Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday, 30 July 1904

The Denaby Strike

Legal Sequel: Another Chapter.

Appeal to the House of Lords.

The Howden Case Reaches its Final Hearing.

Interesting Argument by Mr. Danckwertz, K.C.

The Lord Chancellor’s Humour.

Full Descriptive Report.

The beginning of the end of the now notorious Denaby Main strike may be said to have arrived on Monday, when the appeal of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association against the verdict obtained against them by Charles William Howden in a trial by Mr. Justice Grantham and a special jury, and upheld by the Court of Appeal, reached the House of Lords, the highest as well as the finest legal tribunal of the British Empire.

The points at issue in this appeal need not be set out, for the trial in the King’s Bench, and the more recent reference to the Lords of Appeal are sufficiently fresh in the minds of readers to enable them to remember that Howden’s action was brought against the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, of which he was himself a member, to obtain an injunction preventing them employing the funds of the association in the distribution of strike pay, as he alleged in his particulars of claim, illegally.

That Howden was not the originator of the action, and has throughout the proceedings acted as the nominee of the Denaby and Cadeby Collieries, Limited, has been admitted, whilst Howden himself is at the present time a pensioner upon the Colliery Company’s bounty.

At a more recent trial of the action brought by the Colliery Company against the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, claiming damages for the fomenting and encouragement of an alleged illegal strike, and an alleged conspiracy, on the part of the officials of the association to promote the strike, Howden was a witness on the Colliery Company’s behalf.

He then, in reply to Mr. Rufus Isaacs, K.C., the leading counsel for the association, who cross-examined him, said he was at present living from hand to mouth, although in receipt of £4 a week from the Colliery Company.

On Monday morning he arrived at the House of Lords looking as little “like a man leading a hand to mouth existence” as any man could look.

He wore a glossy silk hat, an immaculate frock coat, and a fancy waistcoat.

Any one who saw Howden would have mistaken for a member of Parliament, a Park Lane millionaire, or a prosperous stockbroker, Lord Lindley, one of the Law Lords sitting to form the House, who walked behind him up the painted lobby leading to the House of Lords, cut quite an insignificant figure beside this modest man, who lives from hand to mouth.

It was raining when the House rose at the conclusion of Monday’s proceedings, and the pensionous Mr. Howden went Citywards in a hansom cab and behind a pair of cabs.

Evidently there are worse ways of going through the world than the method of living from hand to mouth.

Appeals to the House of Lords are heard in the gilded and crimson upholstered chamber, containing the seats of the mighty itself. That the architect who designed the House of Lords never intended it for a Court of Justice does not interfere with the composure and the imperturbability of the highly calculated legal pensioners, who are known as the Law Lords.

The Lord Chancellor, who is the president of the House of Lords, both in its Parliamentary and its legal capacity, and without whom the House is not a House, vacates the Woolsack and descends to sit upon a red-backed chair below the table of the House and before the cross benches.

On either side of him on the front benches sit the Law Lords necessary to constitute the House, for although the House of Lords is a Court of Appeal, it does not sit as such. It sits as the House of Lords and it requires but four to form a quorum.

There was but a quorum on Monday, the Lord Chancellor, who is Earl Halsbury, K.C., Lord James of Hereford, Lord Lindley, and Lord MacNaghten.

The Lord Chancellor wore his full-bottomed wig, without which no Lord Chancellor is genuine, and his silk robe which is made long enough to trail behind him with the dignified sweep and fourmium of a Duchess’s Court train. He has a gold embroidered robe when he presides over the House of Lords in full session, but an ordinary black gown when he presides over a House of Lords.

If, however, he surrenders so much of the Chancellor’s customary dignity as to come off the Woolsack to the vicinity of the bar, he does not quite vacate the seat of his office. He leaves his three-cornered cocked hat and the mace on the Woolsack, perhaps to indicate that he is coming back presently to sit there, just as a railway traveller who has alighted for a drink leaves his bag or his newspaper, or some other property in the corner seat by the window as a hint to the intruder that the seat is occupied.

In a full session of the House the Lord Chancellor is accompanied by the purse containing the great seal of England, a magnificent piece of State property than the Lord Chancellor himself, for it is embroidered with the Royal Arms of England.

For a law session, however, the great seal, like the embroidered full State robe, is not required as essential, all it should be fitted with the Lord Chancellor, who wears knee breeches, silk stockings and buckled shoes for a full session of the House, comes in his frock coat and out-of-door boots when he has to preside over an appeal House.

The Law Lords, who sit on either side of him, with a little portable writing table in front of them, do not make up for the occasion. They wear neither wig nor robe—nothing but civilian attire and ordinary looks, yet on the whole they look as dignified as the Lord Chancellor of England.

Nature did not intend Earl Halsbury for his important office, or she would have endowed him with much greater stature and more imposing presence.

Earl Halsbury, who used to be Sir Hardinge Giffard, is a little fat man with an intellectual face. Between the Lord Mayor’s coachman and the Lord Chancellor of England there is a very strong resemblance, but the Lord Mayor’s coachman is the better-looking of the two, and he does not add, which the Lord Chancellor does.

He is the very embodiment of Gilbert and Sullivan comic Opera, is the Lord High Chancellor of England.

Litigants who seek the final Court of Appeal of the Empire have one rare privilege in return for the money which their pursuit of justice compels them to spend. They are permitted to hear peer for peer and row for row of the great between, to stand on the floor of the House of Lords during the time that their Lordships are hearing counsel on his behalf.

If he should have engaged the services of King’s Counsel to plead his wrongs or rights, the distinguished advocate must appear in the three-quarter wig of Horse of Lords in a full-bottomed wig, and he, its place facing the Lord Chancellor and the House behind a book-like arrangement, which gives him the appearance of a person preaching.

The litigant may stand at the Bar, a respectfully distance behind his counsel, but he may not stand. He cannot sit down; there are no chairs provided for him, and the suitor who came provided with a camp stool to rest himself upon, would probably find he had committed lèse majesté by the contempt of Court, or something punishable with confinement in the Clock Tower.

Counsel addressing the House of Lords in law session have a dreary task. Save for the little cluster of peers who came beneath the House in empty, an array of red and vacant benches. The throne of their Majesties the King and Queen, and the State chairs of the Prince and Princess of Wales, form the background to a stage set, but they are vacant up, and help to accentuate the deserted state of the chamber.

The gilded roof of the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland look down from the walls, and windows which throw the sun’s rays marvellously, if there be one for the dark and the floor when the House sits the religious light of the cathedral is relieved by the electric light. In contrast to this modern element, by the side of the steps to the throne stand two tall sconces filled with many candles.

The procedure before the House of Lords differs considerably from that in the Law Courts. Counsel do not sit in a row before the judges, but in the background, and come forward one at a time when it is their turn to speak, to the pulpit enclosure, which has been referred to.

When the arguments are concluded there is a consultation between their Lordships, who rise from the benches, and stand beside the table addressing the Lord Chancellor.

Counsel has been careful in addressing the House not to refer to any of his points as matters for decision, but as questions for debate, and when their Lordships pronounce judgment it is in the form of debate.

The Lord Chancellor retires to the Woolsack, and from there he moves that the appeal be allowed or dismissed, as the case may be, stating his reasons for the view he holds.

The motion has to be seconded by one of the other peers, and then it is discussed by the House, each of the Law Lords saying why he agrees with or disapproves of the motion.

Then the Lord Chancellor puts the question, declares that the “contents” have it, and the resolution is entered, not as a legal finding, but as a minute of the House of Lords.

It is a roundabout way of working, but the fiction that the House is pursuing a Parliamentary and not a legal function must be preserved.