The Picket Line

1889 · Picket Line · Work 397 of 1,871

Strikers standing at a works gate with printed placards and a subscription tin, a brazier between them, a delegate writing names in a notebook on his knee.

What it was used for: Picketing in the London dock strike. The TUC dates the start to 13 August 1889 and a walkout by a few labourers at the West India Dock; the union Unite gives 12 August. The demand was a minimum wage of sixpence an hour, the "dockers' tanner" — according to Unite a rise of one penny, with eightpence for overtime. Unite records that pickets on the gates were relieved every twelve hours. Strikers were supported with food tickets worth a shilling: 4,000 a day at first, 25,000 as more men joined, 50,000 on Saturdays, nearly 100,000 on 3 September. Two thousand police were drafted into the East End. The pay rise took effect from 4 November 1889.
What was new: What was new was not the picket but its legal figure. The Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875 (royal assent 13 August 1875) made it an offence to "watch or beset" a workplace — up to twenty pounds or three months — but expressly exempted attending "merely to obtain or communicate information". The picketing of every gate in 1889 rested on that proviso; according to Unite it was legal as long as persuasion stayed peaceful. The proviso was then narrowed. In Lyons v Wilkins an interlocutory and later a permanent injunction were granted ([1896] 1 Ch 811 and [1899] 1 Ch 255), and in 1906 Lord Coleridge summed up the position in the Lords: peaceful picketing was lawful merely to obtain or communicate information, but an attempt to persuade was not. The reading on which the strike had stood was rejected after the fact in 1896; in 1906 Coleridge spoke for the clause that was to permit persuasion.

The Picket Line

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