Sheffield Trades and Labour Council
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The Sheffield Trades and Labour Council, usually known as the Sheffield Trades Council, is a labour organisation uniting trade unionists in Sheffield.
The organisation originated in 1858, when many Sheffield compositors were involved in a dispute with the owner of the Sheffield Times newspaper. In order to build solidarity for their cause, they founded the Sheffield Association of Organised Trades. This was not the first attempt to build such links; in the mid-1840s, the "United Trades of Sheffield" had been formed, and its secretary John Drury had persuaded Thomas Duncombe to launch a new National Association of United Trades for the Employment of Labour, but neither body had proved lasting.[1] [2]
The compositors' leader William Dronfield was elected as the trades council's first Secretary, a post he held until 1867;[3] Charles Bradshaw and William Broadhead were the other office holders. The new organisation declared itself dedicated to "the establishment and perpetuation of a more intimate relation between all branches of the operative classes, and giving increased efficiency to the operation of trade societies."[4]
Although not the first trades council, only Glasgow and perhaps Aberdeen Trades Council can claim longer continuous histories.[5] By 1860, twenty-two societies had joined the Sheffield organisation, representing 3,536 workers.[4]
In 1866, Dronfield called a conference in Sheffield to found a national organisation of trade unions, the United Kingdom Alliance of Organised Trades. Most of its Executive Council came from the Sheffield area.[5]
A series of violent attacks on non-trade unionists by a small minority of unionist, the "Sheffield Outrages", ran through 1866, so in November, the trades council joined with the London Trades Council to call for a government enquiry.[6] The repercussions essentially finished the national organisation, but in 1871 the trades council reconstituted itself as the Sheffield Federated Trades Council and continued its work.
At the 1868 UK general election, Dronfield had on behalf of the trades council persuaded Anthony John Mundella to stand in the Sheffield constituency, believing that the Liberal would act in the interests of Labour. Charles Hobson, long-term President of the Trades Council, was elected as a Liberal member of Sheffield City Council, but rejected as a Lib-Lab candidate for the Sheffield Attercliffe by-election, 1894.[7]
In 1908, the trades council split over the question of support for the Labour Party. Many of the lighter trades remained and supported the Lib-Labs, while the heavier trades mostly left to form the "Sheffield Trades and Labour Council".[8] This second organisation was officially aligned with the Labour Party. The two did not reunited until 1920, by which point the Trades and Labour Council was able to subsume the original organisation.[9]
The organisation continued to move to the left, and was threatened with disaffiliation by Labour in 1940.[10] During the 1960s, it was run by communists.[11]
As of 2006, Sheffield Trades and Labour Council's Secretary was Bill Ronksley and its President was John Campbell.[12]
[edit] References
- ^ History and Functions of Central Labor Unions By William Maxwell Burke
- ^ Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock, Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880-1914
- ^ A. E. Musson, Trade Union and Social History
- ^ a b George Isaac Howard Lloyd, The Cutlery Trade
- ^ a b G. D. H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class Movement
- ^ TUC: Events that led to the first TUC
- ^ Single or Return - the official history of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association
- ^ Duncan Tanner, Political Change and the Labour Party 1900-1918
- ^ William A. Hampton, Democracy and Community: a study of Politics in Sheffield
- ^ Martin Upham, The RSL in Unity and Disunity
- ^ Graham Stevenson, The YCL 1966-1980 - anatomy of decline
- ^ Local Government Pensions Strike 28 March
