ABSTRACT
Trade Unions have fought a long and hard struggle for the recognition of the rights of collective bargaining. Up to 1824 combination as such was a crime, punishable either under the Combination Act of 1800 or earlier statutes applying to particular trades, or under common law—for the judges regarded combinations as ‘criminal conspiracies’ for the unlawful ‘restraint of trade’. Collective bargaining, except on a local basis between small Trade Clubs of skilled workers and the small masters who employed them, made no great progress till after 1850. In the ‘fifties it began to spread in the cotton industry; and in the ‘sixties there was a beginning of it in the Midland textile trades—lace and hosiery—and in the building trades. From the ‘seventies collective bargaining became more definitely established in the textile, mining and metal industries. In general, the tendency was definitely towards greater centralisation of bargaining machinery.
