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Trade
Union History
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TUC History Online: The TUC Library Collections at London Metropolitan University has launched the third and final phase of its lottery funded website. Two more resources have been made available – the unique and fascinating archive relating to the General Strike of 1926 as well as every Congress Report between 1868 and 1968. The General Strike Collection comprises material collected by library staff in 1926 and includes TUC documents and bulletins, printed publications and newspapers from Britain and overseas. Other records, such as bulletins produced by local trades councils and strike committees, dispatch riders' reports, photographs etc., were passed to the Library from other TUC Departments.
Trade Unions in Britain: An encyclopedia of the Trade Union movement in Britain between 1800 and 1950. The website includes entries on important events and issues (8), union journals and newspapers (16), trade union and political legislation (12), union organizations (8) and biographies of trade union leaders (48). The text within each entry is linked to other relevant pages in the encyclopedia. In this way it is possible to research individual people and events in great detail. The sources are also hyper-linked so the student is able to find out about the writer, artist, newspaper and organization that produced the material.
The Union Makes Us Strong: TUC History Online, a partnership initiative between London Metropolitan University and the Trades Union Congress in support of their strategies in lifelong learning, made possible through a grant from the New Opportunities Fund as part of their NOF-Digitise programme. Trade unions have played, and will continue to play, a decisive role in shaping economic and social developments in Britain - yet much of their history is at present unknown and inaccessible to the public. This site provides a dynamic new resource allowing us to connect with the working lives of our predecessors, helping to analyse historical developments and to build for the future. The site consists of five learning resources, which will be released in phases throughout 2003. At present you can take a journey through 150 years of labour history with our Timeline, or learn about the Match Workers strike in 1888. Future developments will include the full manuscript of the novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, an archive of material from the General Strike of 1926 as well as every TUC Report from 1868-1968.
Labor Hall of Fame: Elevation to the American Labor Hall of Fame is arrived at by a selection panel composed of distinguished historians, academicians, trade union officials and government leaders, past and present. A single honoree is chosen each year, and so far the website includes biographies of Samuel Gompers, Eugene V. Debs, James P. Mitchell, Terence V. Powerly, A. Philip Randolph, Francis Perkins, Sidney Hillman, Mother Jones, John L. Lewis, Walter P. Reuther, Robert F. Wagner, William Green, David Dubinsky and Cesar E. Chavez.
Welsh Political Archive: This website presents social and political campaigning in Wales during the twentieth century through the use of digitised images of original documents, photographs and sound and video files. The campaigns voice the rights of various groups, for example the right of women to vote, or the right of miners and quarrymen to fair wages and decent working conditions. The material has been selected from various collections in the National Library of Wales. The material can be accessed directly from the site map, the search facility, or the time-line. It is also possible to access the material thematically. The site is divided into six themes - The Ballot Box, Labour Struggles, War and Peace, The Welsh Language, Devolution and The Water Industry.
Victorian Social History: This website provides links to articles on Victorian Social History. This includes: Wages, the Cost of Living, and Contemporary Equivalents to Victorian Money, Victorian Occupations - Life and Labor in the Victorian Period, Child Labour, The Life of the Industrial Worker in the Early 19th England, Billingsgate Fishmarket, The Lack of Social Security in Victorian England, Clara Collett, Charles Booth, and Urban Poverty, Needlewomen: Dressmakers, Milliners, and Slop-workers, The Physical Deterioration of the Textile Workers and the he Development of Leisure in Britain, 1700-1850.
Robert Owen Museum: Robert Owen, the son of a saddler and ironmonger, became one of the most successful mill owners of the Industrial Revolution with a reputation as the producer of fine cotton. However, it was not as a successful and respected businessman that he left his mark on history, but as one of the most prominent social reformers of the period, a pioneer of modern British socialism and a source of inspiration to the co-operative and trade union movements. The Robert Owen Museum includes a detailed biography of this remarkable man.
