The ‘Daily Herald’ instituted the Order of Industrial Heroism in 1923 to recognise the “deeds of valour” of those workers who had saved their fellow workers from danger or death and became known as the “Workers’ V.C.” The TUC Library holds records of all the awards and is filled with cases of acts of selflessness and sometimes sacrifice as workers attempted to rescue their comrades in peril.

It is also a record of employer and government failures to deal with the dangers that these workers have faced.

Many of the stories are about the coal industry, and there is a shocking detail in Case 22 “Miners ran tremendous risk every day. This was shown by the fact that one miner was killed every five hours.” The awards are filled with stories of collapsed mine-shafts, rooves caving in, falls down shafts when ladders broke, explosions from blastings, and cables bearing weights snapping. And the results – trapped, entombed, buried suffering terrible injuries, the pain, and the fear, with only basic facilities for relief and rescue.

Here to mark International Workers Memorial Day we look at just a few of the cases:

Case number 33 William Owen, Golborne, Lancashire, February 1926

A fall of roof, some 50 tons, which occurred in Seven Feet Mine of Golborne Colliery, buried a colliery dataller named Albert Bowles, aged 50. In jumping out of the way of the light Owen lost his light, but pluckily went to the rescue of his workmate. He groped his way over the fall in the darkness, and found Bowles under a stone that weighed about 10cwt (80 stone or 508kg). Bowles who was conscious pleaded “Get me out as soon as you can!” and Owen succeeded in moving the stone. Bowles, however died from his injuries.

Case 34. 35, 36, 37 Fred Fairbrother, Robert Davies, Ernest Bowkett and James Grimshaw, Radcliffe, Lancashire, March 1926

The four men, Messrs F Fairbrother, Robert Davies, Ernest Bowkett and James Grimshaw, went to the rescue of comrades buried by a fall of roof, and were themselves buried by a further fall. All four sustained injuries, Davies having a broken leg and Fairbrother a badly injured back. It is feared both these men will be permanently disabled. Davies is in hospital.

Case 42 William Lindon, miner Tyldesley, Lancashire, August 1927

…when a heavy fall occurred, Wright was pinned beneath a large stone. Both the men’s lamps were extinguished and although other falls were taking place and the darkness was complete, Linton, without a moment’s hesitation, worked desperately in trying to release his comrade. When he found this to be impossible he groped his way to other men who were at work and gave the alarm. When Wright was extricated he was dead.

Guest blogger Dr Paul Griffin from Northumbria University has written this post about Politicising unemployment – connecting workers and non-workers through the trade union movement (1978-)

Ours is a different army. The young unemployed now descending on London may not have starved. They have never tasted Army life. They have grown up against the background of the post-war consensus of economic policies which have had at their heart a commitment to full employment and the welfare state. Skinheads from Bolton, punks from Manchester, the mother and her unemployed son from Whaley Bridge, blacks from London and their older marching companions; what brings them together is the cry for work and dignity.

(People’s March Co-ordinators, Letter to the Editor, The Times, May 5^th 1981, p.13)

1980s Britain – responding to a crisis

On May 1^st 1981, over 250 unemployed people departed from Liverpool for London on the People’s March for Jobs. En route they were joined by parallel regional marchers from elsewhere across the UK and on their arrival into London a month later, became part of a crowd estimated to be over 100,000 people in Hyde Park for a rally. The over 200-mile march, and solidarity events across the country, reflected a community and trade union response to the challenges posed by unemployment. In Liverpool alone, redundancies and industrial closures caused 17.9% of the workforce to be unemployed in July 1981. Nationally the statistics were similarly increasing with 11.9% unemployed.

The march was a response from the trade union movement, with leadership from the Transport and General Workers’ Union, and wider political left organisers, to intervene in a crisis posed by industrial closures. Echoing some of the comments in the exert above, unemployed marcher Keith Mullin reflected on his experience of arriving in London in 1981:

Hundreds and hundreds of people who are just offering you support, putting money in the pockets because we all had collection buckets. We all had the green jackets, we all had the green tops, we were all kitted out with boots. All this stuff by the march which was all paid for by the trade union movement, the TUC, and donations of other people so, that particular day that was historical in my mind.

[Oral History with Keith Mullin, 2021]

Such campaigns sat alongside the opening of Unemployed Workers’ Centres (UWCs) in towns and cities across the UK. These centres were established by trades councils and viewed as a community response to the challenges of rising unemployment. Over the last few years, I have been working with UWC staff, volunteers and activists to uncover a history of struggle associated with unemployment. Their commitment, in some cases of over 40 years, reflects a little known history of organising and resistance in a time largely defined Thatcherism and neoliberalism. My work has looked to illuminate these actions to consider a further history of unemployed struggle, which might complement more familiar social struggles, such as the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement of the 1920s and 30s.

