Items22The creator’s order
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George Loveless (preacher)A Methodist lay preacher and farm labourer in Tolpuddle, Dorset, Loveless formed a friendly society in 1833 to resist wage cuts, meeting under the village sycamore now known as the Martyrs' Tree. He and five others were sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia for swearing a secret…0 - 2
Samuel GompersBorn 27 Jan 1850A London-born cigar maker, Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor in 1886 and led it for all but one year until 1924. His "pure and simple" unionism, organising skilled craft workers for wages, hours and conditions and avoiding a labour party, gave American unions their durable shape, and…0i - 3
Ben TillettTillett, a tea warehouse labourer, led the 1889 London Dock Strike with Tom Mann and John Burns, when tens of thousands of casual dockers stopped work for the "docker's tanner", sixpence an hour. Australian unions sent around £30,000 to sustain them, and they won. The strike proved that unskilled…0i - 4
Mary Kenney O'SullivanBorn 8 Jan 1864A Chicago bookbinder, Kenney O'Sullivan organised women in the printing and garment trades, became the American Federation of Labor's first woman national organiser in 1892, and in 1903 co-founded the Women's Trade Union League, which brought working women and wealthy "allies" together to fund…0i - 5
Mary MacarthurBorn 13 Aug 1880Macarthur founded the National Federation of Women Workers in 1906 for women in "sweated" trades that men's unions ignored, and campaigned for the Trade Boards Act 1909, which set legal minimum wages in chain-making, box-making and tailoring. The next year she led the women chainmakers of Cradley…0i - 6
Clara LemlichAt a mass meeting in New York in November 1909, 23-year-old Lemlich, a shirtwaist maker who had already been beaten on picket lines, interrupted the speeches to call for a general strike. Around 20,000 garment workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian women, walked out in the "Uprising of the…0i - 7
Rose SchneidermanBorn 6 Apr 1882Schneiderman, a cap maker, gave the speech after the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which killed 146 garment workers, telling a wealthy audience that only a strong working-class movement would save lives. She led the New York Women's Trade Union League for decades and helped win the state's factory…0i - 8
Carl LegienBorn 1 Dec 1861Legien built Germany's Free Trade Unions into a centralised movement of millions, and in November 1918, amid revolution, signed the Stinnes-Legien agreement with industrialist Hugo Stinnes: employers recognised unions, accepted collective agreements, works committees and the eight-hour day. That…0i - 9
Albert Thomas (minister)Born 16 Jun 1878Thomas, a French socialist who had run munitions production in the First World War, became the first director of the International Labour Office in 1920 and made it far more than a secretariat. He pushed governments to ratify conventions on working hours, night work and unemployment, built its…0i - 10
Ernest BevinBefore he was a minister, Bevin was the greatest union builder in British history. A former carter, he negotiated the 1922 merger of fourteen unions into the Transport and General Workers' Union and led it until 1940, when it was the largest union in the world. As wartime Minister of Labour he used…0i
