Two hundred years of trade union history is celebrated and commemorated in an exhibition now running at the LSE Library.

Organised jointly by the London School of Economics and the TUC Libraries Collection at London Metropolitan Museum, the exhibition takes as its starting point the Combination Act of 1825 which permitted trade unions to organise but severely restricted their activities.

The exhibition is built around objects associated with specific historical campaigns, including the case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the General Strike, and the Grunwick dispute.

It features items associated with Walter Citrine, the long-serving general secretary of the Trades Union Congress from 1926 to 1946, and editions of Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

It also shines a spotlight on under-represented voices within the trade union movement, including LGBTQ+ rights campaigns led by trade union activist Jackie Lewis, beginning with calls for the local government union NALGO to boycott the Isle of Man, where it had held its delegate conference in 1983 despite the crown dependency’s refusal to decriminalise homosexuality. There are also recordings from the Black Trade Union Oral History Project.

The exhibition is curated by Indy Bhullar, Chelsea Collison and Jeff Howarth and is open to the public at the LSE Library Exhibition Gallery, 10 Portugal Street, London WC2A 2HD.

The LSE Library is also hosting a walking tour titled ‘Class Struggle on the Riverbank’. Taking place on the afternoon of Friday 24 October and led by Professor Laura Schwartz of the University of Warwick, the walk takes in the 1911 ‘Bermondsey Uprising’, when women working in local jam, biscuit and sweet factories went on wildcat strike in protest against poverty wages and appalling conditions, and other sites of class struggle on the banks of the Thames. Find out more.