Unemployed Workers’ Centres

The first UWC officially launched in Newcastle in 1978, following a series of meetings and actions in 1977. The Newcastle Trades Council Centre for the Unemployed opened with the ambition to be a space where unemployed people could meet, access resources and support, as well as providing an organising resource for associated campaigns, connecting workers and non-workers. Reflecting on their second year, the centre’s annual report described their role as platforming a ‘voice for the unemployed’, blending together their campaigning efforts with the ‘mass of day to day issues and queries which crop up among working people, created by the variety of economic and social pressures arising under the present system’ and handling cases on behalf of ‘redundant workers or long term claimants; school leavers or young unemployed’. [i]

Unemployment was regularly discussed and debated at the annual conference of The Trades Union Congress (TUC) and this resulted in a consultative conference in November, 1980 to outline next steps in building a response to the crisis. The most significant outcome of this meeting was a clear instruction to trades councils for an expansion of UWCs based upon the experiences in Newcastle and to respond to the political challenges of the time. The TUC produced guidelines and resources, through regional trades councils, to help establish centres. The TUC President Lionel Murray pledged a commitment to the centres in a letter instructing all affiliated unions and trades councils:

–          [A]ffiliated unions should do all that they can to retain and recruit more of the unemployed, and to publicise union services available to unemployed members;

–          there should be an action programme for the development of unemployed workers’ centres throughout the country.[ii]

TUC support for the initiative was prominent within conferences yet wider calls for greater involvement, participation and membership of the unemployed within Congress remained a source of considerable tension. That said, the centres grew in number considerably and began to provide vital services across the country as well as providing organising spaces for the trade union movement. The potential here for collaboration between those in-work and those out-of-work was clear in the principles outlined by centres.

Activities varied between centres, with some prioritising welfare advice and others emphasising campaigning in their work, but successes were notable. Centres were notable for the large amounts of money returned to claimants through appeal processes. The very presence of centres within urban settings was also significant in itself. Centres offered a place of support, comfort and sociability for unemployed people to gather and share experiences. They could draw upon the expertise of welfare rights advisers and also lead as organisers of campaigns. In this regard, the centres should be considered as sites of care and campaigning. Such services were found at centres across the country, perhaps no more impressive than those found at the large (0.93 acres) Merseyside UWC at 24 Hardman Street in Liverpool. This centre had numerous resources, including a music venue (The Flying Picket) and recording studio, library, office space, and creche.

Image of mural in Newcastle Centre Against Unemployment (with permission from Derbyshire Unemployed Workers’ Centre)

Alongside smaller acts of listening and advice, the centres often held a strong political commitment to related campaigns. These active organising efforts can be broadly described across two perspectives, first campaign and organising work centred upon those issues faced most closely by the unemployed, and second those actions characteristic of a solidarity between workers and non-workers. Multiple actions were prominent throughout the 1980s across unemployed and employed struggles and there is not sufficient space to detail these in full here. Instead, two snapshots are introduced, in addition to earlier references to the People’s March for Jobs, to give an indication of the organising histories. During the 1984/85 miners’ strike, for example, UWC workers, volunteers and users were involved in substantial fund-raising efforts and picket line acts of solidarity. At the same time, centres were also prominent in organising against changes associated with social security, including a sustained campaign against ‘welfare snoopers’ and the surveillance of welfare claimants.

By 1982, the UWC Bulletin reported 150 centres had opened, increasing to 210 centres by 1985, before a significant number of closures in the latter period of the decade, primarily due to reductions in local authority funding and changes to the welfare system (including the closure of the Manpower Services Commission). Their history, though, is reflective of trade union efforts to connect employed and unemployed. This, of course, was not without its tensions and limits. The challenge of what Chesterfield centre co-ordinator Colin Hampton described as ‘organising the unorganisable’ was evident in many conversations through the research. Yet, the potential to extend the reach of trade union principles, beyond the workplace, was clear throughout interviews:

You can’t find out what the problems that people are facing who are out of work unless you offer advice. So you have to offer advice, but when they come in, we’re not just going to sit there in a bovine fashion and just say well, we can help with that, we can’t help with that, you can claim that, you can’t claim with that. If we saw that there was an injustice, then our job was to get people together to do something about that injustice.

(Oral History with Colin Hampton, 2021)

This sentiment is captured in the continued work of centres like those still active in Derbyshire and Tyne and Wear. At their best, Unemployed Workers’ Centres illustrate the transferability of trade union principles and practices. As spaces of care and support, listening and advice, as well as organising and expressing solidarity, Unemployed Workers’ Centres provide a lesser-known history of a sustained alternative vision during a period defined by economic crisis and widening inequality.

This project is funded by a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SRG1920\101292)

For more about the project, access to these publications or if you have a suggestion for the research:

Contact: Dr Paul Griffin – paul.griffin@northumbria.ac.uk

Follow publications from the project at: https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/en/persons/paul-griffin  

For article versions of this research, see:

Griffin, P. (2021) Expanding labour geographies: resourcefulness and organising amongst ‘unemployed workers’. Geoforum, 118, 159-168.

Griffin, P. (forthcoming) Unemployed Workers’ Centres (1978-): spatial politics, ‘non-movement’ and the making of centres.  

