ABSTRACT
The extent of trade union benefit systems was sufficiently large for them to be a matter of political concern. Critics claimed that benefit funds leaked away to support strikes. The successful resolution of the builders' lock-out became something of a watershed for trade unionism generally, not least because it flew in the face of those 'fixed laws' so dear to large sections of contemporary middle-class opinion. The 1860 National Association for the Promotion of Social Science survey, Trades' Societies, concluded that most masters 'agreed that Trade Unions have destroyed the proper relation –one of affectionate dependence –of the operative towards his master'. The general assumption has been that the Act's application was largely confined to 'the small-master sectors of the economy'. The legal situation of British and Irish trade unions after 1859 contrasted sharply with Germany and France where laws explicitly against trade combination were only relaxed from the 1860s.
