Early trade unions

The first trade unions were set up between 1700 and 1750. Most of them were like the guilds of the Middle Ages. Members paid in a few pence a week, and got help if they were unemployed or ill. Strikes were rare, but they were not unknown. The miners of Tyneside went on strike in 1765.

Employers did not like the unions. Some used lock-outs to try to smash them. (They closed their works, and gave the men their jobs back only if they left the union.) And the government took the employers' side. In 1799, during the wars with France, all unions were banned by law.

In spite of the ban, some unions kept going, often in secret. When the ban was lifted, in 1824, new unions were set up. Most of them soon failed, though - employers locked the men out, and brought in non-union workers. And wages were low, so not many men could afford union fees.

Robert Owen tried to set up a union for all trades and for the whole of England in 1834. But it lasted only a few months. It collapsed when six farm workers from Tolpuddle in Dorset were charged with taking a secret oath when they joined it. They were found guilty and sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia.

News of the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' killed Owen's union. Workers did not want to risk transportation for themselves and ruin for their families. For the 'martyrs', though, the outcome was not all bad. Fair-minded people wrote letters and signed protests, saying that they had been wrongly treated. After four years, the 'martyrs' were brought home.

Walter Robson: Britain 1750 – 1900; Oxford University Press, 1993/2002, page 66