Combining Efforts: 200 Years Of Trade Union History
Exhibition showing at the London School of Economics until 31 January 2026
Reviewed by Jim Horton
A free exhibition dedicated solely to the history of British trade unionism is a rarity. This alone entitles this exhibition to be recommended to activists. With more than one in five workers holding membership, trade unions remain a vital part of working-class life. Yet the history of our movement is either not taught in schools, or taught superficially.
This means many people are unaware of the role of trade unions in achieving better pay and conditions in the workplace, including shorter working hours, annual leave, sick pay and improved health and safety. Outside of the workplace, it was the trade union movement which played a leading role in achieving the right to protest and the extension of the franchise to the male working class in the nineteenth century.
This also means most people are unaware that the ruling class, consisting of wealthy landlords, factory owners and capitalist employers, resisted ceding these basic rights to the working class. The full force of the capitalist state has been used to brutally break up peaceful workers’ demonstrations and attack picketing strikers. It is hardly surprising therefore that the ruling class today is not keen for us to learn about the contrasting ‘traditional British values’ of the working and capitalist classes, and how they still shape contemporary society. Unfortunately, these aspects of trade unionism are not highlighted in this exhibition.
Arguably, the exhibition struggles to achieve its ambitious title of Combining Efforts: 200 Years Of Trade Union History. While fascinating, the 45 exhibits and a range of digital images, courtesy of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and London Metropolitan University, appear to have been randomly selected. The curators would likely counter that the selections highlight key moments in the history of the British trade union movement, yet there are many obvious gaps. There is no mention of the industrial action of the early 1970s which brought down Edward Heath’s Tory government and, most glaringly, the 1984-1985 miners’ strike or other key battles in that important decade.
The impetus for the exhibition is the 200th anniversary of the passing of the 1825 Combinations of Workmen Act. Twenty-five years earlier the government had introduced legislation consolidating laws applying to specific trades. The 1799 and 1800 Combination Acts made any combination of two or more workers to raise wages or reduce hours of work a criminal offence. Strikes were banned at a time of industrial and political radicalism following the French Revolution of 1789.
In 1824, the government repealed the Combination Acts believing the threat from the working class to its wealth and political power had subsided. A year later though, following a wave of industrial action and increased union membership, the government amended the repeal act. From 1825, any union activity which was not limited to bargaining over wages and conditions was liable to prosecution as a criminal conspiracy. Picketing, and any attempt to persuade workers not to work, once again became a criminal offence. In the same year, the Master and Servant Act made it a criminal offence to breach an employment contract, further undermining the ability of workers to engage in lawful strike action.
Included in the exhibition is a digital image of the 1834 demonstration in London in support of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who were deported for taking an illegal oath to join a union. With up to 100,000 people protesting, it was one of the first and largest mass public demonstrations of its type in the UK. Also included is the front page of Cleave’s Penny Gazette of Variety of May 1838 reporting on their return to Britain following the revoking of their deportation.
An 1898 London County Council Election poster, addressed ‘To All Trade Unionists’, illustrates the importance of the link between the industrial and political activities of trade unions. The poster promotes voting for the Liberal Party, but the exhibition does not explore how trade unions later helped to establish the Labour Party, clearly relevant today as workers are looking for a political alternative to Starmer’s Labour.
There are some fascinating documents relating to various negotiations between unions and employers over pay and working hours involving the National and Amalgamated Sailors’ and Fireman Union, the Brick Layers Operatives Union and the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees. The exhibition also includes the manuscript of Robert Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists from 1910, and early and more recent editions of his book.
There is a small section devoted to the 1926 general strike, though its narrative reflects the views of the TUC leaders both then and now, when it states: “Despite the enormity of the action it [the general strike] didn’t have the impact that the unions had hoped for”. The actions taken by millions of workers, with elements of workers’ control over parts of the economy, had the potential to move from a dispute over pay cuts to the transformation of society. The fact that the general strike did not realise its potential was partly because, as the exhibition informs visitors, the “TUC moved quickly to end the strike, but won few, if any, concessions from the government or mine owners”. The key factor in this betrayal of the miners and the wider working class was the TUC having no desire to lead a serious challenge against capitalism, fearing the potential revolutionary consequences no less than the political establishment did.
