The role of the trades councils

I’ve been asked recently when I’ll stop reading and start writing. It’s a good question—and one I ask myself often. (Although, to be fair, I’ve already got 15,000 words of my first draft together.) The trouble is always the same: what if I miss something? Wiser heads remind me that I inevitably will. The trick is to accept it and keep going.

One element that I really want to do justice to is the role played by the Trades Councils in campaigning for education. They’re hugely important, but not easy to include—partly because there are so many of them, and partly because they can often lie dormant for years. To get a feel for this, I went on a book-buying spree this month and picked a few local histories from the ‘shelves’ of AbeBooks. This included the histories of the following Trades Councils: -Aberdeen -Birmingham -Bradford -Reading -Manchester & Salford -London

I feel like I hit the jackpot. William Diack’s history of the Aberdeen Council alone made the whole thing worthwhile. Diack’s smiling eyes tell you all you need to know about the man—even if his glorious moustache, hanging beneath his nose like a snow-capped Cairngorm peak, hides a chuckle. His fabulous prose gives the impression you’re hearing it all over whiskey and a pipe, and it makes him the most likeable of authors. It’s no cold, dull list of events. Diak litters it with anecdotes and stories throughout and, to my delight, does not skip over the role of the Council in educational matters.

Many Trades Councils were formed in the second half of the nineteenth century, around the time of the 1870 Education Act created a new public body: School Boards, whose members were elected locally. These Boards were crucial to the development of Labour representation, arriving just a few years after the Second Reform Act of 1867, which gave the majority of working-class men the vote.

Labour was slow to figure out how to organise itself, but when it did, it was the Trades Councils that led the way—seeking candidates from among their own ranks or from others who would represent their views. Many of these candidates were women, both working-class and middle-class, who also experienced public roles for the first time. Diack, in fact, celebrates the election of their candidate, Mrs Fyvie Mayo, the first ever woman to serve on a public board in Aberdeen, in 1894.

The Trades Council books I chose weren’t random. Each one represents a town and city that played a crucial role in the union movement’s work on education: Bradford was the home of Fred Jowett and Margaret MacMillan; Reading was one the WEA’s first branches; and London, Birmingham and Manchester were all focal points of trade union activity.

It’s easy to forget how local and personal the fight for education was—how many voices shaped it before Labour had a name. The Trades Councils weren’t just footnotes; they were the footsoldiers. And they deserve more than a passing mention.