150


century and a half! And we’re still here, despite political hostility, rogue employers and profound economic change. The Trades Union Congress has just


celebrated its 150th anniversary in Manchester. No other social institution can point to such long, continuous activity against the odds and with a real, if challenging, future ahead. Back in Victorian times, nobody told working


people they needed to get together to look after their mutual interests. Not priests, nor poets, nor politicians. They worked it out


1868 The first Trades Union Congress – ‘the parliament of labour’ – was held in Manchester at the Mechanics’ Institute. It drew trade unionists from all ove the UK.


1888 The Match Girls’ Strike in London, followed by the Dockers’ Tanner strike – fin de siecle of union expansion into hitherto unorganised trades.


14 | theJournalist


Paul Routledge celebrates the long history of the Trade Union Congress


not out A


for themselves, which gave these newfangled organisations their organic strength. Trade unions were a natural human response to exploitation in the workplace and in society generally. If we’re all in this together – and we are – the more important it is to stick together. It was never going to be easy. Scroll back to 1799,


when the Combination Acts were passed, making it illegal for workmen to join others to demand a pay rise or better conditions. In ‘the English Age of Terror’, anyone attending a meeting to raise wages


could be sent straight to jail. Worse, they could be transported to the colonies, like the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Landmark disputes like the Match Girls’ Strike of 1888 and the Dockers’ Tanner dispute in the following year established hard-fought rights at work. The General Strike of 1926 was a failure but, in the Second World War, unions were harnessed in the war effort and TGWU leader Ernie Bevin became foreign secretary in the postwar Labour government. Unions became an estate of the realm and treated seriously as social partners. The English model was exported to Germany. When the TUC celebrated its centenary in 1968 – my first year covering it, coincidentally, for the Manchester Evening News – congress was a mosaic of every trade and occupation under the sun. And virtually every town and city. There were unions for plumbers, electricians, bank staff, water workers, dockers, train drivers, town hall staff, draughtsmen, seamen, steelworkers – and another for blastfurnacemen. London had the Watermen, Lightermen and Tugboat men. Luton had the Felt Hat Trimmers. Rossendale had the Boot, Shoe and Slipper Makers. You name the job, it had a union. There were


five civil service unions, three postal unions and a fistful of print unions, each with fiercely independent sections. I counted at least half a dozen textile unions, including the mysterious Beamers, Twisters and Drawers. And so it burgeoned, until membership of TUC-affiliated unions passed the 12 million mark. With its sheer size and impact on public life through collective bargaining and political activity, the


1907 The NUJ was formed. It is now one of the biggest journalists’ unions in the world with 38,000 members in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.


1926 The General Strike, nine days that shook Britain. It was called by the TUC in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent wage cuts and worse conditions for miners.


TUC LIBRARY COLLECTIONS AT LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY


TUC LIBRARY COLLECTIONS AT LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY


TUC LIBRARY COLLECTIONS AT LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY


1907, NUJ WAS FORMED


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