ABSTRACT
In 1909 the House of Lords decided, in the famous Osborne Judgment, that a Trade Union, or at all events a Union registered as such under the Trade Union Acts, had no power to take political action, or to spend any of its funds on political objects. The grounds for this decision, which reversed a practice of long standing in many Unions and threatened the entire basis on which the Labour Party was being built up, were by no means clear. Trade Unions, which had been financing candidates for Parliament ever since the Reform Act of 1867 and for local governing authorities for almost as long, suddenly found this part of their activities pronounced illegal by the courts, and were at the mercy of any member who chose to bring an action designed to prevent them from expending money on political purposes. In 1913 the Trade Union Act restored to the Unions a modified right to take political action.
