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 to deal with questions on the application of either party. Another interesting type of board is that representing two or more groups of workmen and sometimes their employers, with the object of settling “demarcation” disputes between the groups of workmen (i.e. questions as to the limits of the work which each group may claim to perform). Examples of such boards are those representing shipwrights and joiners on the Clyde, Tyne and elsewhere. While the arrangements for voluntary conciliation and arbitration differ in this way in various industries, there is an equally wide variation in the character and range of questions which the boards are empowered to determine. For example, some boards in the coal trade (e.g. the conciliation boards in Northumberland and the so-called “Federated Districts”) deal solely with the general rate of wages. Others, e.g. the “joint committee” in Northumberland and Durham, confine their attention solely to local questions not affecting the counties as a whole. The Durham conciliation board deals with any general or county questions. This distinction between “general” and “local” questions corresponds nearly, though not entirely, to the distinction often drawn between questions of the terms of future employment and of the interpretation of existing agreements. Some conciliation boards are unlimited as regards the scope of the questions which they may consider. This was formerly the case with the boards in the boot and shoe trade, but under the “terms of settlement” of the dispute in 1895 drawn up at the Board of Trade, certain classes of questions (e.g. the employment of particular individuals, the adoption of piece-work or time-work, &c.) were wholly or partially withdrawn from their consideration, and any decision of a board contravening the “terms of settlement” is null and void. A special feature in the procedure for conciliation and arbitration in the boot and shoe trade, is the deposit by each party of £1000 with trustees, as a financial guarantee for the performance of agreements and awards. A certain class of conciliation boards, mostly in the Midland metal trades, were attached to “alliances” of employers and employed, having for their object the regulation of production and of prices (e.g. the Bedstead Trade Wages Board). None of these alliances, however, have survived.

At all events up to the year 1896, the development of arbitration and conciliation as methods of settling labour disputes in the United Kingdom was entirely independent of any legislation. Previously to the Conciliation Act of 1896 several attempts had been made by parliament to promote arbitration and conciliation, but with little or no practical result, and the act of 1896 repealed all previous legislation on the subject, at the same time excluding the operation of the Arbitration Act of 1889 from the settlement of “any difference or dispute to which this act applies.” The laws repealed by the Conciliation Act need only a few words of mention. During the 18th century the fixing of wages by magistrates under the Elizabethan legislation gradually decayed, and acts of 1745 and 1757 gave summary jurisdiction to justices of the peace to determine disputes between masters and servants in certain circumstances, although no rate of wages had been fixed that year by the justices of the peace of the shire. These and other laws, relating specially to disputes in the cotton-weaving trade, were consolidated and amended by the Arbitration Act of 1824. This act seems chiefly to have been aimed at disputes relating to piece-work in the textile trades, though applicable to other disputes arising out of a wages contract. It expressly excluded, however, the fixing of a rate of wages or price of labour or workmanship at which the workmen should in future be paid unless with the mutual consent of both master and workmen. The act gave compulsory powers of settling the disputes to which it relates on application of either party to a court of arbitrators representing employers and workmen nominated by a magistrate. The award could be enforced by distress or imprisonment. The act was subsequently amended in detail, and by the “Councils of Conciliation” Act of 1867 power was given to the home secretary to license “equitable councils of conciliation and arbitration” equally representative of masters and workmen, who should thereupon have the powers conferred by the act of 1824. The act contains provisions for the appointment of conciliation committees, and other details which are of little interest seeing that the act was never put into operation. Another amendment of the act of 1824 was made by the Arbitration (Masters and Workmen) Act of 1872, which contemplated the conclusion of agreements between employers and employed, designating some board of arbitration by which disputes included within the scope of the former acts should be determined. A master or workman should be deemed to be bound by an agreement under the act, if he accepted a printed copy of the agreement and did not repudiate it within forty-eight hours. Like the previous legislation, however, the act of 1872 was inoperative. The evidence given before the Royal Commission on Labour (1891–1894) disclosed the existence of a considerable body of opinion in favour of some further action by the state for the prevention or settlement of labour disputes, and some impetus was given to the movement by the settlement through official mediation of several important disputes, e.g. the great coal-miners’ dispute of 1893 by a conference presided over by Lord Rosebery, the cab-drivers’ dispute of 1894 by the mediation of the home secretary (H. H. Asquith), and the boot and shoe trade dispute of 1895 by a Board of Trade conference under the chairmanship of Sir Courtenay Boyle. In these, and a few other less important cases, the intervention of the Board of Trade or other department took place without any special statutory sanction. The Conciliation Act passed in 1896 was framed with a view to giving express authorization to such action in the future.

This act is of a purely voluntary character. Its most important provisions are those of section 2, empowering the Board of Trade in cases “where a difference exists or is apprehended between any employer, or any class of employers, and workmen, or between different classes of workmen,” to take certain steps to promote a settlement of the difference. They may of their own initiative hold an inquiry or endeavour to arrange a meeting between the parties under a chairman mutually agreed on or appointed from the outside, and on the application of either party they may appoint a conciliator or a board of conciliation who shall communicate with the parties and endeavour to bring about a settlement and report their proceedings to the Board of Trade. On the application of both parties the Board of Trade may appoint an arbitrator. In all cases the Board of Trade has discretion as to the action to be taken, and there is no provision either for compelling the parties to accept their mediation or to abide by any agreement effected through their intervention. There are other provisions in the act providing for the registration of voluntary conciliation boards, and for the promotion by the Board of Trade of the formation of such boards in districts and trades in which they are deficient. During the first eleven years after the passage of the act the number of cases arising under section 2 (providing for action by the Board of Trade for the settlement of actual or apprehended disputes) averaged twenty-one per annum, and the number of settlements effected fifteen. In the remaining cases the Board of Trade either refused to entertain the application or failed to effect a settlement, or the disputes were settled between the parties during the negotiations. About three-quarters of the settlements were effected by arbitration and one-quarter by conciliation. A number of voluntary conciliation boards formed or reorganized since the passing of the act provide in their rules for an appeal to the Board of Trade to appoint an umpire in case of a deadlock. At least thirty-six trade boards are known to have already adopted this course. The figures given above show that the Conciliation Act of 1896 has not, like previous legislation, been a dead letter, though the number of actual disputes settled is small compared with the total number annually recorded.

Arbitration and conciliation in labour disputes as practised in the United Kingdom are entirely voluntary, both as regards the initiation and conduct of the negotiations and the carrying out of the agreement resulting therefrom. In all these respects arbitration, though terminating in what is called a binding award, is on precisely the same legal footing as conciliation, which results in a mutual