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The Industrial Revolution
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the late 1700s, manufacturing was often done in people’s homes, using hand tools or basic machines. Industrialization marked a shift to powered, special-purpose machinery, factories and mass production. The iron and textile industries, along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the Industrial Revolution, which also saw improved systems of transportation, communication and banking. -
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Tory government protest?
Fearing the influence of the ideas inspiring the French Revolution (1789), the Tory government of 1815 was determined to crush protest. Nevertheless, political radicalism was widespread in these years and was expressed in demonstrations, rebellions and a flurry of political tracts and newspapers defying the infamous 'taxes on knowledge' (the stamp duties of 1819). -
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Chartist demonstration
Chartism was a political movement based on the demands of a
6-point Charter. Its mass support was clearly visible in the presentation of three 'monster' petitions to parliament in 1839, 1842 and 1848 containing millions of signatures. At first Chartism won support from a wide variety of workers and even from lower middle class radicals. From this mass support came the formation of the first ever working class political party - the National Charter Association, founded in 1840. -
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Manchester Mechanics Institution site of the first Trades Union Congress in 1868
By the late 1840s Britain entered into a second phase of industrialisation. The construction of the railway network, almost complete by 1847, had stimulated the growth of the coal, iron and (later) steel and engineering industries. Together with cotton, these formed Britain's staple industries. Until the 1870s they flourished in a unique period of steady uninterrupted growth, punctuated only by the two short depressions in 1857 and 1866. -
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Gas workers meeting, 1889
The years up to and including the First World War witnessed the rise of a mass labour movement. Trade Unionism spread to previously unorganised workers and its initial militancy rocked the complacency of the old leadership. The new mood was inspired by a revival in socialist activity. Britain's industrial lead and dominance was now challenged by the growing economic might of Germany and USA. The profits from Britain's massive colonial empire concealed the impact of the decline in industry -
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General Strike
The First World War and the temporary post-war boom camouflaged the underlying chronic economic problems associated with Britain's loss of status as a prime manufacturing power. This was a period of readjustment, economically and politically. Politically the era of the mass franchise (universal after 1928) brought about a new two party system. The Liberal Party declined after 1914 and was replaced by Labour as the main opponent of the Tories. -
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Election Night
The size of the Labour majority in the 1945 election (146 seats) gave it a mandate for the first time to carry out its election manifesto 'Let Us Face the Future'. Six of the 20 members of Attlee's cabinet were union sponsored. -
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Growth in Trade Union Membership
Membership density not only remained at the record peacetime level of the late 1940s, hovering around 44%, during the late 1960s it began to increase steadily. In 1979, union density was 55.4%; there were 13 million union members, in contrast to the 9-10 million members in 1951-60 (1). Non-trade unionists were impressed by the improving wages and working conditions in the traditional centres of trade unionism - manual workers in large factories, shipyards, coalmining and railways.