Contextes - La Grande Guerre et son droit - 350

342

eMerGeNCY LeGAL PoWerS IN BrItAIN

to remind all litigants that the national interest in winning the war must
prevail. And if this meant sacrificing the otherwise unequivocal legal rights
of landlords and employers, then so be it.
But the Courts Act did not prohibit rent increases. And in
November 1915 landlords in the important munitions centre of Glasgow
where housing shortages were acute decided to seek to evict 18 tenants
engaged in a rent strike protesting at the large rent increases of up to 21%
in the district. However, in an act of popular defiance large numbers of
protestors marched to the court along with the 18 people summonsed.
the atmosphere was tense and the protestors condemned the landlords as
unpatriotic, thus reflecting a national call for the "Conscription of riches".
So, to cut a long story short, the judge, Sheriff Lee, agreed to meet a delegation of protestors before the hearing could commence. they told him
that, "the country cannot do without these 8,000 [munitions] workers
but the country can do without the [landlords]"45. Indeed, the marchers
pointed out that their complaint was not a housing problem but a "national
interest" problem. It is clear that the judge, while ritually declaring that
he was obliged to apply the law no matter his personal feelings, perceived
a real threat to industrial peace and to the war effort if the evictions were
to proceed. He therefore decided on the extra-judicial step of expressing
condemnation and disgust at the landlords' behaviour and indeed shamed
them into dropping the cases before formal hearings commenced.
Industrial conflict was thus averted, the government in London was
quickly informed of these developments, and within a month national
legislation was passed by parliament prohibiting rent increases and thereby
reducing further scope for social and industrial conflict. So while one must
be cautious about drawing broader conclusions or seeing broader patterns
from an individual case, what occurred here was, first, that the judge had
assumed the role of mediator, seeking a pragmatic solution that would
advance the perceived national interest. And in doing so he abandoned
his role as a judicial official in this instance, a role that normally involved
the strict application of the law and which included the option, obviously
declined, of postponing the hearing. So a technical legal question was,
unusually, transformed by the judge himself into a political decision in the
"national interest", and which forced the factors (the landlords' agents)
to drop their case. It was indeed the immediate prelude to a further political decision thereafter in the shape of the rent and Mortgage Interest
(War Increases) Bill introduced by Lloyd George into parliament on
November 26, 1915.
45. Ann and Vincent Flynn, "We Shall Not Be removed", in Flynn, L. (ed.). (1978).
We Shall be All: Recent Chapters in the History of Working Class Struggle in Scotland.
Bookmarks, p. 28.

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