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Spoiler: this is a quick rewrite and consolidation of what's in Wikipedia on these topics, so there is some more detail there. I've just synthesised it, with a side order of this being one of the major topics for GCSE history, though there it came with a heavy dose of "and this is how Britain led the way in workers' rights", though you could just as well interpret it as "Britain industrialised early and led the way in exploiting their workforce until forcibly stopped". Obviously there are a ton of academic articles arguing about the nuance. Wikipedia will link to some, JSTOR will give you a lot more if you have access to it.
The tl;dr of it all is: Trade Unions (TUs) have been intimately involved with (male) suffrage. TUs were mostly male dominated. They're a primarily industrial phenomenon.
This is primarily focused on the UK, primarily England. Some of that is that there was undoubtedly a lot of activity there. Some of that is also that
There are two things feeding in to the Trades Union movement: one: Friendly Societies; two: the massive social and economic changes caused by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, and the Industrial Revolution. One gives us a principle for organising groups; the other gives the impetus to form those groups.
The Friendly Societies originated in the mid-late 18th century, and have some things in common with the mediaeval guilds (mostly around organisational structure, and the notion of some benefits for members. Some of these societies were specifically Benefit Societies (e.g. for insurance, mutual aid, and so on. Like credit unions or building societies - both of which evolve from this).
The Wikipedia article on Benefit Societies (accessed today), says they are characterised by:
From the mid-18th century onwards, new jobs were being created in cities. These weren't the agricultural jobs of the past (where labour was limited in winter, because it was too damn dark, with some seasons of intense work - like harvest). These were jobs using machinery such as the Spinning Jenny. The Napoleonic Wars took a lot of men out of the workforce, then dumped them back in (plus a lot of newly-disabled people - this also triggered a growth in workhouses, and started the fight for state benefits). Agricultural wages fell, and the price of corn went way up. Mysteriously, this made people pretty pissed off.
First of all, unionising was difficult. The Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 restricted "combining" or gathering together for a common purpose. These laws were strongly motivated by fear of the French Revolution - well, the fear that it might give people ideas.
They got ideas anyway. There were the Luddites (ca. 1805), who were textile workers protesting about their jobs being taken by lower waged workers using machines. The Luddites smashed machines, and they were arrested, put on trial (often these were show trials), and sentenced to transportation. Their protests were disrupted by military force, and new laws were written to discourage similar equipment sabotage.
There were the Factory Acts of 1802 and 1819, which started to restrict the use of very young children as factory workers. This didn't spring directly from trades unions. The first Factory Act came about because of the spread of an infectious disease, and this was the main motivation. Workers' rights were not really involved. The later Factory Act came about because of the work of Robert Owen, who was a factory owner, and a strong believer in socalist enterprise. It was he who coined the phrase: "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". He coined this in 1817, and in modified form, it's been used by many campaigners since.
At the time of the second factory act (1819), there were already some trade unions, as the Manchester General Union of Trades formed in 1818. Trade Unions early on tended to be either regional, or to cover specific trades (or both). A lot of trade unions and political movements of the nineteenth century relied on increasing literacy. This was mostly because of the Sunday school movement, which arose in the mid-18th century, which wished to educate poor children (mostly boys) to read the Bible. "Ragged schools", with no or very low fees, arose from around 1818. This meant that there was enough literacy for there to be some readers in most groups of workers. The Industrial Revolution also reduced the cost of printing, so that it was feasible to distribute leaflets and journals.
Some early attempts at unionisation were harshly punished. The Merthyr Rising was a miners' strike in 1831 over low wages, unemployment, and the treatment of debtors. It was the first time a red flag was flown by workers. It was dispersed by the army, and some protestors were killed, many were imprisoned and transported, and one was hanged. The Tolpuddle Martyrs formed a Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers in 1834, to complain about the lowering of wages. They were initially sentenced to transportation (for "swearing false oaths" of membership), and later pardoned.
There were also some early attempts to get a National TU movement going, starting with the National Association for the Protection of Labour in 1830 (this mostly covered the textile industry), and the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in 1834, which was focused on the building trade, and riven with disagreement. The New Model Unions were also forming around this time, but they tended to be for specific trades, generally ones which required higher literacy (e.g. Engineers), and they tended to focus on negotiation and education, rather than strike action.
Not long after (in 1838), the Chartist movement began. They weren't a workers' rights organisation, as such, but a group looking for male suffrage, a secret ballot, and fairer constituency boundaries (the boundaries had been drawn up for a primarily rural population, and didn't take into account growing cities such as Manchester). This rapidly tied into the Trade Union movement during the 1842 General Strike, where the demands focused on increased wages, and implementing the demands of the Chartlsts. The strike began when a mine owner broke the law about giving notice for pay reductions, but swiftly spread through the Potteries and into South Lancashire. Many Chartists were imprisoned as the strike was broken up.
As far as I can tell, everyone took the 1850s off, or at least they were doing things that didn't make it into history lessons or Wikipedia. Though that may have been a result of post-1848 panic, as the UK government got a bit twitchy after a bunch of European revolutions.