Guest blogger author and historian Cathy Hunt has written this post about our recent acquisition of a minute book of the Newcastle upon Tyne Branch of the National Federation of Women Workers (thanks to the Hazlehurst family for the kind donation).

Winding down for the weekend and scrolling through Twitter last Friday afternoon, my attention was suddenly grabbed by a tweet from the TUC Library. It announced a brand-new acquisition to its Collections and was accompanied by two images which stopped me in my tracks. These were the opening pages of a hand-written minute book belonging to the pre-First World War Newcastle on Tyne branch of the National Federation of Women Workers. My heart skipped a beat, flipped over entirely and neither it nor my mind settled down until I had seen the document for myself a few days later.

I learned that the book was found by a daughter who was clearing her mother’s house after her death. I understand all too well what that this entails, having just finished sorting and emptying my own mum’s house. It seems likely that the book belonged to her grandmother. My thoughts and emotions are, then, not just ones of excitement but also of empathy and gratitude that this has now been passed to the TUC Library. Such finds are the very stuff of the history of working people’s lives and they are priceless.

I know there are hundreds of historians who long for such discoveries. It is rare occasions such as these that make searching for them so worthwhile, especially as there are inevitably so many garden paths to go up as well. I have been researching and writing about the extraordinary trade union that was the National Federation of Women Workers (Federation) for well over a decade. In 2014 Palgrave Macmillan published my history of the Federation, founded in 1906 by the charismatic Mary Macarthur (1880-1921). The research for the book was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and provided me with the funds to work with national collections and to travel (there were a lot of train journeys, a lot of meal deals in hotel rooms and a lot of soreness in my arms, back and neck from lugging laptop and books all over the place) to local archives and local studies’ libraries.

This small all-female trade union, which nonetheless punched well above its weight, existed for just 15 years, between 1906 and 1921, before merging with the larger and mixed gender National Union of General Workers. Thanks in large part to the endeavours of Gertrude Tuckwell of the Women’s Trade Union League, under whose guidance and protection the Federation operated, an extensive and valuable collection of annual reports, newspaper cuttings, pamphlets and notices relating to the union (and more broadly on women and work) is available for consultation at the TUC Library in London. What was harder to find – and of course what I then wanted so much to find – was detailed information about just how the union operated at the grassroots level. This I tried to knit together, albeit with many frustrating gaps, by looking at newspapers and at the records of other organisations, such as local Trades Councils, which supported the Federation in its attempts to protect women industrial workers and improve their often appalling pay and conditions.

How I longed to find more than a brief branch report submitted to and published by the Federation’s newspaper, Woman Worker, or included within its Annual Reports. At the end of my book, I included a substantial appendix giving brief outlines of all the branches I had managed to identify. My frustration at its almost certain incompleteness is there for all to see in the note I added at the start indicating that ‘this is not a comprehensive list but is included here to encourage and facilitate further research’ (my fervent hope). Here I included, where they emerged, the names of branch secretaries, treasurers and presidents and of the industries in which women in the different regions of Britain were employed. The book chapters also pay attention to the establishment of branches, the disputes that drew in members, the triumphs when disputes ended in improved conditions and the despair when at times organisation had little lasting success. There is detail but it is not always enough to tell stories in their entirety. When piecing together – often very small – snippets of information from a myriad sources, I was acutely aware of how much more there was out there, undiscovered and also of how difficult it can be to capture the grassroots history of a national union that existed over a hundred years ago.

And then, a decade after I started to write the book (and 8 years after its publication) came this amazing discovery of the first branch minute book of the Federation that I have ever seen. It is only a few pages long, from the inaugural meeting of the Newcastle upon Tyne branch on August 14th 1912, when 18 people were present, until July 1913 when just seven turned up. From the election of the branch officials (fabulous lists of names with which a local and/or family history researcher can do so much), including the secretary, E Howson, the formation of a social or dance committee, through to concerns over falling membership and pleas for members to stick together and to turn up to meetings, these few pages are of the utmost importance. They reveal the campaigning efforts of local activists, including Mrs Harrison Bell of the Women’s Labour League, in helping to form and sustain the branch which held its meetings in the Northern Independent Labour Party Club Room, at 18 Clayton Street. Laid out before me is evidence of so many challenges faced by local branches. Here is concern about paying the rent for the meeting room when attendance was so low (in early 1913 there were two consecutive months when numbers were too low for the meeting to go ahead). There is cheerful optimism at a two-shilling profit after the enjoyable and successful Christmas dance and appeals for an organiser to be sent from the Federation’s London HQ. There were always too few organisers and demand for their help was high because their presence was so helpful with campaigning and giving encouragement to new and fragile branches.

In the earliest meetings there is encouragement given to join and stay united within the union and discussion about the importance of combination. Resolutions passed included the need for women to be present on the newly established National Insurance Courts of Referees and for ‘intelligent working women’ to be involved in the planning and arrangement of workmen’s dwellings in Newcastle. There are summaries read out of the minutes of the Federation’s National Council.

