The Politics of the Osborne Judgment

Abstract

The Osborne judgment is always mentioned in political histories of the early twentieth century as one of the two principal judgments affecting the trade unions and the growth of the Labour party-the other being the Taff Vale decision of 1901. In both cases officers of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants were acting upon what they believed to be constitutional lines; in both cases, after lawsuits which went to the highest court in the land, the House of Lords, they were found to be behaving illegally; and in both cases parliament was eventually persuaded, if not precisely to reverse the Lords’ decision, at least to modify the law drastically in the unions’ favour. The repercussions upon the Lords themselves were not insignificant: the ordinary voter found it difficult to distinguish between the judicial and the legislative functions of the Upper House; and so both cases strengthened the willingness of trade unionists to support the Liberal government in its constitutional struggle against the Lords. Such was the outcome of Disraeli's decision in 1875 to retain the final appeal to the Lords, despite Gladstone's attempt, in the Judicature Act of 1873, to abolish it altogether.