The Denaby Evictions

Libel Action Against a Manchester Newspaper

Yesterday, in the King’s Bench Division, before the Lord Chief Justice and a special jury, the case Pope and others v. Taylor and others came on for hearing. Plaintiffs, directors of the Denaby Colliery Company, Limited, claimed damages for libel against the proprietors and publishers of the Manchester Evening News. Mr. Montagu Lush, K.C., and Mr. Cautley appeared for plaintiffs; and Mr. Rufus Isaacs, K.C., and Mr. Vaughan Williams represented the defendants.

Plaintiffs’ company carried on business at Denaby and Cadeby, and employed between 4,000 and 5,000 workmen, and are the owners of about 1,400 houses, in which the workmen had been on strike for about 32 weeks, and had ceased to be in the employ of the company, which was endeavouring to obtain other workmen for their colliery.

Defendants, on the 24th of January, 1903, had, in a notice headed “Labour and Progress,” printed and published the following:—

“They, the plaintiffs, possess dwellings in which their workmen have lived, and in the midst of the inclement weather of the last few weeks they have turned 800 families, or about 200 persons, into the streets. But what could the workman possess beyond the power of passive resistance? A Labour member for Rotherham worth his salt would have made the country ring again with the recital of the inhumanity of the Denaby evictions. The bare record of them makes one’s blood boil. When the Denaby dispute had continued for six weeks the owners of the collieries determined to push things to the extreme by evicting those miners who still refused to work upon their own terms. To the Denaby colliers is attached one of those villages which are frequently to be met with in many districts. The miners are the tenants of the colliery proprietor. Such a relationship reproduces the conditions of serfdom. They are now paying its penalties. The colliery company want servants who will obey them more implicitly than those they have evicted. Further on they did what evictions meant. We who sleep comfortably in our beds at night can have little conception of the meaning of the word eviction—what is involved in being turned out into the pitiless rain, with a wife and children and furniture, and in being dumped down into the middle of the street, with no house to enter but that of an improvised marque. What comfort can be gleaned from the circumstance that 794 families in similar plight? The evicted were unaccompanied by a single bright circumstance. The final blame for all this inhumanity and social danger rests with the directorate and shareholders of the Denaby Main Colliery Company. They possess a giant’s power, and have used it like a brute.”

Defendants admitted the publication of the article, and had paid money into Court, and had published an apology.

Mr. Lush, K.C., opened the case for the plaintiffs, and narrated at length that history of the Denaby strike, which occurred at the end of June last year. The company, he explained, owned many of the houses in which the miners lived, and they took care that these houses were everything that working-class houses could be. By August there were only a few workmen left in the collieries, and even those had to leave because of the action of the strikers. In December the men who occupied the houses, and were on strike, refused to leave them, and refused in addition to pay rent. The result was a loss to colliery proprietors of £3,000 in rents alone. By this time the company had persuaded some men to come to work, but they could not get accommodation for them. The magistrates were applied to for eviction orders, and these were granted. In January steps were taken to carry out these orders, and the evictions were carried out in as way the least harsh to the men. Most of the evicted had houses to go to, but a few went into tents, and a few into hospital.

Mr. Rufus Isaacs, K.C., for defendants, said their reply was that they had no knowledge whatever of the appearance of the article until attention was called to it by plaintiffs. Since then they had made a handsome apology for what no doubt was a very serious libel on the company, and had also paid money into Court, and offered to publish a similar apology in any newspaper plaintiffs selected. Defendants now paid into Court £100 in respect to the claims of the directors, and £100 in respect of the claim of the Company.

Replying to His Lordship, counsel said the Court would not be troubled further with the case, as his learned friend had argued, except terms and apology, which was made without reserve, and with an admission that there was no ground for charges against the directorate.

As a result a jury was withdrawn, and the case ended.—Plaintiffs accepted the apology and withdrawal, and payment by the defendants of costs, in addition to the amount paid into Court.