A NEW PROVINCE FOR LAW AND ORDER 209 spread suspension of activities. The mode of punishment which the Prime Minister chose was the cancellation of the registration of the union in the registry of the Court. So he got the Governor- General to sign a regulation as under the War Precautions Act to enable him to cancel the registration of any union on strike if regis- tered in the books of the Court. On the very day that the regulation was published, the Prime Minister caused an application to be made to the President for a rule nisi for the union to show cause before the Court why the registration should not be cancelled. This seemed to the President to mean "You must cancel; for if you do not cancel I shall myself cancel." Such an attitude recalls the efforts of the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns to interfere with the judges in the execution of their duty, and especially the amusing controversy between James I and Lord Coke in the evocation case; but the President granted the rule so that the matter might be discussed. It turned out in the argument that the Prime Minister thought by cancellation to destroy the award ; but this was a mis- take, for an award is not destroyed by cancellation of the registra- tion of the union. The Court discharged the rule. The grounds were that the powers to cancel were not to be used as an instrument of fruitless vengeance; that the cancellation would not free the employers from the obligations of the award; that it would be un- just to members at ports at which there was no strike; that it would free the property of the union from penalties for future strikes; that it would prevent the union from suing members for breach of its rules, that it would deprive the registrar of his power to get returns of members, officers, etc. ; that it would make it difficult to know whom to summon to conferences. Moreover, the strike was against the advice of the executive union, and the union was now induced by the President to alter its rules so as to give to the execu- tive more control over its members and branches, and so as to forbid strikes without the consent of the executive. Deregistra- tion would not conduce to industrial peace, but would turn a public responsible body into an underground, irresponsible combination.^^ It is curious indeed to observe how, under the southern sky, the position has been reversed, and the registration of unions which nearly led to a labour revolution in France in Waldeck-Rousseau's
- ^ Waterside workers, 11 Com. Arb. (1917).
