A Working Class Conundrum

It is often the case that those drafting laws, rules and legislation have insufficient knowledge and experience to understand the consequence of their words.

Section 2 of the Allotments Act of 1887 practically prohibited local authority from letting allotments to anyone other than those deemed to be the “labouring population”. So the law officers of the Crown and the English Bar had to consider who may be included in the term “labouring population”?

The Attorney General held that the “labouring population” means the population that in substance makes a living in manual labour including all such as smiths, ploughmen, carpenters, artificers, workers in factories, and others whose work is in the main manual, though knowledge and skill  also be required; but that it does not include those whose work is in the main the matter of knowledge and skill, though manual labour also be required, such as nurses or cooks, postmasters, clerks or tradesmen. The Attorney General considered that a precise line of demarcation was impossible to lay down and that each case must depend upon its acts. However, the Attorney General considered that it should also include those persons that whilst they did not labour themselves they relied upon the income of a labourer, such as a widow.

It has to be understood that the Attorney General’s view was on how the law should be imposed, but English law is a law of letters and the Act was still guilty of creating unfairness depending upon whether his views were heeded