Welsh Journals

THE TRADE UNION POLITICAL LEVY, THE OSBORNE JUDGMENT (1909), AND THE SOUTH WALES MINERS' FEDERATION* THE Osborne judgment, issued by the House of Lords in December 1909, prohibited trade union contributions to the Labour Party and, by direct implication, other forms of trade, union political activity as well. Early agitation against the trade union political levy (the method by which unions financed their political activity), including Walter Osborne's campaign in the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS), primarily reflected disagreement within the unions during the first years of the twentieth century over the appropriate political course to be pursued by the fledgling Labour Party (founded in 1900 and known until 1906 as the Labour Representation Committee [LRC]). Serious objections to the political levy were first articulated following the decision of the LRC's 1903 annual conference to alter the party's constitution in order to ensure pursuit of a path independent of political Liberalism. The new LRC constitution mandated that party members 'abstain strictly from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any section of the Liberal or Conservative parties', and required all prospective parliamentary candidates to agree to abide by the constitution and decisions of the parliamentary Labour group, or else to resign Liberal trade unionists in a number of unions, including the ASRS, the United Operative Plumbers' Association (UOPA), and the London Society of Compositors, seized on the conference's decisions as a basis for challenging the legality of a compulsory political levy, the proceeds of which were transferred to an allegedly socialist party. The Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) did not, however, affiliate to the Labour Party until 1908-9; until that date, the constituent *I would like to thank the Marshall Commemoration Commission of Great Britain, whose generous financial support made possible the dissertation from which this article is drawn, as well as Drs. Ross McKibbin and Mark Freedland who supervised the production of that dissertation. I am also grateful to Herbert Klarman and Hal Krent for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. 1 Liabour) P[arty) Clonference] Rieport], 1903, pp. 27-35. 2 See, for example, Amalgamated] Slociety] of R[ailway] Stervants], Walthamstow branch resolution, 18 February 1904 [University of Warwick,] M[odem] R[ecords] Clentre], MSS.127/AS/OC/7/LE/2/1; United Operative Plumbers' Association, Executive] C[ommittee] meeting, 29 December 1903 and 5 January 1904 (MRC, MSS.134/UO/1/12); Reynolds' Newspaper, 12 March 1905, p. 7 (resolution of Reynolds' Newspaper chapel of London Society of Compositors).