History of Labour Law in The United Kingdom - Late Nineteenth Century

Late Nineteenth Century

Throughout the nineteenth century, the worker's existence remained largely miserable, nasty, brutish and short. As Industrial Britannia was extending its Empire, its corporations and its businesses were responsible for half the world's production across a third of the globe's land, a quarter of its population, and ruling its waves. Joint Stock Companies, building railways, canals and factories, manufacturing household goods, connecting telegraphs, distributing coal, formed the backbone of this dominant laissez faire model of commerce. Around the start of the 20th century, in Mogul Steamship Co Ltd v McGregor, Gow & Co, the House of Lords emphasised that businesses should be free to organise into trade associations in the same way that employees organised into unions. The consciousness of working people that they should have a role in the economy mirrored the development toward political participation.

  • Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845)
  • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine, Ancient Law (1864) and the move from status to contract
  • Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867)
  • Workmen's Compensation Act 1897
  • Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb, History of Trade Unionism (1894) and Industrial Democracy (1897)

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