Grow Your Family Tree
Tracing trade union records
Get more details about your ancestors’ working lives from organisations they belonged to. Follow Nick Peers’ guide to…
There have been over 5,000 trade unions in UK history, with a collective membership running into the tens of millions, so it’s likely that some of your ancestors belonged to one. If they were card-carrying members then they’ll probably be on file somewhere.
Search Find My Past’s online records
The biggest collection can be found at Find My Past ( www.snipca.com/38854), which has over three million records from 26 unions. Searching is free, but you’ll need a Plus subscription (£12.99 a month) to actually view the records. Take the time to scroll past the search boxes and review the summary to see which records are available. Once you’ve done that, enter an ancestor’s full name (or just the surname for a more speculative search) and wait for the search tool to reveal how many potential matches it has found, before clicking the ‘View Results’ button to review them.
The results show name, admission year, trade, union branch and – in some cases – the person’s birth year, which can all be used to confirm a possible match. Click the transcript or image button to the right to view the record in full. As our screenshot below left shows, the original image can be hard to read, so start by viewing the transcript. To do this, click a name at the bottom.
Visit trade union sites
Find My Past’s collection is large, but it’s far from complete because most trade union records have yet to be digitised. For a wider look at the trade union movement, visit The Union Makes Us Strong website ( www.unionhistory. info), which provides a general history based around topics such as the 1926 General Strike. You can also download scans of annual TUC reports from 1868 onwards (see screenshot above right).
If you know your ancestor’s profession from other sources, such as censuses or employment records, search the Union Ancestors website’s A-Z list of 5,000 trade unions ( www. unionancestors.co.uk). You’ll end up with a list of trade union names, only some of which would have existed during your ancestor’s working life. Find out what happened to these by viewing the ‘family trees’ that reveal how various unions amalgamated into modern-day unions – like the RMT for rail, maritime and transport workers.
If you haven’t yet found what you want, you may need to link an old union to its modern-day equivalent and visit its records in person. The richest resources are concentrated in places like the Modern Records Centre at Warwick University ( www.snipca.com/38856) and the Working Class Movement Library ( www.snipca.com/38857). Also check out the National Library of Scotland ( www. snipca.com/38858) for Scottish records, along with the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland’s ecatalogue ( www. snipca.com/38859) and the Irish Labour History Society ( www. irishlabourhistorysociety.com).
Finally, visit the National Archives ( www.snipca.com/38860) for a wider collection of records held in archives across the UK, along with web links and contact details where applicable.