. He said—

We belong too much to one class, and the consequence is that with respect to a large number of questions wo are all too much of one mind. Now that is a fact which appears to me to bo injurious to the character of the House as a political assembly.

"Too much of one class," indeed! The House of Lords is the central citadel of class interest. Under no conceivable circumstances can any representative of the industrial classes cross the sacred portals of the Gilded Chamber.

The House of Lords first showed its antagonism to the interests of labour very early in the session of 1906 by throwing out a small Bill passed almost unanimously through the House of Commons prohibiting the importation of alien labourers from abroad in the course of an industrial dispute. The Lords did not venture to throw it out on its merits. They invented the hollow pretext that they ought not to pass such a Bill demanded by the unan mous vote of the representatives of the people because it was not forsooth a Government measure! Any stick is good enough to beat a dog.

In thus thwarting the popular will and in rejecting a measure specially promoted by the Labour party, they acted in entire accordance with their indent hereditary and traditional practice. It might naturally be supposed; that the peers who have boasted that they were "the hereditary tribunes of the poor," would, if only from their antipathy to landlords and manufacturers, have sedulously supported the cause of labour against the exactions of capital. Such, however, has not been the case. In 1842 they began their operations by mutilating the Mines Regulations Bill in the interests of the colliery owners. Lord Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley) declared they had "invalidated the principle of the Bill, and rendered it [unclear: inoperative]." "I have never seen," he added, "such a display of selfishness and frigidity to any human sentiment." The safeguards provided against the excessive toil of young children in mines were weakened, and t was thirty years before the mining population was able fully to secure that protection for life and limb to which the Commons admitted they were [unclear: entitled] as far back as 1842. Eighteen years after this first interference of the Peers with the efficient regulation of mines, the House of Lords weakened the provisions inserted by the Commons in the Mines Regulation Bill of 1860, intended to secure the children of the mine the educational [unclear: acilities] enjoyed by the children of the factory. Twelve years more had [unclear: o] elapse before the Peers could be induced to pass an adequate measure or the education of the pit-boys.

The same grudging spirit was shown in 1880, when the Employers' [unclear: Liability] Bill was under discussion. The Lords limited its operation to page 47 two years instead of seven, and struck out, on the motion of Lord Brabourne, the clause which made employers responsible for the acts of those to whom they delegate their authority. The Commons restored the, clause, but the rejected "Lords' amendments" remain on record as [unclear: an] illustration of the views of the Upper Chamber. The Lords also struck seamen out of the Bill and limited the amount of compensation to he paid.

In 1893 the Liberal Government brought in their Employers' Liability Bill.

This is what the Government Bill did:—
1.It made the crooked ways of the Act of 1880 straight;
2.It abolished the doctrine of common employment;
3.It extended the operation of the Act of 1880 to everyone acting under a contract of service;
4.It brought in sailors and firemen who had been shut out before together with the workmen in Government works, and many other classes of workers;
5.It made the contractor responsible for accidents in place of the sub-contractor, who had been used in the past to "contract" the [unclear: contractor] out of bis liability;
6.It swept away the regulation that notice of action must be [unclear: brough] within six weeks of an accident;
7.It made the employer responsible for injury done to health as well as to the life and limb of his employés.
8.It abolished the limitation of three years' wages as the maximum that might be claimed under the Act, leaving it to the jury to give exactly what damages they pleased.

When that measure was passing through the Commons in November 1893. Mr. McLaren moved au amendment allowing those firms and [unclear: thei] workmen who had already made mutual arrangements for insurance, [unclear: t], "contract out" of the Bill, 011 a two-thirds ballot of the workmen being cast for this course. The amendment was defeated by 236 votes to 217.

Next month the Lords inserted an amendment, by 148 votes to 28 giving with specified safeguards the liberty of contracting out, not only [unclear: t] firms who had already made insurance arrangements with their workmen but also to any firms who might make such arrangements hereafter.

This was struck out in December by the Commons by 213 to 157. [unclear: I] January it was reinserted by the Lords. In February the Commons [unclear: struc] it out once, more by 219 votes to 197, but carried only by a majority of a concession postponing the enforcement of the measure in the case existing insurance arrangements for three years. The Lords rewarded [unclear: th] concession by insisting on their old amendment. The Commons refuse to pass the Bill with this clause, and it was accordingly discharged.

The Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee and the [unclear: Lond]. Trades Council issued a manifesto declaring that the Lords [unclear: amendment] rendered the Bill "entirely worthless from the workers' point of view. The manifesto proceeded—

We now appeal to you to say whether you will thus continue to allow the House Lords to block the path of your industrial progress, as well as to render insecure [unclear: yo] selves and limbs when toiling from day to day to enrich them and the nation. If [unclear: it] thus possible for the House of Lords to continue to thwart the voice of the constituency and reject every measure except those which are in accord with its interest a sympathies, the time has come when the House of Commons should be dismissed as: effete and useless institution for representing the national will.—(The Liberal platfo.. Historic Facts and Current Problems, pp. 348-9.)

page 48

There are some people who seem to think they have no reason to "thank God for the House of Lords."

When the ten years during which the Unionists were in power came to an end, the Liberals introduced a new and more drastic Employers' Liability Bill, officially described as the Workmen's Compensation Bill. This time the word was passed by Mr. Balfour that the Lords must not meddle with Labour Bills. The Peers, therefore, contented themselves with making two amendments in the first schedule. The first provided that workmen suffering from old age, physical infirmity, or incapacity might contract themselves out of the Act so far as to accept a reduced compensation. This was the reinstatement of the original proposal of the Government which the House had struck out at the instance of the Labour party. Here, possibly, the Lords might have done good if they had stood to their guns. But when the Commons rejected their amendment they submitted. The only oilier amendment was that providing that either party might insist upon calling in a medical referee. As the Bill stood, he could only be called in when both parties consented. This amendment was also disagreed with, and again the Lords submitted.

In 1887 the Lords, although a Unionist Government was in power, struck out some of the clauses in the Government Bill which was framed to secure the safety of the miners. In the same year the Lords mutilated the Truck Acts Amendment Bill, excluding agricultural labourers from its protection. Even the Unionist majority in the Commons disagreed with the Lords' amendments, but in order to save the Bill they had to submit, and the Peers had their way. The Commons reluctantly assented, on account of the lateness of the session, to accept the "amendment."

In 1893 the Railway Servants (Hours of Labour) Bill was mutilated by the Peers, who excluded shop and factory hands from the protection accorded by the measure.

One of the most useful functions of the House of Lords from a Conservative point of view is that of providing incoming Conservative Ministers with an ample array of measures ready to hand. The rejected Bills, or the expunged clauses of the Bills of Liberal Administrations, amply furnish [unclear: orth] the programme of their Conservative successors. The legalisation of picketing is only one case out of many.

In the legislation of the Parliament of 1874, upon which the Conservative Government specially prided itself on account of its benevolence to the working nan, many of its "reforms" were little else than the repeal of "Lords' [unclear: mendments]" in previous Parliaments. Notably was this the case in the [unclear: reat] grievance of the Trade Unions in connection with the Criminal Law [unclear: Amendment] Act. The clause in that measure which the workmen most [unclear: eenly] resented—that making picketing a penal offence—was introduced by [unclear: he] Lords. Viscount (then Mr.) Cross and Lord Cranbrook (then Mr. [unclear: athorne] Hardy) argued strongly in favour of the alteration; but it was [unclear: nctioned] not so much out of deference to their arguments as because of [unclear: he] hopelessness of securing the consent of the Lords to the Bill without [unclear: e] objectionable provision. The Act passed, and it immediately excited [unclear: e] keenest hostility among the working classes. The conviction of the [unclear: s] stokers increased their antipathy to the Act, but all attempts to amend failed owing to the crowded state of the order book. When the new [unclear: arliament] met, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the [unclear: hole] question; and in 1875 Sir Richard Cross, with the assent of the [unclear: ords], repealed the Criminal Law Amendment Act, loudly congratulating [unclear: e] workmen upon the fact that at last there was a Government in power page 49 which would not hesitate to remove the grievances of which they complained. The fact that the Conservative Government had done little more than undo the mischief which the House of Lords, with the hearty assent of the Conservatives in the Commons, had done in the previous Parliaments was studiously kept out of sight, nor was it so much as once alluded to by Conservative candidates, who paraded the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act as one of the beneficent measures which the working classes owed to the Conservative Government.

