Aberdeen Trades Union Council

Trade unionists in Aberdeen first formed a committee in 1846, in order to support joiners who were on strike. This committee lasted for three years, and no further organisation was established until 1868, when stonemasons in the town held a ten-week strike. John Jessiman of the Associated Carpenters and Joiners of Scotland founded the Aberdeen United Trades Council, with the aim of establishing a conciliation board to resolve future disputes. This was not achieved, but the council endured. Originally, thirteen trade union branches affiliated, but by 1873 it had more than fifty delegates.[1]

Even by the 1880s, the council represented only 2,000 workers, but its ability to support unions on strike, campaign for shorter working hours and the municipalisation of utilities, gave it prominent role in the city. Socialists increasingly took leading roles on the council, focusing on organising unskilled workers, and setting up a union of women workers and the Scottish Farm Servants' Union.[1] In 1890, it finally achieved its aim of establishing a conciliation board but, since its rulings were not binding, it achieved little, considering only nine cases by 1906.[2]

The council first began electoral activity by opposing the re-election of Lord Provost of Aberdeen George Jamieson. By 1879, it was backing favoured candidates in the School Board election, and it first supported independent labour candidates in the 1885 local elections, with James Forbes and George Maconnachie elected. In 1891, it was a founding affiliate of the Scottish United Trades Councils Labour Party, and sponsored Henry Hyde Champion in Aberdeen South at the 1892 general election, although he could only take third place in the poll. At the 1895 general election, there was another independent labour candidate, John Lincoln Mahon, but the council eventually decided not to back his candidacy.[1]

The council also engaged with the broader trade union movement. It hosted the Trades Union Congress in Aberdeen in 1884, and in 1895 it hosted a meeting of Scottish trade unions and trades councils which led to the formation of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), in 1897.[1] In 1973, it became the leading organisation in the new Grampian Federation of Trades Councils.[3]

Early in its history, the council met at the Queens Rooms on Union Street, but in 1892 it purchased its own headquarters on Belmont Street, and four years later opened a purpose-built trades hall, with murals by Douglas Strachan. It relocated to a former warehouse in 1956, then to its social club, and now once more meets at hired rooms.[3]

The trades council continued to grow until 1920, when it reached a peak affiliated membership of 16,684. That year, it formed a council of action to oppose British intervention in the Polish-Soviet War. It co-ordinated local activity during the 1926 UK general strike, then during the 1930s focused on organising workers who were not trade union members. From 1918, the council was known as the Aberdeen Trades and Labour Council, and incorporated the local Labour Party. This arrangement ended in 1935, and it broke all links with the party in 1937 in order to take part in the Communist Party of Great Britain's National Unemployed Workers' Movement and United Front Against Fascism.[1] While a merger with the NUWM was proposed, this did not occur, and the council soon returned to the Labour Party.[2]

The council remained prominent in the STUC as the Aberdeen Trades Council and began growing again, membership reaching a new peak of 26,000 in 1980. Since then, its membership has declined in line with the Scottish trade union movement.[1] In 2003, it was officially renamed as the Aberdeen Trades Union Council.[3]

1868: Alexander Rennie

1877: William Brown

1878: John W. Annand

1885: James Forbes

1887: William Johnston

1907: G. A. Fraser

1913: James Balfour

1925: G. R. Mcintosh

1935: William Urquhart

1937: George Maitland

as of 1939: William McLean Brown

1948: Jimmy Milne

1969:

as of 1980: Ron Webster

1994: James Lamond

1998:

until 2012: Sultan Feroz

2012: Brian Carroll

2014: Nathan Morrison

2015: Laura McDonald

2016: Post vacant

2017: John Connon and Gerry McCabe

2018: Fiona Napier

2019 Fiona Napier

1868: Alexander Kidd

1875: Thomas Gill

1877: George Taylor

1879: William Anderson

1882: William Elphinstone

1883: James C. Thompson

1886: George Bisset

1889: William Livingstone

1890: Thomas Nicol

1895: John Keir

1898: Alexander Robertson

1900: John H. Elric

1903: H. H. Duncan

1911: Joseph Forbes Duncan

1913: David Palmer

1918: James C Allan

1919: George Catto

1922: G. R. McIntosh

1923: W. Williamson

1925: Thomas Brown

1927: P. Irvine

1928: Charles Bathgate

1929: Robert A. R. Fraser

1930: Robert Raffan

1935: M. Hetherington

1938: James J. Stewart

1952: William James Fraser

1969: James Lamond

1982: Jurgen Thomaneck

1990s: Sultan Feroz

2014: Alan Robertson

2015: Kate Ramsden

2017: Kevin Hutchens and Tyrinne Rutherford

2018: Kathleen Kennedy

2019: Sasha Brydon

• Scottish Trades Union Congress
• List of trade unions
• List of federations of trade unions

• Kenneth D. Buckley (1955), Trade Unionism in Aberdeen, 1878 to 1900, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd.
• William Diack (1939), History of the Trades Council and the Ttrade Union Movement in Aberdeen, Aberdeen: Aberdeen Trades Council.

• Official website