There are just a few specific references to conditions at local firms; a mention, for example of improvements which would ‘add to the comfort of the girls’ at Messrs Armstrong & Whitworth. There is frustration at the branch members at Messrs Gleaves who ‘seemed to have forsaken the Union altogether’ (this is possibly the business of Henry Gleave, whose drapery sold underclothing, baby linen and fancy drapery made in his factory).

Having been to many such meetings at the end of my own working day, tired and wanting to put my feet up, I can’t help wondering if there was enough here (despite the enormous efforts of the branch officials) to keep members engaged and ready to come back each month. There were -and are – so many calls on women workers’ time and in addition, there was the hugely important issue of feeling secure and safe enough to attend a union meeting. In Newcastle, as in many other towns and cities where women worked across a broad range of industries, it was often too risky to openly form a works branch and instead – as in this case – one branch would seek to pull in workers from across the city to meet in a club room or hall. Men – employed in larger numbers – might hold their union meetings in the pub or union club, thus combining leisure time with union business. It was all so much trickier for women. There were a hundred and one domestic things to be done at home in the evening. On top of that, there was the ever-present risk of intimidation or victimization – would the boss find out about the meeting? Would he sack you? And then there was the cost of membership, out of an already low wage.

Being a branch official was hard and often dispiriting work. I am not in the least surprised to read that on a stormy night in January 1913, only the Secretary and one other woman attended and that the meeting did not go ahead. It was not a question of members’ commitment to the union but simply one of getting by – and of keeping warm (hopefully) and dry at home. Social events were often the glue that held a branch together, although even here it does not seem that the December dance in 1912 (despite being hailed as a decided success with its two-shilling profit) was able to do this.

The book ends with a meeting in July 1913. It is not clear if there were more meetings, although clearly membership was falling and the Federation’s Annual Report for 1914 reveals organisers’ frustration, asking why the women of Tyneside don’t ‘wake up to the fact that they will never get decent wages till they organise’. There were so many reasons why organisation was so difficult for women workers. I am (by complete and happy chance) currently writing an article for the North-East Labour History Society about the work of the Federation in the North-East of England, in which I explain just how hard it was for small branches to keep going, in the early years of the union. It was not until the First World War that membership soared, particularly in munitions centres like Newcastle. By early 1917, the Federation claimed it had nearly 9000 members in that city alone.  This short minute book adds detail, intimacy and vibrancy to research like mine into women’s work and trade union membership. I am delighted to know that it has survived and that it is there to refer to in the forthcoming article and much more besides. It is a tremendous addition to the Library’s collections.

I hope my excitement at the emergence of this new acquisition to the TUC Library is evident. If you want to know more about the National Federation of Women Workers, here is a link to an exhibition I worked on with the TUC Library to commemorate the 100th year of the death of Mary Macarthur:

The Life of Mary Macarthur – TUC Library exhibition | TUC

The Newcastle upon Tyne Branch of the National Federation of Women Workers

Cathy Hunt

Winding down for the weekend and scrolling through Twitter last Friday afternoon, my attention was suddenly grabbed by a tweet from the TUC Library. It announced a brand-new acquisition to its Collections and was accompanied by two images which stopped me in my tracks. These were the opening pages of a hand-written minute book belonging to the pre-First World War Newcastle on Tyne branch of the National Federation of Women Workers. My heart skipped a beat, flipped over entirely and neither it nor my mind settled down until I had seen the document for myself a few days later.

I learned that the book was found by a daughter who was clearing her mother’s house after her death. I understand all too well what that this entails, having just finished sorting and emptying my own mum’s house. It seems likely that the book belonged to her grandmother. My thoughts and emotions are, then, not just ones of excitement but also of empathy and gratitude that this has now been passed to the TUC Library. Such finds are the very stuff of the history of working people’s lives and they are priceless.

I know there are hundreds of historians who long for such discoveries. It is rare occasions such as these that make searching for them so worthwhile, especially as there are inevitably so many garden paths to go up as well. I have been researching and writing about the extraordinary trade union that was the National Federation of Women Workers (Federation) for well over a decade. In 2014 Palgrave Macmillan published my history of the Federation, founded in 1906 by the charismatic Mary Macarthur (1880-1921). The research for the book was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and provided me with the funds to work with national collections and to travel (there were a lot of train journeys, a lot of meal deals in hotel rooms and a lot of soreness in my arms, back and neck from lugging laptop and books all over the place) to local archives and local studies’ libraries.

This small all-female trade union, which nonetheless punched well above its weight, existed for just 15 years, between 1906 and 1921, before merging with the larger and mixed gender National Union of General Workers. Thanks in large part to the endeavours of Gertrude Tuckwell of the Women’s Trade Union League, under whose guidance and protection the Federation operated, an extensive and valuable collection of annual reports, newspaper cuttings, pamphlets and notices relating to the union (and more broadly on women and work) is available for consultation at the TUC Library in London. What was harder to find – and of course what I then wanted so much to find – was detailed information about just how the union operated at the grassroots level. This I tried to knit together, albeit with many frustrating gaps, by looking at newspapers and at the records of other organisations, such as local Trades Councils, which supported the Federation in its attempts to protect women industrial workers and improve their often appalling pay and conditions.

