# Manchester Trades Union Council

The Manchester Trades Union Council brings together trade union branches in Manchester in England.

## History

Efforts to bring trade unionists together across Manchester go back to the eighteenth century. In 1818 the cotton spinners persuaded other trades to join them in a successful but short lived Philanthropic Society. The first use of the name Trades Council was a meeting in 1837 of the United Trades Council of Manchester and Salford organising support for the Glasgow Cotton Spinners. A thousand people in the Corn Exchange listened to speakers including J.R. Richardson, author of ‘The Rights of Women’ and Joseph Rayner Stephens, both of whom went on to be active Chartists.
Following a trade union conference in Sheffield in July 1866 called to discuss the use of the lockout weapon by employers, two delegates from the Manchester Typographical Association, William Henry Wood and Samuel Caldwell Nicholson, convened the inaugural meeting of the Manchester and Salford Trades Union Council in October 1866. A month later Wood was elected secretary and Nicholson president. Wood and Nicholson were Conservative working men. Other members of the council included the radicals Peter Shorrocks of the Tailors, William MacDonald of the Operative Housepainters and Malcolm MacLeod, an engineer. When the Council decided to avoid identifying with any political movement, the radicals set up the Trade Unionists Political Association with MacDonald as president and MacLeod as secretary. One of the Trades Council's first decisions was the proposal to form a court of arbitration. Set up jointly with the Manchester Chamber of Commerce in 1868, it was short-lived, failing to arbitrate a single case. More significantly in February that year, the council called a national conference of trade unionists which met in June and agreed to form what became the Trades Union Congress. Woods was elected president and Shorrocks secretary. This soon became the leading national association of trade unions.
Peter Shorrocks played a leading role in establishing the Amalgamated Society of Tailors and was an active supporter of the International Workingmen's Association, the First International. He succeeded Wood to be secretary from 1877 to 1883. He was followed as secretary by George Davy Kelley, full-time secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Lithographic Printers and a member of the General Council of the Manchester Liberal Association. Kelley helped to greatly increase affiliations to the council. Many of the new affiliations were general unions of unskilled workers, a development which Kelley opposed as he felt the organisations would not endure, but they soon came to dominate the council. Despite this, Kelley remained the council's most prominent figure, being elected to Manchester City Council in 1891 as a Liberal-Labour representative.
In 1902, the council convened a meeting of local trade unionists and members of the Independent Labour Party and Social Democratic Federation, which renamed the council as the Manchester Trades and Labour Council, becoming the local affiliate of the Labour Representation Committee. Two years later, Kelley broke his links with the Liberals, and in 1906 he was elected as a Labour Member of Parliament, standing down from his trades council posts.
In the 1920s, the council affiliated to the Communist Party of Great Britain-led National Minority Movement. Although the Labour Party set up its own Manchester Borough organisation, the council continued to campaign on a wide range of labour issues, remaining the leading labour movement organisation in the city into the 1930s, and attracted the support of John Maynard Keynes for its proposals on local industrial policy.
In 1974, Salford District Trades Council was created, and the Manchester Trades Union Council adopted its present name.

## Secretaries

    1866: William Henry Wood
    1877: Peter Shorrocks
    1883: George Davy Kelley
    1906: Tom Fox
    1909: William R. Mellor
    1929: A. A. Purcell
    1935: Jack Munro
    1944: Horace Newbold
    1969: Colin Davis
    1974: Frances Dean
    1982: Dave Hawkins - UHDE
    1990: Arthur Berry - NGA
    1999 Jeno Menezes
    2004 Geoff Brown - UCU
    2012 Frank Ellis - TSSA
    2013 Richard Lighten - UNISON
    2014 Alexander Davidson - PCS
    2016: Chris Marks - PCS
    2018: Alexander Davidson - GMB
    2019: John Pye - UNISON
    2020: John Pye - UNISON

## Presidents

    1866: Samuel Caldwell Nicholson
    1882: Robert Austin
    1886: Matthew Arrandale - UMW
    1895: F. Entwistle - ASE
    1899: George Tabbron - Manchester Brassfounders
    1901: Matthew Arrandale - UMW
    1905: A. A. Purcell - NAFTA
    1906:
    Tom Fox
    1914: A. A. Purcell - NAFTA
    1920: Rhys Davies - SAU
    1921: Ernest Hookway
    1924: Jack Munro (NUSMW)
    1925: Ernest Hookway
    1927: Will Crick
    1927: Eric Gower
    1932: Abraham Moss - RCA
    1935: Fred Harrison - NSMM
    1938: Bob Bradfield
    1940: Tom Brown - NAUSAWC
    1944: Jim Porter - USDAW
    1946: Jim Cunnick - USDAW
    1950: Edmund Dell - ASSET
    1951: Jim Porter - USDAW
    1953: L. H. Addie - CSCA
    1954: Jim Cunnick
    1957: Jim Porter - USDAW
    1959: Edmund Dell - ASSET
    1961: Eddie Marsden - CEU
    1964: Ernest Pearson - AEU
    1967: Eddie Marsden - CEU
    1969: C. Davies
    1970: Frances Dean - USDAW
    1975: Mick Gadian - NUTGW
    1978: M. Bury
    1980: T. Keane
    1982: Denis Maher - CEU
    1988: Tony Lucas - MU
    1989: Henry Suss - GMB Clothing and Textile Section
    1991: Harry Spooner - NASUWT
    2004: Sharon Green - PCS
    2013: Annette Wright - PCS
    2017: Alexander Davidson - PCS
    2018: Annette Wright - PCS
    2019: Ian Allinson - UNITE
    2020: Ian Allinson - UNITE

## Vice Presidents

    1945/46/47: Frances Dean
    1948/49: E Pearson
    1950:P Jackson
    1951: J Porter
    1952:P Jackson
    1955/56: J Porter
    1957/58: E Dell
    1959/60: E Marsden
    1961/62/63: E Pearson
    1964/65/66: E Marsden
    1967/68: C Davies
    1969/70: A Harvey
    1973/74:S Gadian
    1977/78/79: F Hodgkinson
    1980/81:D Maher
    1982/83/84: JP Gunn
    1985-89: Henry Suss
    1989-91: G Peel
    2004: Sarah Livesey - USDAW
    2013: John Clegg - UNITE
    2019: John Morgan - NEU
    2020: John Morgan - NEU