Enamel Badges of the National Union of Mineworkers is available from Brian Witts, 4 Balmoral Drive, Hednesford, Staffordshire WS12 4LT. Price £33, with cheques payable to Nine-One-Seven. Email gailwitts@hotmail.co.uk for further information or call 01543 425743.

Enamel Badges of the National Union of Mineworkers is a new book which sets out to catalogue exactly what it says in the title – and succeeds admirably. 

In its 156 glossy pages, the book includes – at a rough count – some 1,700 full-colour photographs of different NUM badges along with full descriptions and details of the dates at which they were produced and the numbers manufactured.

This volume is undoubtedly a labour of love on the part of badge collector Brian Witts, himself a stalwart of the 1984-85 miners strike, who must have put in untold hundreds of hours’ work to produce this book.

And it has to be said, the outcome is a magnificent work that anyone with an interest in trade union or mining memorabilia would be proud to own, and which is essential for collectors, both as a reference work and for the pure pleasure to be had in browsing through its pages.

Best of all, all the profits are going to the Justice for Mineworkers campaign, which even now, a quarter of a century after the great miners’ strike of 1984-85 began, needs to continue its work on behalf of those victimised during and after the dispute.

In a foreword to the book, Rick Sumner, national convenor of Justice for Mineworkers, acknowledges the part played by the 1984-85 strike in virtually creating a new badge culture in the NUM, building on a relatively small tradition of national and area badges in previous years.

As he puts it:

“With the 1984-85 strike, a whole new scene developed. Every pit and workshop produced badges to show their loyalty to the union and the strike and a wonderful contemporary art form developed. Men on the picket lines not only wore their own branch badge but also collected others from across the whole of Britain. Many pits produced a series of badges that could be sold to raise money for the struggle.”

Make sure you order your copy of Enamel Badges of the National Union of Mineworkers while stocks last. It is likely to become a collector’s item – and valuable historical source – in its own right.

Enamel Badges of the National Union of Mineworkers is available from Brian Witts, 4 Balmoral Drive, Hednesford, Staffordshire WS12 4LT. Price £33, with cheques payable to Nine-One-Seven. Email Brian Witts for further information or call 01543 425743.

The UnionBook website.

A new social networking site for trade unionists worldwide has been lanched.

UnionBook shares some features with the likes of FaceBook and MySpace, but unlike them is run by and for union members.

It also doesn’t carry advertising, and promises to respect your privacy at all times when you sign up. But, of course, unlike them it unfortunately doesn’t have quite the same resources.

One feature of the site is a group set up by Canadian trade unionist Derek Blackadder dedicated to “lapel pin/badge collectors and traders”. Derek is currently offering to trade a range of Canadian public service union badges through the group.

You need to register and then log in to see much of the content, including the badge collectors group. But that should not be a barrier.

Click to go to the UnionBook Registration Page or to see the UnionBook Home Page.

People's March for Jobs, 1981

With unemployment now rising fast once again, this is a badge which will stir some rather pointed memories of the recession of the early 1980s.

The People’s March for Jobs set off from Liverpool on 1 May 1981 to draw attention to the plight of the unemployed. Every day, thousands of supporters joined the core 500 marchers, culminating in a rally at Brockwell Park in south London on 30 May. 

The march was organised by the North West, West Midlands and South East regions of the TUC, and consciously drew on the hunger marches of the 1930s.

During the march, Labour MP David Winnick drew attention to the plight of those who were without work, pointing out that 6,000 people were joining the dole queues every day while 400,000 had been out of work for more than 12 months.

Unemployment continued to be a major economic problem, blighting people’s lives for years to come. A second People’s March for Jobs took place in 1983. On their arrival in London, the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher refused to meet a deputation.

Badge of the Ship Constructors and Shipwrights Association.

As shipbuilding made the switch from wood to iron and sail to steam, the old established shipwrights’ associations found themselves a minority union behind the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron and Steel Shipbuilders.

Their answer was to federate, and in the decade from 1872 onwards an Associated Society of Shipwrights largely succeeded in bringing together most of the local and specialised societies under a single banner.

But despite growing rapidly in private dockyards and establishing a 48-hour week for its members in 1894, the society proved unable to win recognition in the naval dockyards, where a separate Ship Constructive Association was formed.