The decision of the House of Lords sitting as the Supreme Court off Appeal in the Taft Vale case in 1901 startled everyone by the discovery that the Trades Union Act of 1871-5 did not protect the funds of the unions from liability in case of strikes. The working classes insisted upon fresh legislation to restore them to the position which everyone for thirty years had believed that they occupied. To meet this grievance the Liberal Government, in 1906, brought in the Trades Disputes Bill. The leaders of the Peers, Lord Lansdowne and Lord Halsbury, hated the Bill, denounced it in the strongest terms, and then announced that they would not reject it, because to fight the nation upon such a question might prove, disastrous to themselves.

Lord Lansdowne's words were: "Let their Lordships, if they were to join issue, do so upon grounds which are as favourable as possible to themselves. In this case the ground would be unfavourable to the House."—(December 4, 1906.) Therefore, he said, although the Bills "conferred privileges upon the Trades Unions fraught with danger to the community, and likely to embitter industrial life," he would not vote against it. The Bill would inaugurate "a reign of licence," but the Lords must not throw it out. A pretty Second Chamber this!

Lord Halsbury said the Bill was contrary to the spirit of English liberty. It contained the most disgraceful section that had ever appeared in an English statute. As for Clause 4, "anything more outrageously unjust, anything more tyrannical, he could hardly conceive." It was "a Bill for the purpose of legalising tyranny." It was likely to produce commercial distress. It might be that it would drive justice from her seat. And then with a majority of the Peers longing to be allowed to reject this terrible measure, Lord Halsbury, like Lord Lansdowne, would not vote against it. And why? Frankly because they feared for their order. Was ever the essential rottenness of a hereditary bulwark more nakedly confessed?

The same moral is emphasised with equal force by the action of the House of Lords when they came to deal with Old-Age Pensions in 1908. The Unionist party, through Mr. Chamberlain, had promised Old-Age Pensions in 1894. But although Mr. Chamberlain's Government could find £250,000,000 for the war against the Boors, they could not spare a penny for the worn-out veterans of industry at home. Not only did they do nothing themselves, but when the Liberal Government, which had never promised Old-Age Pensions, brought in the Bill giving five shillings a week to every old poor man or woman over seventy years of age, the Unionists denounced it. On the second reading twenty voted against it, and ninety-one refused to vote at all. Only forty-two voted for it. On the third reading eleven voted against it, one hundred and forty did not vote at all, and only twelve voted for it. When it reached the House of Lords, the Peers were only kept from throwing it out by Lord Lansdowne's insistence upon the privilege of the Commons. Ho denounced the Bill on many grounds. He said that it would completely undermino the present page 50 Poor Law system. He regarded it with great apprehension, and must throw the entire responsibility for passing it upon the Government.

The Lords said that the Bill would have "disastrous" effects, that it would "weaken the moral fibre of the nation and diminish the self-respect of our people," would "demoralise" the working classes, "do away with thrift," while they regarded the money to be spent on pensions as "these lost millions."

The Bill had, however, been supported by colossal majorities in the Commons, and it was a Bill essentially of financial complexion. "In these circumstances it seems to me," said Lord Lansdowne, "that however much we may dislike the Bill, we should gain nothing by rejecting or delaying its progress . . . and the difficulty would be increased for us by the fact that we should be represented, not without some prima facie justice, as having endeavoured to encroach upon that well-established privilege of the House of Commons which gives to that House almost utidisputed control over the finances of the country."—Hansard (192), p. 1,422.

It was the Commons' privilege which saved Pensions. But although Lord Lansdowne shrank from straightforward slaughter of the Bill, he supported Lord Cromer's attempt to take it on the flank. The House of Lords carried by 77 to 45 Lord Cromer's proposal killing the Bill in seven years' time. Fortunately this was ruled out as a breach of privilege by the Speaker. Privilege therefore saved Pensions twice over. It saved them in 1908 and it saved them in 1915.

Small wonder is it then that the Labour party in its Manifesto speaks with no uncertain sound on the question at issue. "A General Election has been forced upon the country," it says, "by the action of the House of Lords rejecting the Budget. The great question you are to decide is whether the Peers or the People are to rule this country." The House of Lords, it declares, has mutilated or destroyed many useful measures, and now claims the right to decide what taxes shall be paid and how they shall be spent. The present system of land ownership "has devastated our countryside, imposed heavy burdens upon our industries, cramped the development of our towns, and crippled capital and impoverished labour." "Therefore," says the Manifesto, "the Lords must go! "