Artefacts relating to the 1926 general strike include a copy of the British Worker, the official general strike bulletin, and an excerpt from the diary of Walter Citrine, who became TUC general secretary during the strike. Citrine is featured later in his own section at the exhibition. There is no recognition though of left-wing trade union leaders.
Three digital images displayed on a large screen feature a cartoon from the February 1926 edition of the Trade Union Unity journal depicting a wealthy mine owner seeking to break the unity of miners for his own interests, a group of pickets standing at the London Docks, and a group of strike-breaking volunteers at Dover docks. To be clear though, the perfidy of the TUC leaders, not strike-breaking, was the most significant factor in the defeat of the general strike.
The exhibition also touches on themes of gender, race and sexuality. The match workers’ successful strike of 1888, involving female workers fighting against horrendous conditions at Bryant & May in East London, is featured and impressively includes the original match-workers’ strike register from the year of the strike, and the matchmakers’ union rules from 1893.
Related to this section are digital images featuring a poster promoting the May 1969 demonstration in Trafalgar Square for equal pay, and a plaque commemorating the Ford sewing machinists whose industrial action in 1968 not only won them equal pay but was also crucial to securing the passage of the 1970 Equal Pay Act.
Also featured is the 1976 strike at Grunwick’s photo-processing plant in West London, involving predominantly female Asian workers in a battle for union recognition. Intersecting gender and race, its inclusion acts as a background to the Black Trade Union Oral History Project featured at the end of the exhibition. A photograph shows Jayaben Desai, a strike leader, remonstrating with a police officer at one of the many pickets outside Grunwick. There is also a poster from 1977 advertising a meeting in solidarity with the strikers. After two years the campaign was eventually defeated because the solidarity action of members of other trade unions was not matched by the Grunwick workers’ own union leadership nor the TUC, of which there is no mention in the exhibition.
A section of the exhibition is devoted to Jackie Lewis, who was closely involved in the formation of one of the first lesbian and gay groups in a British union, NALGO, now UNISON. Artefacts include Gay Rights at Work (GRAW) and NALGAY newsletters from 1983, and the Manx Star newspaper report of the gay rights march on Tynwald in the same year. The penultimate part of the exhibition looks at the Black Trade Union Oral History Project.
Yet, despite some really fascinating material, the exhibition lacks coherence and an educative message. While the starting point of the exhibition is the 1825 Combinations of Workmen Act, this theme is not really followed through. There is no mention of subsequent trade union legislation.
The Trades Dispute Act of 1906, passed by a Liberal government fearing the growing influence of the newly formed and trade-union backed Labour Party, gave workers greater rights to go on strike than exist today. Trade union rights were subsequently curtailed during the first world war and, most notably, following the defeat of the 1926 general strike. Anti-trade union laws were only eventually repealed by the reforming Labour government of 1945.
In subsequent decades both Labour and Conservative administrations attempted to reverse the rights gained under the 1906 Act, but were thwarted by trade union protests and industrial action, until Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government succeeded with a raft of legislation which was not seriously challenged by trade union leaders, particularly the TUC.
In an exhibition marking two hundred years since the passing of the repressive 1825 Combination Act, the quite sizeable elephant in the notably small exhibition room is the fact that Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s anti-trade union laws remain on the statute books, in no small part thanks to the inaction of the TUC. Labour has pledged to repeal the 2023 Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, and most of the provisions of the 2016 Act passed under Tory David Cameron, but has no intention of repealing previous anti-trade union legislation. Yet, none of this is commented on in this exhibition. Instead, we are presented with random snippets from our history, which fail to educate or offer an inspiring call to action.
At the end of the exhibition visitors are asked to comment on what they believe trade unions should be fighting for. The responses are illuminating, and include workers’ empowerment, workers’ democratic control over their workplaces, rebuilding the union membership base, union rights for precarious workers, and mass mobilisation against rising racism and fascism. International issues are addressed, most notably Gaza, with calls for an end to arms sales to Israel, and global trade union action against arms manufacturers and the Israeli government. In this respect, the TUC has conspicuously failed to follow the lead of the Italian working class.
Exhibition visitors also call on trade unions to disaffiliate from the Labour Party and demands for justice, freedom of speech, and the destruction of capitalism and for a classless society also feature. Yet it is the demand for the scrapping of all anti-trade union laws which is most resonating, more so for being conspicuously absent in the narrative of the exhibition itself.