Between 1900 and 1910 the Associated Society succeeded in consolidating union organisation further by absorbing local organisations in Newport, Gloucester and on the Wear – and taking over smaller national bodies, including the Ship Constructive Association.

The result was a new Ship Constructive and Shipwrights Association, which would later become the Ship Constructors and Shipwrights Association – the name shown on the union badge pictured here.

Under this name the association continued until 1963, when it joined forces with the boilermakers’ unions to form the Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipbuilders and Structural Workers.

A further merger with the National Union of General and Municipal Workers in 1982 led to the creation of the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trades Union. The union would later contract its name to the three initials GMB.

• The shipwrights’ union records are held by the Working Class Movement Library in Salford.
• The GMB’s family tree (PDF) can be seen on the Trade Union Ancestors website.

Amalgamated Society of Woodcutting Machinists badge.

The Amalgamated Society of Woodcutting Machinists took its name in 1877, having grown out of the Birmingham and District Mill Sawyers and Planing Machine Workers Trade Society.

The Birmingham society had been founded in 1866 by a group of 80 sawyers. By the time it changed its name, it had more than 250 members, and by the end of the century it had grown large enough – partly through absorbing other local societies – to appoint its first full-time secretary.

By the turn of the century the union had changed its name once again, becoming the Amalgamated Society of Mill Sawyers and Woodcutting Machinists. The name would be changed back again within a few years, and after 1919 settled into the form of words shown on the badge pictured here.

In 1971, the society merged with the National Union of Furniture Trade Operatives to form the Furniture, Timber and Allied Trades Union (FTAT). FTAT itself merged with the GMB in 1993.

The British Worker - TUC general strike newspaper 1926.

The Trade Union Badge Collectors Society also includes collectors of other trade union ephemera –membership cards, commemorative plates, posters and leaflets…

This rather sad memento of the 1926 general strike is the 13 May edition of The British Worker, announcing the TUC General Council’s decision to end the strike and organise a return to work. Despite its upbeat tone, the strike had ended in defeat for the miners and disaster for the trade union movement.

The British Worker was launched by the TUC at the beginning of the strike and printed on the presses of the Daily Herald. This particular paper was the eighth in the run. There would in total be 11 before publication ceased on 17 May 1926, with circulation peaking at half a million.

Further examples of the paper can be seen on the Union Makes Us Strong trade union history website.

The earliest known surviving example dates to 1901, and can be found in Unison’s trade union badge collection, although the Amalgamated Society of Engineers produced a badge of its own for TUC delegates back in 1893.

The Trade Union Badge Collectors Society spoke to Keith Faulkner, Senior Events Officer at the TUC and the man responsible for producing each year’s new badge, about how he approaches the task.

Clive Jenkins' choice of badge for TUC 1988.

TUBCS: How did you come to be the person responsible for the annual Congress badge – presumably it’s not the whole of the day job?

Keith Faulkner: Back in 1988, when Clive Jenkins was President and General Secretary of MSF (Manufacturing Science Finance), he wanted something other than the standard badge, as produced over many years.  As the TUC’s in-house designer at that time, I was asked to liaise with his office and the manufacturers to ensure the result was achievable. Ever since, I have been the person responsible for the badge, as one very small part of my current job as Senior Events Officer.

TUBCS: Tell us a bit about how each year’s badge is developed? In recent years each has had its own theme. What part does the incoming president play in developing the theme and the design?
Keith Faulkner: Clive “broke the mould”, and in many but not all years the President has wanted something more – as shown by John Edmonds (1988), Hector MacKenzie (1999), Tony Young (2002) and Nigel de Gruchy (2003), when the Congress slogan was also adopted. In many other years, the President has wanted their own personal preferences included, as Rita Donaghy (2000), Bill Morris (2001), Roger Lyons (2004) and Jeannie Drake (2005).  But equally, some Presidents have adopted a more straight forward approach as Leif Mills (1995) and Tony Dubbins (1999). 

TUBCS: Who actually designs the badge, and how does the design get translated into the solid piece of metal art that delegates receive?
Keith Faulkner: The normal process these days is that the President is asked what overall approach is desired, and previous examples and basic layout approaches provided for their consideration. Once an approach/theme has been decided, further layouts are developed until such time as the President is happy. The badge manufacturer – currently the very excellent Badges Plus of Birmingham – then takes the basic black and white artwork and uses this to make the mould from which the basic badge is made, and then in-fills any colour and adds an appropriate “pin”.