How I longed to find more than a brief branch report submitted to and published by the Federation’s newspaper, Woman Worker, or included within its Annual Reports. At the end of my book, I included a substantial appendix giving brief outlines of all the branches I had managed to identify. My frustration at its almost certain incompleteness is there for all to see in the note I added at the start indicating that ‘this is not a comprehensive list but is included here to encourage and facilitate further research’ (my fervent hope). Here I included, where they emerged, the names of branch secretaries, treasurers and presidents and of the industries in which women in the different regions of Britain were employed. The book chapters also pay attention to the establishment of branches, the disputes that drew in members, the triumphs when disputes ended in improved conditions and the despair when at times organisation had little lasting success. There is detail but it is not always enough to tell stories in their entirety. When piecing together – often very small – snippets of information from a myriad sources, I was acutely aware of how much more there was out there, undiscovered and also of how difficult it can be to capture the grassroots history of a national union that existed over a hundred years ago.

And then, a decade after I started to write the book (and 8 years after its publication) came this amazing discovery of the first branch minute book of the Federation that I have ever seen. It is only a few pages long, from the inaugural meeting of the Newcastle upon Tyne branch on August 14^th 1912, when 18 people were present, until July 1913 when just seven turned up. From the election of the branch officials (fabulous lists of names with which a local and/or family history researcher can do so much), including the secretary, E Howson, the formation of a social or dance committee, through to concerns over falling membership and pleas for members to stick together and to turn up to meetings, these few pages are of the utmost importance. They reveal the campaigning efforts of local activists, including Mrs Harrison Bell of the Women’s Labour League, in helping to form and sustain the branch which held its meetings in the Northern Independent Labour Party Club Room, at 18 Clayton Street. Laid out before me is evidence of so many challenges faced by local branches. Here is concern about paying the rent for the meeting room when attendance was so low (in early 1913 there were two consecutive months when numbers were too low for the meeting to go ahead). There is cheerful optimism at a two-shilling profit after the enjoyable and successful Christmas dance and appeals for an organiser to be sent from the Federation’s London HQ. There were always too few organisers and demand for their help was high because their presence was so helpful with campaigning and giving encouragement to new and fragile branches.

In the earliest meetings there is encouragement given to join and stay united within the union and discussion about the importance of combination. Resolutions passed included the need for women to be present on the newly established National Insurance Courts of Referees and for ‘intelligent working women’ to be involved in the planning and arrangement of workmen’s dwellings in Newcastle. There are summaries read out of the minutes of the Federation’s National Council.

There are just a few specific references to conditions at local firms; a mention, for example of improvements which would ‘add to the comfort of the girls’ at Messrs Armstrong & Whitworth. There is frustration at the branch members at Messrs Gleaves who ‘seemed to have forsaken the Union altogether’ (this is possibly the business of Henry Gleave, whose drapery sold underclothing, baby linen and fancy drapery made in his factory).  

Having been to many such meetings at the end of my own working day, tired and wanting to put my feet up, I can’t help wondering if there was enough here (despite the enormous efforts of the branch officials) to keep members engaged and ready to come back each month. There were -and are – so many calls on women workers’ time and in addition, there was the hugely important issue of feeling secure and safe enough to attend a union meeting. In Newcastle, as in many other towns and cities where women worked across a broad range of industries, it was often too risky to openly form a works branch and instead – as in this case – one branch would seek to pull in workers from across the city to meet in a club room or hall. Men – employed in larger numbers – might hold their union meetings in the pub or union club, thus combining leisure time with union business. It was all so much trickier for women. There were a hundred and one domestic things to be done at home in the evening. On top of that, there was the ever-present risk of intimidation or victimization – would the boss find out about the meeting? Would he sack you? And then there was the cost of membership, out of an already low wage.

Being a branch official was hard and often dispiriting work. I am not in the least surprised to read that on a stormy night in January 1913, only the Secretary and one other woman attended and that the meeting did not go ahead. It was not a question of members’ commitment to the union but simply one of getting by – and of keeping warm (hopefully) and dry at home. Social events were often the glue that held a branch together, although even here it does not seem that the December dance in 1912 (despite being hailed as a decided success with its two-shilling profit) was able to do this.

The book ends with a meeting in July 1913. It is not clear if there were more meetings, although clearly membership was falling and the Federation’s Annual Report for 1914 reveals organisers’ frustration, asking why the women of Tyneside don’t ‘wake up to the fact that they will never get decent wages till they organise’. There were so many reasons why organisation was so difficult for women workers. I am (by complete and happy chance) currently writing an article for the North-East Labour History Society about the work of the Federation in the North-East of England, in which I explain just how hard it was for small branches to keep going, in the early years of the union. It was not until the First World War that membership soared, particularly in munitions centres like Newcastle. By early 1917, the Federation claimed it had nearly 9000 members in that city alone.  This short minute book adds detail, intimacy and vibrancy to research like mine into women’s work and trade union membership. I am delighted to know that it has survived and that it is there to refer to in the forthcoming article and much more besides. It is a tremendous addition to the Library’s collections.

