1. After the Combination Acts. -- 2. 'Under sufferance' : unions outside the law, 1825-1866. -- 3. Union funds, Free Labour and the franchise. -- 4. Reconciling unions and the law. -- 5. Trade unions legalized. -- 6. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1871. -- 7. The Gas Stokers' case and the freedom to strike. -- 8. Reforming labour law, 1873-1874. -- 9. 'The workmen's victory'? -- Conclusion: combinationa and the liberal state
Summary
After the repeal of the Combination Acts in the 1820s, collective labour enjoyed limited freedoms. When that regime collapsed under judicial challenge in the 1860s, governments were obliged to devise a new legal framework for trade unions and strikes. This study traces how, in adjudicating between opposing conceptions of 'free trade' and 'free labour', official opinion came to favour an unrestricted freedom to combine, and sought to withdraw the criminal law from industrial relations. It also reveals the impact upon policy-makers of the contemporary assault upon classical political economy, and of the historicized critiques of labour law propounded by Liberal writers. Drawing upon previously unused governmenal sources, this account provides many wider insights into the nature and inner-workings of the mid-Victorian state
Notes
Formerly CIP. Uk
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [247]-271) and index
