TRADE UNION BADGES

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: april 2015 :: RMTnews 29 T hey have their Orders of the Garter and the Bath we have our trade union badges and awards. Since the mid-19th Century trade unions have produced badges to show their pride in being a member of a union and also their battle honours, won, lost or drawn. Members have fought for the right to wear the badge, have struck for that right and been sacked defending that right. The badge is outward sign of our sense of solidarity and commitment to the basic principle of “An injury to One is an Injury to All”. In our history there are thousands of trade unions from the tiny factory based unions of the cotton industry of the late 19th century to the mass unions of today. Membership has ranged at times from a handful to over one and half million in a single union. Members such as those of the Preston Operative Flagger and Slaters Trade and Benefit Society (1864-1925) which never had more than 56 members had pride in their badge as much as those of the General Railway Workers Union (1889-1913) with over 20,000 members when it helped to form the NUR in 1913. The art of the union badge is also part of our forgotten history. The symbols of the trade, the design, the mottos from “Unity is Strength” used by many unions, the important internationalist “Workers of the World Unite” of the NUR (1913- 1990) to the more grovelling “At the Command of Our Superiors” used by the Amalgamated Society of Watermen Lightermen and Bargemen (1914-1922) all tell a story which is as much political as it is the art of the badge. Behind the Badge is an attempt to pull all this information together from the history of the individual union, its growth, amalgamation or demise, with a few anecdotes thrown in, to showing one of the largest selections of trade union badges at a price for the ordinary trade unionist. Volume One lists over 600 trade unions and features 200 badges. Volume Two covers another 400 trade unions and 200 of the rarest trade union badges. It is not an academic book but written by trade unionists for trade unionists. All badges are cross referenced to the text. The index and contents are colour coded in volume two to show some organisations which have been claimed as unions but we have proved are not. We also list books and films that feature unions from the 1984 miner’s strike to Sylvester Stallone playing a truckers union leader in the USA. It is our history and, as much as they try to bury it, we must continue to keep it alive and show as much pride in it as our ‘superiors’ (as the bargemen would have said) show in theirs. For more information email Norman Biddlecombe: normanbiddlecombe@yahoo.co.uk TRADE UNION BADGES