ABSTRACT
Ramsay MacDonald, writing of the L.R.C.’s inaugural meeting in his book, The Socialist Movement, declared that “129 delegates met, some to bury the attempt in good-humoured tolerance, a few to make sure that burial would be its fate, but the majority determined to give it a chance”. The L.R.C.’s chance came when, in the year after its inauguration, the House of Lords issued the famous Taff Vale judgment. For this Judgment put the entire Trade Union movement in jeopardy. It had been generally supposed, ever since 1871, that the Trade Union Act of that year had given full protection to Trade Union funds against actions for damages arising out of industrial disputes. In the Taff Vale case, the A.S.R.S. had to pay £23,000 in damages, and the legal expenses came to an even larger sum. At the second L.R.C. Conference, held at the beginning of 1901, the question of forming a central Parliamentary Fund was already under consideration.