The 1860s saw a lot of consolidatory activity. The International Workingmen's Association was formed in 1864, which was an international alliance of socialists, communists, anarchists, and TUs. It suffered a lot from internal conflicts, and disbanded in 1876. Its heir was the Second International, founded in 1889. Marxism and Communism became an important part of the Trade Union movement. The UK Alliance of Organised Trade (1866) briefly existed; the Sheffield Outrages (explosions and murder) caused its end. The Trades Union Congress (which survives today) was formed in 1868, and was greatly aided by the eventual legalisation of unions in 1872. (Legalisation of unions elsewhere tended to come later on in the 18th century - in France in 1884, Germany 1897, and in the US from ~1880 onwards a series of court decisions made unions more permissible.)
The TUC was formed primarily from Northern unions from Manchester and Salford, and was trying to deal with a perceived London bias), and also some of the New Model Unions. Their ability to share information was probably aided by the 1870 Elementary Education Act, which permitted local government to set up schools to fill in gaps in provision, which led to increased literacy amongst the workforce. The TUC organised a congress in 1899, "to establish a voice for working people within Parliament". This led very directly to the modern Labour Party.
The first candidates weren't Labour Party candidates per se, they were candidates endorsed by the Liberal Party and sponsored by Trade Unions. The first candidate was in 1870. The TUC and socialist groups such as the Independent Labour Party, the Scottish Labour Party, and the Fabian Society gathered together to promote more candidates, and eventually we ended up with the Labour Party, with its very strong union roots.
You'll notice an almost complete absence of mention of women here. The TUs were mostly male led, though there were plenty of women employed in the textile industry, and they were more prominent in those unions and strikes. The Factory Acts in the mid-19th century reduced the working hours of women and children, thus categorising women as children, and not as adult workers. And I've not been able to find out how white the TU movement was in the 19th century, though I'm going to guess that it was pretty damn white, even if the workers themselves weren't. Though I'd expect wide regional demographics - London and Liverpool and Newcastle, as big ports, probably weren't so white, but the Potteries almost certainly were very white indeed. Sorry. My history education was somewhat silent on these matters, and spending a few hours reading isn't a substitute for having this embedded in a course of study. There is some material on 20th century union history that covers this: unionhistory.info/britainatwork/narrativedisplay.php, but there is a strong colonialist and racist legacy here.
The union movement was very successful; the UN Declaration of Human Rights has clauses in about the right to work (and not be discriminated against), the right to just remuneration, the right to join trade unions, and the right to rest and leisure. Those rights stem from the demands of Trade Unions across the world.
The tl;dr of it all is: Trade Unions (TUs) have been intimately involved with (male) suffrage. TUs were mostly male dominated. They're a primarily industrial phenomenon.
This is primarily focused on the UK, primarily England. Some of that is that there was undoubtedly a lot of activity there. Some of that is also that
There are two things feeding in to the Trades Union movement: one: Friendly Societies; two: the massive social and economic changes caused by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, and the Industrial Revolution. One gives us a principle for organising groups; the other gives the impetus to form those groups.
The Friendly Societies originated in the mid-late 18th century, and have some things in common with the mediaeval guilds (mostly around organisational structure, and the notion of some benefits for members. Some of these societies were specifically Benefit Societies (e.g. for insurance, mutual aid, and so on. Like credit unions or building societies - both of which evolve from this).
The Wikipedia article on Benefit Societies (accessed today), says they are characterised by:
- Members having equivalent opportunity for a say in the organisation
- Members having potentially equal benefits
- Aid goes to those in need (strong helping weak)
- collection fund for payment of benefits
- educating others about a group's interest
- preserving cultural traditions
- mutual deference.
From the mid-18th century onwards, new jobs were being created in cities. These weren't the agricultural jobs of the past (where labour was limited in winter, because it was too damn dark, with some seasons of intense work - like harvest). These were jobs using machinery such as the Spinning Jenny. The Napoleonic Wars took a lot of men out of the workforce, then dumped them back in (plus a lot of newly-disabled people - this also triggered a growth in workhouses, and started the fight for state benefits). Agricultural wages fell, and the price of corn went way up. Mysteriously, this made people pretty pissed off.
First of all, unionising was difficult. The Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 restricted "combining" or gathering together for a common purpose. These laws were strongly motivated by fear of the French Revolution - well, the fear that it might give people ideas.
They got ideas anyway. There were the Luddites (ca. 1805), who were textile workers protesting about their jobs being taken by lower waged workers using machines. The Luddites smashed machines, and they were arrested, put on trial (often these were show trials), and sentenced to transportation. Their protests were disrupted by military force, and new laws were written to discourage similar equipment sabotage.
There were the Factory Acts of 1802 and 1819, which started to restrict the use of very young children as factory workers. This didn't spring directly from trades unions. The first Factory Act came about because of the spread of an infectious disease, and this was the main motivation. Workers' rights were not really involved. The later Factory Act came about because of the work of Robert Owen, who was a factory owner, and a strong believer in socalist enterprise. It was he who coined the phrase: "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". He coined this in 1817, and in modified form, it's been used by many campaigners since.
