ABSTRACT
The General Election of 1906 saw twenty-nine Labour members elected out of fifty candidates approved by the Labour Representation Committee. The Trade Union Act of 1913 therefore was a compromise born broadly of the views expressed by Lord James of Hereford in his musings on the Mr W. V. Osborne case. The principal Act referred to in Section 16 was the Act of 1871, but the whole argument put forward by Osborne was that the clause did provide an exhaustive definition of what a trade union could have in its objects. Osborne contended that spending money on parliamentary representation was not included in the objects on which money could be spent in Section 16 of the Trade Union Act of 1876. This case now dealt not only with Osborne’s original point, but also struck at the constitution of the Labour Party itself as decided by the 1900 Conference.
