Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 06 February 1904

Local & General Notes

The trial of the great action in the Law Courts in the Strand, which is now nearing its conclusion, after a course which has already lasted for seven days, involves an issue of vital importance to trades unionism. Upon the verdict which the jury will probably arrive at on Friday, it may be said hangs the life of Unionism among employees for purposes of attack and defence.

This is true, not so much because the point at issue between the Denaby and Cadeby Collieries, Ltd., and the Yorkshire Miners’ Association has not in part been decided in the Taff Vale case, as because the present action strikes at the principle of combination in that industry which more than any other relies upon strikes to settle its disputes. Neither the strength and wealth of the association which is attacked, nor the magnitude of the damages claimed—£125,000—involves the case with so much importance as the fact that an adverse verdict will mean that colliery strikes for the future are impossible or almost so.

Briefly, the allegation of the Denaby Company is that in June, 1902, their workmen left work without giving notice, as they were bound by their contract with their employers, as well as by the rules of their own association, to do. They were not at first granted strike pay, but in July they took a ballot and agreed to return to work to serve out their notices. Before they could return to work, however, they were required to sign a fresh contract. They refused to do this, and their lamps were refused to them. Now the association regarded the position as that of a lock-out, and paid the men strike pay. The company, contending that this was a breach of the association’s own rules, go further, and submit it as evidence of a conspiracy to injure their business. Practically they submit to the jury that the association fomented, encouraged, and supported an illegal strike, because they were anxious to damage the colliery company. For these reasons they have sued the Yorkshire Miners’ Association for £125,000 damages, and for seven days, with the prospect of an eighth, Mr. Justice Lawrance and a special jury have been trying the issue.

It seems the practice in Law Courts, whenever they have an action involving large interests, and consequently interesting a large number, to put the case down for trial in the smallest Court available. King’s Bench No. III., where Mr. Justice Lawrance has been sitting, has proved altogether too small for the numbers crowded into it, and at all events in the earlier days of the trial, it was inconveniently crowded. Gradually, however, as the plaintiffs’ witnesses were called, and after giving their testimony went off home, the breathing space increased, and more important still, there was a little more elbow room.

Sir John Compton Lawrance, the judge who is trying the case, is a sound lawyer, with more legal humour than judicial asperity about his Court manner. That he can occasionally be severe he has shown to one or two of the witnesses, who have not appeared to him to make the best use of their intelligence, and that he can enjoy a joke is shown by the way he has twitted Mr. Danckwerts with his inability to understand the Yorkshire dialect. The laugh was, of course, on the Judge’s side, because he is a Yorkshire man.