ABSTRACT
While the political movements were developing, the Trade Unions were also drawing together industrially, and conducting a combined agitation for the improvement of the laws affecting the workers. The third phase extended from the passing of the Trade Union Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1871 to the further drastic amendment of the "Labour Laws" in the workers' interest in 1875. The law was thus grossly unfair, and was based on the conception of compulsory servile labour. The National Association of United Trades for the Protection of Labour, founded in 1845, was indeed still nominally in existence; but it had shrunk to a few thousand members, and no important Union was connected with it. At length, in 1867, the Association got the abortive Conciliation Act passed into law. An employer could give evidence against a worker in his own cause; but a worker could not give evidence against his employer.
