Note 378 — Chapter V

The first permanent committee of the nature of a Trades Council appears to have been, according to our information, the Liverpool “Trades Guardian Association,” which was established in 1848 with the object of protecting Trade Unions from suppression by the employers’ use of the criminal law. From its printed report and balance sheet for 1848, and the references in the Fortnightly Circular of the Stonemasons’ Society for November 23, 1848, we gather that it took vigorous action to protect the Sheffield razor-grinders from malicious prosecution, and to help the Liverpool masons who had been indicted for conspiracy. Of its activity from 1850 to 1857 we possess no records, but in August 1857 it subscribed £400 in aid of the Liverpool cabinetmakers, and in 1861 it was assisting the London bricklayers’ strike. In July of that year it was merged in a “United Trades Protection Association,” formed upon the model of the newly established London Trades Council. In Glasgow there appears to have been, since 1825, an almost continuous series of joint committees of delegates for particular purposes. An attempt was made in 1851 to place these on a permanent footing, but the trades soon ceased to send delegates. A renewed attempt in 1858, made at the instance of Alexander Campbell, met with greater success; and the Council then established, composed principally of the building trades, was in 1860 enjoying a vigorous life. Sheffield, too, had long had ephemeral federations of the local trades, which came near having a continuous existence. One of these, the “Association of Organised Trades,” established in 1857 with the special object of assisting the Sheffield Typographical Society in defending a libel action, became the permanent Trades Council. Other towns, such as Dublin and Bristol, had almost constantly some kind of Council of the local trades. An appeal of the Trade Defence Association of Manchester, signed by representatives of nine thousand operatives on behalf of the dyers’ strike, occurs in the Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular for 1854. In London, as may be gathered from George Odger’s evidence before the Master and Servant Law Committee in 1867, the meetings of “Metropolitan Trades Delegates” had been particularly frequent since 1848. In 1852, for instance, as we discover from the Bookbinders’ Trade Circular (November 1853), a committee of the London trades took the case of the Wolverhampton tinplate workers out of the hands of the somewhat decrepit National Association of United Trades, and bore the whole cost of these expensive legal proceedings. No sooner had the task of this committee been completed, when another committed was formed to assist the strike of the Preston cotton operatives. It was to this committee, sitting at the Bell Inn, Old Bailey, the historic meeting-place of London Trade Unionism, that Lloyd Jones, in March 1855, communicated his fears that a certain Friendly Societies’ Bill, then before the House of Commons, would make the legal position of trade societies even more equivocal than it then was. A “Metropolitan Trades Committee on the Friendly Societies’ Bill” was accordingly formed, the printed report of which is reviewed by Dunning in his Circular for December 1855. From this we learn that it was presided over by William Allan, and that it included his old friend William Newton, as well as the general secretaries of the Stonemasons’ and Bricklayers’ Societies, and representatives of the Compositors and Bookbinders. It was supported by eighty-seven different Trade Unions with forty-eight thousand members, who contributed a halfpenny per member to cover the expenses. Its Parliamentary action seems, to have been vigorous and effective. The objectionable clauses were, by skilful Parliamentary lobbying, dropped out of the Bill, and what seemed at the time to be an important step towards the legislation of trade societies was, through the help of Thomas Hughes and Lord Goderich, secured. Between 1858 and 1867 Trades Councils were established in about a dozen of the largest towns. The Trade Union expansion of 1870-73 saw their number doubled. But their great increase was one of the effects of the great wave of Trade Union organisation which swept over the country in 1889-91, when over sixty new councils were established, and those already in existence were reorganised and greatly increased in membership.