Trade Unions in the USA: An encyclopedia of the Trade Union movement in USA between 1800 and 1960. The website includes entries on important events and issues (12) union journals and newspapers (8), union organizations (6) and biographies of trade union leaders (52). The text within each entry is linked to other relevant pages in the encyclopedia. In this way it is possible to research individual people and events in great detail. The sources are also hyper-linked so the student is able to find out about the writer, artist, newspaper and organization that produced the material.
Haymarket Martyrs: On 4th May, 1886, a meeting was called by trade union leaders in Haymarket Square, Chicago, in protest against the shooting of several strikers in a recent industrial dispute over demands for an eight hour day. The police chief ordered the crowd to leave the area and soon afterwards a bomb was thrown by an unknown person in the crowd, resulting in the deaths of seven people. Eight men involved in organizing the meeting were arrested and in 1887 four of them were hanged. This website provides a brief description the Haymarket Affair and a list of links to other websites on the subject.
Samuel Gompers Papers Project: In 1974, Stuart B. Kaufman, the author of Samuel Gompers and the Origins of the American Federation of Labor and the founding editor of Labor's Heritage, established the Samuel Gompers Papers Project at the University of Maryland. Under Kraufman's direction, a crew of historians and graduate students plowed through Gompers' letterbooks, located and microfilmed union records, and searched for evidence of Gompers' family, friends, and associates in newspaper reports, government documents, and vital records. This material is now available from this website sponsored by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the AFL-CIO.
Tom Mooney: In a survey carried out in Europe in 1935 and it was discovered that the four best known Americans were Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles A. Lindbergh, Tom Mooney and Henry Ford. The reason that Tom Mooney was on this list was because at the time there was an international campaign to get him freed from San Quentin Prison. Mooney had been convicted of throwing a bomb into the midst of a military parade in San Francisco during the First World War. He was sentenced to death but in 1918 this was commuted to life imprisonment. By this time the American government knew the truth about the case as the Secretary of Labor, William Bauchop Wilson, had arranged for a dictaphone to be installed in the private office of the District Attorney in San Francisco and had discovered that Mooney had been framed. Despite this information being reported in the national press, Mooney was not released from prison until Culbert Olson became Governor of California in 1939. This website provides biographies of all the main characters involved in this tragic case.
Bill Haywood Trial: In 1905 Bill Haywood was charged with taking part in the murder of Frank R. Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho. Steunenberg was much hated by the trade union movement after using federal troops to help break strikes during his period of office. Charles Darrow, a man who specialized in defending trade union leaders, was employed to defend Hayward. This comprehensive website includes a chronology of trial related events, biographies of the main characters involved, the testimony of Harry Orchard, the prosecution and Darrow's summation and the Supreme Court decision on the case.
Tolpuddle Martyrs: In 1834 six English farmworkers were charged with taking illegal oaths while establishing a local trade union branch of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle with the aim of obtaining an increase in their wages. The six were found guilty and condemned to seven years' transportation to Australia. This website, produced by the Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum, tells the story of this terrible injustice.
Red Clydeside: During the period between 1910 and 1932 the city of Glasgow was witness to an unparalleled wave of working class protest and political agitation which challenged the forces of capitalism and also, on occasion, directly challenged the state itself. The events and people who shaped this period forged an enduring legacy which still remains part of the political and social fabric of the city to the present day, and which is known quite simply as Red Clydeside. This turbulent period of industrial, social and political upheaval reinforced Glasgow's reputation as the centre of working class struggle in Britain in the early years of the twentieth century. This website provides access to digital copies of original source materials from the Red Clydeside period, as one of the digital collections of the Glasgow Digital Library.
Match
Girls Strike: On 23rd June 1888, Annie Besant wrote an article in her newspaper,
The Link. The article, entitled White Slavery in London, complained about the
way the women at Bryant & May were being treated. The company reacted by
attempting to force their workers to sign a statement that they were happy with
their working conditions. When a group of women refused to sign, the organisers
of the group were sacked. The response was immediate: 1400 of the women at Bryant
& May went on strike. This website provides an account of the strike. It
also includes a tutors' pack produced by Ben Walsh.
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Educational Websites
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