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After the repeal of the Combination Acts in the mid-1820s, the extent of the freedom to combine, and the wisdom of exercising that freedom, continued to be disputed in Britain. Robert Peel, the home secretary responsible for bringing in the measure of 1825, had intended that the scope for legal combination should be kept within very narrow limits. Peel's whig successor, Lord Melbourne, appeared to take a slightly more relaxed view of what the new statute meant. Artisan radicals, on the other hand, claimed the liberty to combine on virtually unrestricted terms, provided only that it was peacefully exercised. This chapter examines the criminal liabilities of strikers after the ban on combinations was lifted. The Wolverhampton trials, which involved the National Association of Union Trades and opened the way to a new phase of judicial creativity towards trade unions and strikes, are analyzed.

Trade unions in Britain were denied legal recognition because their aims and practices were regarded as detrimental to the community at large and ultimately also to union members themselves. One view held that unions should be allowed a more or less unconditional form of legalisation. The contrary view insisted that the law was right to subject unions to disabilities if their objectives conflicted with prevailing notions of public policy, especially those drawn from the maxims of political economy. Legalization should therefore be on restrictive terms, purging union rulebooks of those provisions which the courts had held to be illegal, and enforcing changes to the way unions conducted their affairs. This chapter examines issues related to settling of labour disputes through arbitration and conciliation, debates concerning the separation of trade from the unions' funds for welfare benefits, and the Erle commission's report on the freedom to combine.

For nearly half a century after the repeal of the Combination Acts, the liberty to combine in Britain continued to be restricted, at least in theory. Governments and the courts admitted the impolicy of an outright ban on combination. However, they were unwilling to recognize trade unions or to remove the penalties for strikes, or threats of strikes, in all instances. Empirical evidence indicated that the position which favoured legal restriction conceptualized labour market relations in ways that bore little relation to the actual practice of collective bargaining and its outcomes. The legislation of the 1870s brought about the unrestricted legalisation of unions and the decriminalization of labour law, which for practical purposes protected the freedom to strike. The attack against the persistence of ‘class’ legislation was directed against labour and sought to establish the freedom to combine, in its broadest extent, as one of the foundations of the liberal state in Britain.