Papers relating to Walter Greendale's membership of the Trades Union Congress General Council

A large proportion of the collection consists of minutes of the trades union congress General Council and the various committees that support it [U DTU/1-24 & 40-62]. The collection also includes circulars, memoranda, agendas, press releases, General Council decisions, cases considered by the Disputes Committee, papers on the economy and trade and industry, and correspondence including letters addressed to Walter Greendale himself.

The Trades Union Congress was formed in Manchester in 1868 and is essentially a national voluntary association of trade unions, working with government and the Labour movement to improve the rights and conditions of working people. The General Council was set up in 1921 as the TUC's executive body, supported by a variety of committees and departments, and run on a day-to-day basis by the General Secretary. The General Council is composed of trade unionists elected by affiliated trade unions at the Annual Congress.

Walter Greendale served on the General Council during the Winter of Discontent, 1978-79, the election of the first Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher in May 1979 and a peak in trade union membership of 13 million which occurred in the same year. Greendale was a docker in Hull and a leading member of the Transport and General Workers' Union.

Access will be granted to any accredited reader

Trades Union Congress

Donated by Walter Greendale in instalments: U DTU/1-39 in Nov 1980; U DTU/40-77 in Feb 1981

Other repositories:

Main archive of the Trades Union Congress [MSS.292], Warwick University, Modern Records Centre [GB 0152]

Tape and transcript of interview with Walter Greendale, about trade unionism in British docks, undertaken by Prof. FJ Lindop, University of Greenwich [MSS.371/QD7Docks 1/15/i, ii, iii ], Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick [GB 0152]