TUBCS: Do you get any feedback from people when they see a new badge?
Keith Faulkner: The badges are normally only seen around the Saturday lunchtime two days prior to Congress; so immediate responses are rarely given because the President is already by then heavily involved in the processes of Congress itself. However, comments are usually made in the following couple of days.

TUBCS:  There is a long tradition of Congress badges going back over a hundred years, including a porcelain badge to mark the 1905 Congress which took place in the Potteries. Have you ever looked back at some of the early designs, for inspiration or just out of curiosity?    
Keith Faulkner: The developing design(s) are certainly of interest out of curiosity but, due to different materials and production methods and the desire of Presidents to have a punchy slogan, inspiration is not a reason to look back.

TUBCS: What do you have in mind for 2009?
Keith Faulkner: Consideration will probably not begin until around May for the Congress 2009 badge when the current President – Sheila Bearcroft of the GMB – will be contacted and the process started again.

 
 A badge of the Dock, Wharf,
Riverside and General
Labourers Union.

More commonly known simply as the Dockers Union, the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers Union was originally formed in 1887 as the Tea Operatives and General Labourers Union.

The union recruited 2,300 members by the end of 1888, and in 1889 became involved in the Great Dock Strike which brought the Port of London to a halt. The dispute won widespread public support for the dockers, and achieved its aim of establishing a rate of 6d an hour.

In the wake of the strike, the union changed its name and membership grew rapidly to 30,932 by the end of 1889, and to 57,000 by the end of 1890. However, a dispute between dockworkers north and south of the Thames also led to the creation of a separate South Side Labour Protection League.

With the dockers split, and many remaining outside any union, by 1904, the Dockers Union had almost disappeared in London. It remained strong elsewhere in the countryhowever, and in 1922, the Dockers Union was one of 14 organisations which merged to form the Transport and General Workers Union.

Badge of the Association of Women Clerical Staff.

Founded in April 1903 with just 64 members, and originally known as the Association of Shorthand Writers and Typists, the union’s first president was the Fabian intellectual and trade union historian Sydney Webb.

It became the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries in 1912, and from that point on organised only women workers. Its badge shows not a penguin as it might appear but an auk – the union’s name being abbreviated to AWCS.

Though never large, the union survived until 1941, when it amalgamated with the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union. In 1972, it became the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff or APEX (and has since 1989 been part of the GMB).

One of the AWCS’ leading members, Anne Godwin (1897-1992), who had become general secretary of the CAWU in the 1950s, became only the third woman president of the Trades Union Congress, serving in 1961-62, shortly before her retirement.

The union’s surviving records can be found in the Working Class Movement Library.

Badge of the National Asylum Workers Union

The National Asylum Workers Union was founded in 1910, largely as a result of dissatisfaction with a new national pension scheme introduced for mental health workers the previous year.

Though heralded as a breakthrough by the then dominant Asylum Workers Association, the scheme was considerably worse for some asylum workers than the discretionary schemes it replaced. Their frustration came to a head in Lancashire, where agitation and petitions to improve the new scheme’s terms failed to sway members of the county asylums board.

The new union’s slogan, “All for one and one for all: thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”, was adopted early on at the same meeting, at the Boar’s Head Hotel, Preston, on 24 September 1910, at which the union was named. The first half of the slogan can be seen on the union’s badge.

By July 1912, the NAWU had 5,400 members and a paid general secretary, the Rev HMS Bankart, a former mental hospital chaplain. It affiliated to the Labour Party in 1915 and to the TUC in 1923.

One of its first disputes, at Bodmin Asylum in October 1918, broke out when nurses were ordered to remove their union badges and refused to do so. Five nurses were sacked, and 34 more walked out in sympathy (from a staff of 70).

Within a week, male staff at the hospital had joined the strike, and the visiting committee was forced to back down, reinstating all those who had been dismissed and permitting them to wear their union badges.

The union changed its name in 1930 to the Mental Hospital and Institutional Workers Union and, with the backing of the TUC, began to recruit in opposition to the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO).

In 1946, the MHIWU merged with the smaller Hospital and Welfare Services Union to form the Confederation of Health Service Employees, under which name it continued to operate until 1993, when it was one of three founder unions of the new Unison public services union. Its partners were the National Union of Public Employees and NALGO.

More on the history of the National Asylum Workers Union and its successor unions can be found on Michael Walker’s COHSE blog.