Louis:
I wrote to you a few weeks ago asking if you knew the source of a quip about “English judges wagging their tails for the ruling class.” (my paraphrase)
Well, I found the passage in Capital 1. I located the full quote on-line. Unfortunately, there is no page number.
As you well know, 19^th century Britain was littered with a series of Factory Acts. The Marx excerpt that I am sending you is from 1871. Gladstone was prime minister and Liberal Party leader and he knew well that he and his party’s 1868 election victory was due to an increase in male working-class voters who were enfranchised by the 1867 Voting Reform Act one year earlier.
Gladstone and the Liberals would back away from supporting labor law reform in 1871. Instead, they coalesced with the Tories to enact an anti-union Criminal Law Act that made illegal everything from picketting to violence. Gladstone and his party were voted out of office in 1874. Meanwhile, Disraeli and the Conservative Party were returned to power.
So here is the way that Marx described the 1871 Liberal betraya1 of the working class (from Capital 1):
Not content with this betrayal, the 'great Liberal party' allowed the /English judges/, ever ready to /wag/ their /tails/ for the ruling classes, to exhume the earlier laws against 'conspiracy' and apply them to combinations of workers... It is evident that only against its will, and under the pressure of the masses, did the English parliament give up the laws against strikes and trade unions, when after it had itself, with shameless egoism, held the position of a permanent trade union of capitalists against the workers throughout five centuries. Take Care, Michael -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8111): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/8111 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/82239106/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