I hope my excitement at the emergence of this new acquisition to the TUC Library is evident. If you want to know more about the National Federation of Women Workers, here is a link to an exhibition I worked on with the TUC Library to commemorate the 100^th year of the death of Mary Macarthur:

The Life of Mary Macarthur – TUC Library exhibition | TUC

In this post guest blogger, Susan Zimmermann, historian and University Professor at Central European University, Vienna, Austria, describes completing the research for her  book  Frauenpolitik und Männergewerkschaft. Internationale Geschlechterpolitik, IGB-Gewerkschafterinnen und die Arbeiter- und Frauenbewegungen der Zwischenkriegszeit [Women’s politics and men’s trade unionism. International gender politics, female IFTU-trade unionists and the labor and women’s movements of the interwar period] recently published with Löcker Verlag, Vienna, in 2021.

In August 2019 I traveled to Warwick and London for a second time. I wanted to do concluding, complementary research on the Women’s International of the International Federation of Trade Unions, the IFTU, also known as the “Amsterdam International.” For decades, little has been written on the history of the women’s branch of the IFTU and the politics of women’s work the organization pursued. This has historical as well as historiographic reasons. Historically, in the male-dominated labor movement, female trade unionists had to grapple with the marginalization of the “women’s question;” in the world of the non-socialist women’s movements, they were faced with the marginalization of the “class question.” The documents and publications related to the British Trades Unions Council kept in the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick and in the TUC Library Collections at London Metropolitan University are an invaluable resource for bringing the IFTU women into the spotlight.

There is no genuine archive of the IFTU, largely because most material was confiscated during WWII by the Gestapo from the former premises of the IFTU in Paris, Rue de l’université 154. Yet rich portions of the genuinely international history of the IFTU can be retrieved through the archives and library of the TUC, which as British branch of the international federation duly documented its international activities. For many years Walter Citrine was the President of the IFTU, while from 1936 onwards Anne Loughlin, who later would become the chairman of the General Council of the TUC, served as one of the five members of the IFTU Women’s Committee. The TUC Library Collections keep all the conference proceedings, the full run of the IFTU journal The International Trade Union Movement, and other key materials. Women are at the very margins of this material, and yet it is this material that can guide us into exploring their contribution to trade union internationalism. When revisiting the Collections in August 2019, I had set aside sufficient time to go after more unlikely and sporadic documents. And indeed, the Collections helped me overcome additional marginalizations that have characterized the historiography, namely the lack of information on the involvement of women from Eastern Europe. Who would have thought that exactly a Souvenir Agenda memorializing the IFTU Congress assembled in Holborn Restaurant, London, from July 8th to 11th, 1936 would include the first and (to date) only photograph of Valerie Novotná, member of the IFTU Women’s Committee, representative of a trade union of domestic workers, and, as the Souvenir Agenda adds, “Chief Woman Officer in the Czecho-slovakian Joint National Trade Union Centre”.

Building on a large network of female socialist activists and functionaries, the IFTU Women’s International sought to strengthen the position of women workers, addressing wage policies, women’s unpaid family work, labour protection and social policy, the right to work, war and peace, and the unionization of women. It played an active role in shaping the international politics of women’s work and other elements of the emerging international gender politics of the interwar period.

Guest blogger, author and historian Jerry White has kindly written about his research into the Workers Educational Association archives, part of the TUC Library.

THE WEA ARCHIVE AT THE TUC LIBRARY

For the last five or six years I’ve been working on a history of London in the Second World War, published in November 2021 as The Battle of London 1939-45. Endurance, Heroism and Frailty under Fire. In the book I’ve tried to give an overview of all aspects of life in the capital and, in a final chapter, attempted to spell out the consequences of war for London and the Londoner. Many of these were disastrous, not least the impact of war on the education of schoolchildren, whose learning was not just interrupted but in many cases obstructed altogether.

But I didn’t have much space to write about adult education during the war, and here the story was very different. Adult education flourished and would never look back, at least for a generation and more to come. So the opportunity to give a public lecture in February 2022 at Birkbeck College – soon to celebrate its bicentenary – on adult education in London during the war sent me back to the archive. And the most useful archive for my purposes has proved to be the WEA archive at the TUC library.
The WEA was formed in 1903. It was firmly rooted in the trade union movement, providing evening classes for workers of all kinds. From the outset it capitalised on workers’ aspirations to understand better the world around them. Some of its courses were tutorial classes of university standard and delivered by lecturers of considerable renown – RH Tawney, the distinguished economic historian and Labour Party activist, was the WEA’s president for many years. It was organised on a local basis, often with branches related to individual boroughs or groups of boroughs. It was strong especially in the north of England but it had branches and voluntary organisers (some fulltime and salaried) everywhere in Great Britain.

