The Government lost no time in setting to work to redeem their pledge about Trade Disputes. Early in April, C. B. figures in the cartoon "Hard to please" as a farmer soliloquizing over his dog (Labour), "He's had two platefuls of biscuits and isn't satisfied. Looks as if he wanted raw meat." The plates, labelled Workmen's Compensation and Merchant Shipping Bill, are both empty. The third, the Trade Disputes Bill, is full of biscuits as yet untouched. When the Attorney-General, Sir J. Lawson Walton, introduced that measure, Punch , in his "Essence of Parliament," speaks of it as a "ticklish Bill" conceding important demands in regard to picketing and conspiracy, but "as to the immunity of Trade Union funds from amercement consequent on civil actions, the Bill does not go the full lengths of the demands of Labour." The attitude of the Labour Party, who threatened to bring in their own Bill and to insist on its substitution for the Government measure, is symbolized in the cartoon showing Labour offering his scales to Justice in preference to her own, in which Capital and Labour are equally balanced, with the comment, "I think you'll find this pair works better for me." The climbing down of the Government in the autumn session is illustrated in a further cartoon representing Labour as the predominant partner. The Liberal Party is seen on foot being pushed on by a donkey (Labour) drawing a cart in which the Trade Disputes Bill is sitting. "Yes," says the old lady, "I was wrong to threaten him with a whip. The dear creature must be led, not driven. Still this isn't quite the way I meant to come." Comment in Punch's "Essence of Parliament" on the progress of the Bill is curiously meagre, but there is one illuminating paragraph on the Report Stage: "The Attorney-General explained that when at the earlier stage he argued against the immunity of Trade Unions from action at law, he did not mean to debar himself from subsequently insisting upon the justice of such immunity." The momentous and far-reaching consequences of a measure which created a privileged class and set them above the law were only dimly apprehended in Punch , who confined himself in his further comments to the lack of spirit shown by the Opposition in the Lords. Thus in "The Better Part of Valour" we see the Trade Disputes Bill standing over the prostrate figure of the Education Bill, about to batter its way into the Lords, while Lord Lansdowne remarks: "I bar your way? My dear fellow! Why, you've got a mandate." "Well, so had my friend here," rejoins the T.D.B., on which Lord Lansdowne replies: "Ah! but not such a big one!" The same idea is developed in the Epilogue, where the Lords are charged by the representative of "The People's Will" with having attacked and brutally ill-treated the Education Bill, while they were too cowardly to tackle the Trade Disputes Bill.
The Revolt of the Middle ClassesDaily Mail Punch
In 1897 Punch had resented Government interference with the management of workhouses, and fell foul of the Local Government Board when a Board of Guardians in Lincolnshire were asked to make a return of the number of currants put into the children's puddings. Ten years later the ground of this complaint had shifted; and the administrative scandals which Punch assails in 1907 are ascribed to the extravagance of Labour Guardians. Poplar is described as "the Pauper's Paradise"; and the new Bumbledom is shown, in a perversion of the scene from "Oliver Twist," "asking for more," while the miserable ratepayer ladles out champagne-cup for its refreshment. The "latest excursion" is "A day in Profuse Poplar," the lair of the "Gorgeous Guardians."
The Workmen's Compensation Act is treated as a set-off to the Prevention of Corruption Act, aimed at the abuse of secret commissions, and a butler is shown reassuring a cook and advising her how to get her own back by a carefully contrived accident. The same spirit is revealed in the picture of the workman whose innocence has been outraged by someone who said he had seen him hurry: "I never 'urry."
To this year belongs the farcical suggestion of a Society to Protect Employers, for the special benefit of persons who were afraid of their servants and had not the courage to dismiss them.
Punch was nearer the mark in his illustrations of the popular prejudice against the Army. A football enthusiast at a match commiserates "silly people who mess about with a rifle on Saturday afternoons"; and a "Spartan mother" standing at a barrack gate, uplifts her voice in thankfulness that her Bill "isn't wasting his time drilling," while Bill is shown in an inset engrossed in the contemplation of a pot of beer.
Socialist: "Cert'nly."
H. T.: "And if yer 'ad two cows, yer'd give me one?"