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legislation with all its obscurities and possibilities for misinterpretation. The Hong Kong TUC took the opportunity during a meeting with me to protest about the law and the way it was administered; and in a memorandum presented by the TUU and supported by the Textile Workers Asian Regional Organisation and the International Metalworkers Federation, it is stated that 'we need a law which puts the right to strike beyond doubt and which permits peaceful picketing without so many qualifications that in practice police intervention can always be justified'. Additionally a complaint about police intervention in picketing during a strike was lodged during 1970 by Mr Harold Gibson, General Secretary of the Hosiery and Knitwear Workers, who was witness to an incident involving the arrest of picketers. The amendments to the law as it relates to essential services which have been proposed (paragraphs 6-8) should clear up obscurities about the first part of the trade unions' complaint; and, since the law on picketing follows the United Kingdom wording, it comes down to a question of how the law is administered. (It will, of course, be remembered that the addition of an offence cf 'obstruction' to the draft Bill which later became the Hong Kong Trade Union Registration (Amendment) Ordinance was dropped in view of widespread criticism.)
34. The problem of picketing was discussed with the Commissioner of Police and the interpretation of the law contained in the guide for police officers was examined. It is clear that the police are briefed to exercise the greatest caution about intervening in industrial disputes and see their first duty as ensuring that the facts of a particular dispute involving 'sit-ins', picketing etc are made known to the responsible officers at the Tepartment of Labour. Thereafter the police see their primary role as one of keeping the peace and preventing unreasonable obstruction, using persuasion as much as possible and avoiding actions likely to raise the temperature. A special difficulty arises regarding obstruction. The purpose of picketing as defined in the law is for 'peacefully obtaining or communicating information or of peacefully persuading any person to work or to abstain from working'. If workers who are not taking part in a strike are driven in and out in a closed vehicle, this primary objective is, of course, defeated (the law was drafted when workers went in and out on foot). The police officer on the spot then has the difficult task of deciding whether it is safe, or acceptable to the driver and occupants of a vehicle, to stop it and allow the pickets to talk to the occupants. The difficulties of interpretation are well defined in "Trade Union Law" by N A Citrine, Second Edition 1960, pp. 452-464. I would draw attention in particular to the following paragraph:-
"So far as liability for obstruction of the highway is concerned, it is submitted that such amount of obstruction, if any, as is necessary to the exercise of the right to picket under the section is rendered lawful by it.
As Vaughan Williams L.J. said in Lingke v.
Christchurch Corporation:
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