I was interested mainly in the work of the WEA London District, though I gleaned useful context from the archive’s full run of WEA annual reports for Britain as a whole, and for London the archive is especially rich in material: the minute books, correspondence files, collections of ephemera and the London District’s printed annual reports for the war years were all of great interest.

The story they tell is of an organisation that was never dislocated by the declaration of war or by the Blitz or V-Weapons. Unlike London’s university colleges, which (apart from Birkbeck) were evacuated from London for the whole of the war, and unlike London’s schools (which operated only a sparse education for those children – a majority – who were not evacuated), the WEA continued to operate throughout the six years of war. At first, classes were reduced in number as lecturers were syphoned off into the services or other war work, and as the blackout discouraged many from attending evening classes; and the night-bombing from September 1940 to May 1941 drove many classes to open during the day and weekends. But from the summer of 1941 a rapid growth in demand for adult education across London fuelled the creation of new branches (especially in the London suburbs) and ever more classes. By 1942 the WEA in London was teaching more students in more localities than ever before in its history. In part this was due to what we might call ‘the democratic turn’ of 1941-2, in which sympathy for Soviet Russia, the feeling of community generated by local civil defence forces, the interest aroused by the Beveridge Report and the London Plans with their focus on what sort of London would emerge from the war, and educational reform nationwide, all played their part. We can see in this ever-growing interest in the WEA, and just where its local branches were formed, the key part that the London suburbs would play in voting to power a Labour government in 1945.

In sum, the WEA archive can tell us a great deal about aspects of working-class life and aspirations that are otherwise hidden from view. It is a treasure-trove for historians of the British working class in the twentieth century.

Jerry White
Emeritus Professor of London History, Birkbeck College

Peterborough and District Trades Council publications – Jubilee celebration and Rules book 1964

Guest blogger Hazel Perry, MA, History OU has been researching for a PhD thesis entitled ‘Peterborough Trades Union Council 1899-1974: A Neglected Arena for Working Class Politics’ at De Montfort University, Leicester, since October 2016. 

In 2014 a friend asked if I could work on a manuscript. The manuscript was written by Tom Browning, a former delegate to Peterborough Trades Union Council (PTUC), which contained 90 sides of A4 paper listing facts, events and opinions on various political, social and economic matters during the twentieth century. The manuscript contained the history of PTUC which Browning was unable to publish before passing away in the mid-1990s. Consequently, as a History MA student and delegate to PTUC I agreed to take a look and shortly after proposed the subject as a topic for a PhD.  

Initial research led me to understand that trades councils were an important, yet largely neglected part of the trade union movement. Made up of delegates from different union branches in a town, city, or county, trades councils acted as ‘unions in the community,’ and some of the earliest bodies, such as Sheffield and Salford (established 1858 and 1866) predated the formation of the TUC (1868) – to put this research into context PTUC was formally constituted on 1 January 1899.

Further research showed that trades councils contained the most radical elements of the working class. Moreover, delegates created local labour parties in 1919, campaigned for industrial unionism and led Councils of Action during the 1926 general strike. Additionally, trades council functions changed frequently resulting in an interesting mix of subjects for wider social, political and economic research.

Labour historians ignored trades councils, therefore some felt it necessary to produce their own histories. For instance, Malcolm Wallace wrote Nothing to Lose… A World to Win: A History of Chelmsford and District Trades Council (1979), however, two academic studies, Alan Clinton’s Trade Union Rank and File: Trades Councils in Britain 1900-40 (1975) and Richard Stevens’ PhD thesis Trades Councils in the East Midlands 1929-1951 (1995), eventually produced some history in an academic form.

My research has been problematic however. For instance, in 1949 PTUCs executive committee took the decision to destroy many of the trades council’s older documents due to water damage from being stored in a shed. Luckily this research covered a larger historical period and there were many documents from the 1950s onwards, available at the Trades Union Congress Library Collections at the London Metropolitan University Library. The library contained PTUCs Diamond Jubilee Year Book, which listed the main activities that delegates took part in between 1899 and 1959 which could then be further researched in old newspapers. There were also copies of the PTUC rules and constitutions which were useful when trying to establish the organisation’s functions.

Moreover, the library provided access to PTUC year-books which gave life to individual delegates. The year books contained not only factual information and opinions, but jokes, poems and anecdotes which demonstrated the personable characters of the individual men and women delegates and the spaces they inhabited. This information has allowed me to weave a narrative of a people’s history into my thesis, which I intend to complete in 2021.

Our guest blogger is David Dewar, researching the intersections between professional and amateur music-making in 20th century, looking at the lives and work of a range of musicians and the institutions which supported them. David is at the University of Bristol and recently looked at our Workers’ Educational Association Collection.

My research in Professional and Amateur Music-Making in England, in the early 20^th century, contains a strand considering the educational provisions available for adult amateur musicians. As such, the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) came to mind for a short case study. Though it was not by any means confined to music, some branches provided courses about music, in various forms. This organisation has had considerable longevity, having been founded in 1903 and still in existence now. Over the years it has adapted to the changing needs of adults who wish to further their intellectual interests.