At the time of the second factory act (1819), there were already some trade unions, as the Manchester General Union of Trades formed in 1818. Trade Unions early on tended to be either regional, or to cover specific trades (or both). A lot of trade unions and political movements of the nineteenth century relied on increasing literacy. This was mostly because of the Sunday school movement, which arose in the mid-18th century, which wished to educate poor children (mostly boys) to read the Bible. "Ragged schools", with no or very low fees, arose from around 1818. This meant that there was enough literacy for there to be some readers in most groups of workers. The Industrial Revolution also reduced the cost of printing, so that it was feasible to distribute leaflets and journals.
Some early attempts at unionisation were harshly punished. The Merthyr Rising was a miners' strike in 1831 over low wages, unemployment, and the treatment of debtors. It was the first time a red flag was flown by workers. It was dispersed by the army, and some protestors were killed, many were imprisoned and transported, and one was hanged. The Tolpuddle Martyrs formed a Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers in 1834, to complain about the lowering of wages. They were initially sentenced to transportation (for "swearing false oaths" of membership), and later pardoned.
There were also some early attempts to get a National TU movement going, starting with the National Association for the Protection of Labour in 1830 (this mostly covered the textile industry), and the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in 1834, which was focused on the building trade, and riven with disagreement. The New Model Unions were also forming around this time, but they tended to be for specific trades, generally ones which required higher literacy (e.g. Engineers), and they tended to focus on negotiation and education, rather than strike action.
Not long after (in 1838), the Chartist movement began. They weren't a workers' rights organisation, as such, but a group looking for male suffrage, a secret ballot, and fairer constituency boundaries (the boundaries had been drawn up for a primarily rural population, and didn't take into account growing cities such as Manchester). This rapidly tied into the Trade Union movement during the 1842 General Strike, where the demands focused on increased wages, and implementing the demands of the Chartlsts. The strike began when a mine owner broke the law about giving notice for pay reductions, but swiftly spread through the Potteries and into South Lancashire. Many Chartists were imprisoned as the strike was broken up.
As far as I can tell, everyone took the 1850s off, or at least they were doing things that didn't make it into history lessons or Wikipedia. Though that may have been a result of post-1848 panic, as the UK government got a bit twitchy after a bunch of European revolutions.
The 1860s saw a lot of consolidatory activity. The International Workingmen's Association was formed in 1864, which was an international alliance of socialists, communists, anarchists, and TUs. It suffered a lot from internal conflicts, and disbanded in 1876. Its heir was the Second International, founded in 1889. Marxism and Communism became an important part of the Trade Union movement. The UK Alliance of Organised Trade (1866) briefly existed; the Sheffield Outrages (explosions and murder) caused its end. The Trades Union Congress (which survives today) was formed in 1868, and was greatly aided by the eventual legalisation of unions in 1872. (Legalisation of unions elsewhere tended to come later on in the 18th century - in France in 1884, Germany 1897, and in the US from ~1880 onwards a series of court decisions made unions more permissible.)
The TUC was formed primarily from Northern unions from Manchester and Salford, and was trying to deal with a perceived London bias), and also some of the New Model Unions. Their ability to share information was probably aided by the 1870 Elementary Education Act, which permitted local government to set up schools to fill in gaps in provision, which led to increased literacy amongst the workforce. The TUC organised a congress in 1899, "to establish a voice for working people within Parliament". This led very directly to the modern Labour Party.
The first candidates weren't Labour Party candidates per se, they were candidates endorsed by the Liberal Party and sponsored by Trade Unions. The first candidate was in 1870. The TUC and socialist groups such as the Independent Labour Party, the Scottish Labour Party, and the Fabian Society gathered together to promote more candidates, and eventually we ended up with the Labour Party, with its very strong union roots.
You'll notice an almost complete absence of mention of women here. The TUs were mostly male led, though there were plenty of women employed in the textile industry, and they were more prominent in those unions and strikes. The Factory Acts in the mid-19th century reduced the working hours of women and children, thus categorising women as children, and not as adult workers. And I've not been able to find out how white the TU movement was in the 19th century, though I'm going to guess that it was pretty damn white, even if the workers themselves weren't. Though I'd expect wide regional demographics - London and Liverpool and Newcastle, as big ports, probably weren't so white, but the Potteries almost certainly were very white indeed. Sorry. My history education was somewhat silent on these matters, and spending a few hours reading isn't a substitute for having this embedded in a course of study. There is some material on 20th century union history that covers this: unionhistory.info/britainatwork/narrativedisplay.php, but there is a strong colonialist and racist legacy here.
The union movement was very successful; the UN Declaration of Human Rights has clauses in about the right to work (and not be discriminated against), the right to just remuneration, the right to join trade unions, and the right to rest and leisure. Those rights stem from the demands of Trade Unions across the world.
