Preston 1854. Trade Unionists arrested for conspiring to stop scabs. Where Truss wants to go with union law.
The Preston lock-out of 1853/4 was one of the great labour disputes of the nineteenth century.
My thanks to Robbie Judkins who has written a new piece on workers organisation in Preston in the 1840s and before for reminding me that Marx had written on the lock-out
https://libcom.org/article/workers-organisation-1843-radical-unionism-and-preston-cotton-martyrs
Writing in the New York Daily Tribune on 31st March 1854 Marx noted that, while there seemed little real legal basis for it, several workers leaders had been arrested for conspiracy. They had successfully persuaded scabs hired by the employers not to work but to return home.
Until the 1871 Trade Union Act the provisions of which appear to be in the sights of Liz Truss collective union action to stop scabs was regarded as conspiracy. Hiring scab labour while a balloted industrial dispute is underway was recently legalised by Kwasi Karteng, although whether he had the power to do so remains disputed.
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