I was interested to find out about its founders, and their own backgrounds, as well as to see how early its sense of adaptability started, and anything else related to music and adult educational needs.

My path led, naturally enough, to the WEA’s current website, from which enquiry I was recommended to a particular branch in the East of England. This, it turned out, had archives relating only to its own inception and activities. These were potentially interesting in seeing how a WEA branch came into being – but was not likely to give me chapter and verse about the organisation’s original aims, how it came into being, or how it managed its early years and agile evolution.

Thus, I could simply look in library and archives catalogues for references to the WEA and its founders – principally Albert Mansbridge (1876-1952), who was the initial secretary of the association. I was fortunate to find his description, in the form of a book, in the Special Reserves of my university’s library, and some further documentation in the Bodleian Library.

This was helpful – certainly in relation to Mansbridge’s leadership in the early days. There was also some information about the WEA’s organisational structure, and of a constitution. But these felt a little inadequate for my purpose.

Recently, I came across an unpublished thesis by a musicologist colleague, which enabled me to realise that, contrary to the impression I had of there being little in the way of central archives of the WEA, the TUC Library actually had most of the documents needed for me to gain a good impression of how the WEA managed changing external requirements during the period of my study. I’m very happy finally to have come across the location of the Association’s records!

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has, of course, precluded a visit to the Library. I’m deeply grateful, therefore, for the help of Jeff and his colleagues at the TUC Collection who have provided me the copies of minutes and constitutions which I request, and very speedily, too.

One of the most enjoyable features of carrying out historical research is the generosity with which librarians and archivists give their time and expertise to, I imagine, a never-ending stream of researchers seeking material! I’m very grateful.

Ten years ago I spent a summer digitising all the GFTU publications stored in Bishopsgate Institute working with Stef Dickers. I was very proud to learn this week that PhD research student Edda Nicolson is basing her whole thesis on the study of them.

Badge from Gas Workers and General Labourers Union in TUC Library’s badge collection

Our guest blogger is Edda Nicolson, PhD Researcher in Labour and Social History at University of Wolverhampton

On the afternoon of the 13th June 1938, Sir Walter Citrine of the Trade Union Congress held a meeting with several notable characters of the labour movement. None of them were younger than 75; all of them had seen just how quickly the world can change through the resilience and determination of the ‘low-skilled’ workforce. From starting their working lives as young as six years old, they played key roles in growing the labour movement that provided us with the working environments that we rely on today: weekends, paid holidays, safety equipment and fair wages.

Once again, it is our workforce rather than our political leaders that are striding towards this challenge and showing resilience, ingenuity and solidarity. This observation does not negate the need for leadership during crisis, but simply seeks to consider who we think of as world-changing heroes. 1938 was a good time to pause for reflection: in three decades Britain had seen its first global war, a flu pandemic, mass unemployment and a return to slum-level deprivation that had been punctuated by episodes of industrial unrest. With Hitler having annexed Austria only a couple of months before this meeting, what new challenges were they about to face?

The present-day social media commentary on the Covid-19 crisis has been punctuated by repeated observations that our present-day heroes are our so-called ‘unskilled’ workers. Despite overwhelming evidence that workers in low-paid roles are integral to the economy, a yearly earnings floor for migrants coming to the UK of just £20,480 has been suggested by the Home Secretary. This has served to alienate a large sector of our valuable workforce in sectors from construction to nursing and given rise to questions about which roles we value, and why.

Looking back to those sept- and octogenarians gathered around a table in 1938, I cannot see anyone who would have made today’s threshold when they started their working lives. Nevertheless, they played integral roles in creating what it means to have a job in the UK. Ben Tillett, leader of the 1889 London Dock strike, told his friends that afternoon of the time he was ordered to scoop the flattened remains of his colleague out of the way following a fatal accident, before having to get on with his task of loading cargo onto a ship. Will Thorne, then an MP for Plaistow but formally the general secretary of the Gas Workers union, spoke of being unable to read even at the time of his marriage as a young man.

Their frustration at these dangerous and hopeless working conditions spurred them on to seek a new way of living and working that benefited society as a whole. Their fight brought us the weekend, the idea of universal education and the concept of a minimum wage. Today’s low skilled workers, those currently stacking our depleted shelves, caring for our vulnerable elderly and those nursing our most desperately ill, have much in common with those men that reminisced on their achievements in 1938. It seems that we now have an opportunity once more to look towards our vital workforce as the heroes that are going to once again change the world.

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. These pamphlets from the TUC Library are just a small example of what we have that were published between 1933 and 1945 to raise awareness of the persecution and murder of Jewish people in Nazi Germany. Some were produced by Jewish groups in Britain, including German refugees, others are by trade unionists and the Labour Party. It’s heartbreaking to read these pleas to recognise the persecution and calls for it to be stopped, knowing now what was to come. There are more https://www.pinterest.co.uk/tu…/persecution-in-nazi-germany/