Aberdeen Trades Union Council

Aberdeen Trades Union Council (ATUC) is the body made up of affiliated trade union branches and organisations working in the Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire area to promote the interests of workers in the region. The ATUC provides services to affiliated branches on a wide range of industrial, social and community issues and is affiliated to the STUC. It has an office based in Aberdeen, Scotland.

History

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.

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. 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.

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 1884 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.

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. In 1973, it became the leading organisation in the new Grampian Federation of Trades Councils.

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.

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. While a merger with the NUWM was proposed, this did not occur, and the council soon returned to the Labour Party.

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. In 2003, it was officially renamed as the Aberdeen Trades Union Council.

Secretaries

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: Sultan Feroz 2012: Brian Carroll 2014: Nathan Morrison 2015: Laura McDonald 2016: Post vacant 2017: John Connon and Gerry McCabe 2018: Fiona Napier

2020: Sasha Bryden

2022: Fiona Napier 2023: John Singer 2024: Andrew MacGregor & Douglas Haywood

Presidents

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

2021: Graeme Farquhar

Aberdeen Trades Union Council

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