History
Labour Councils were formed to meet a need to co-ordinate trade union activity in a geographical region. The earliest examples of this form of organisation can be found in the medieval craft guilds and Craft halls that developed in European cities. An example of this is the historic Glasgow Trades Hall wherein the 14 Incorporated Trades of Hammermen, Tailors, Cordiners, Maltmen, Weavers, Bakers, Skinners, Wrights, Coopers, Fleshers, Masons, Gardeners, Barbers, Bonnetmakers & Dyers yearly elected members of the Trades House, headed by the Deacon Convener of the Trades:
- The Trades House of Glasgow was created at the time of reform of Glasgow's local government in 1605. At that time the electorate was basically divided into two groups, the Merchants and the Craftsmen. The Craft Incorporations or Guilds comprised the trades Rank of Burgesses under the leadership of the deacon convener, who was given a council. This included the Craft leaders and is the body we now recognise as the Trades House.
The trade union activity of the late nineteenth century in particular spurred the establishment of Labour Councils and Trades Councils acrossing North America, Australia and Britain.
Some notable events in the history of labour councils include:
- 1791 - 1794 - Glasgow Trades Hall built to serve as a public hall and meeting place for the city’s Trades House & 14 Incorporated Crafts.
- 1834 - attempt to establish the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in Britain.
- 1856 - Melbourne Trades Hall Committee formed. Now known as Victorian Trades Hall Council
- 1858 - trades councils started forming in major British towns and cities.
- 1858 - Sheffield Trades Council and Glasgow Trades Council founded.
- 1859 - Melbourne Trades Hall opened in May.
- 1860 - London Trades Council founded.
- 1861 - Dundee Trades Union Council founded.
- 1864 - Manchester and Salford Trades Council formed.
- 1868 - First Trades Union Congress called by Manchester and Salford Trades Council in Manchester, with invitations being sent to "trades councils and other similar federations of trade societies" only.
- 1871 - Trades & Labor Council of Sydney formed.
- 1893 - San Francisco Labor Council chartered.
- 1895 - Trades Union Congress (Britain) restricted to unions, with trades councils excluded altogether to avoid dual representation.
- 1926 - In Britain, Trades Councils play a prominent role in organising the General Strike
Read more about this topic: Labour Council
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“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
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“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)