• The Potteries Museum
• Gladstone Pottery Museum
• Ford Green Hall
• Etruria Industrial Museum

• Home
• Browse Collections
• Photographic Archive
• Object of the Month

• Browse Collections
  • Ceramics Collections
    • Slipware Collection
    • Studio Pottery Collection
    • Minton
    • 18th and 19th Century
    • 20th Century Ceramics
    • East Asian Ceramics
    • Ceramic Enquiries
    • Ceramics Floorplan
    • Ceramic Links
    • News
    • Publications
    • Recent Acquisitions
    • Research Resources
      • Factories
      • General
        • Bottle Ovens
        • Changes in the Pottery Industry in the 20th Century
        • The story of china clay and Cornish stone
        • Clays used in the Pottery Industry
        • Coal in North Staffordshire
        • Working Conditions and Responsibilities of fireman
        • Customs and working Practices of the Victorian pottery Factory
        • Digging fo early Porcelain
        • Health Risks in a Victorian Pottery Industry
        • A brief History of the Pottery Industry
        • The Industrial Revolution and the Pottery Industry
        • Ceramic Instituations and Associations
        • Key dates in the English Pottery Industry
        • The Potters` Union
        • Public Toilets: A History
        • 10 reasons why we started making pots in North Staffordshire
        • Victorian Potteries The Social Conditions
        • Types of Pottery
      • People
      • Processes
    • Information Sheets
  • Local History
  • Natural History
  • Decorative Arts
  • Fine Arts
  • Our Online Collections

The Potters` Union

The first union - Journeyman Potter's Union

The first real union to emerge in the six towns was the Journeyman Potter's Union in 1824. By the following year it had embarked upon a series of confrontations with employers. The issues involved:

• the truck system;
• standardisation of sizes; and
• piece rates.

These would dominate union affairs for years to come. In August 1825 a strike began.

The manufacturers, who had closed ranks and promised to subsidise each other until the union's defeat retaliated with a lockout. The strike failed, the union disintegrated and selected leaders were victimised.. The biggest problem was with the Journeyman Potter's Union was its lack of unity. Ovenmen, potters, cratemakers, printers  and others all argued for their own corner and worked for the advantage of their group. This trend continued in later combinations.

The Great Union

The re-emergence of trade unionism in North Staffordshire was related to the unrest of the 1830s. This was a period of social crusades. There was widespread calls for parliamentary reform and national attention was focused on Robert Owen's new socialism.

In the Potteries protest of all description became centred on the truck system which was unpopular with both potters and local shop keeper alike. In 1832 the various pottery factions came together as the National Union of Operative Potters. By 1833, 6,000 Staffordshire Potters were members. But the factional weaknesses resulted in the organisation being splintered into 54 lodges.

Masters posed little opposition in the early days of the union. Some even encouraged it. The national reputation of the union was high and further boosted by the involvement of Robert Owen. This was played down locally because his views on socialism, family life, divorce and birth control would not have been popular in the Potteries.

Owen failed to persuade the potters to affiliate to the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. However he persuaded the union to set up its own pottery factory which went bankrupt within a year.

Origins of the Great Strike

In the early 1830s the Union had been fairly effective in dealing with the pottery manufacturers. In 1833 a series of small scale strikes were staged. This forced pottery manufacturers to agree to a series of minimum selling prices, which stabilised workers incomes. This system of pricing lasted for a few months.

Then three employers stopped paying the rates the union demanded and uncoordinated strike action broke out. The employers and union met again, the aim being to devise a committee with powers to determine prices for all Staffordshire Potteries. The union wanted the committee to be formed from worker and employer representatives, the employers wanted it to be solely of employers.

Behind the negotiations there was;

• the growing awareness by the Union of their power; and
• a growing fear by the employers of this power.

Strike action lasted from January 1834 to March. One by one employers gave in and the Union gained the advantage in the dispute.

After this there was a period of growing antagonism and even intimidation between the Master and the Union. In March, 1836, the employers formed a Masters' Union called the Chamber of Commerce. In 1836 the Union decided to try to get rid of 'Good from Oven' and 'Annual Hiring' practices. This was to be its undoing.

The Great Strike

Getting rid of Annual Hiring became the key issue. The Union began to use a subtle strike tactic to force the employer's hands. They withdrew a few key men from selected pot banks. This meant that production halted and men were laid off.

The Union encouraged all members who were affected to bring legal action against the employers via the magistrates. It seemed at this stage that the employers who were under great financial strain would give in. But only 14 factories were involved. The Chamber of Commerce stepped in and encouraged the factories to fight on, promising to compensate the employers for their losses.

The Chamber of Commerce was hoping that the 14 factories could hold out until September when negotiations for workers contracts would begin in readiness for Martinmas - contracts ran from one Martinmas to the next. The Chamber promised that as soon as the old contracts ended all factories would lock the employees out.

When the Union suggested that some of its employees should return to work the Chamber refused. From September to December there was no open negotiations. The Union was hoping that the Chamber of Commerce would disintegrate and the Chamber that the Union would.

Lock out

When Martinmas came the employers were no longer liable to legal action from employees laid off. No new contracts were drawn up and 64 factories closed. This meant that a further 20 000 people no longer had work.

Troops began to be moved into the area as the temperature of the situation rose. On 7 January the employers offered a modified form of the hiring agreement and reduced the 'Good form Oven' deductions. The Unions reject this as it came nowhere near the radical changes they wanted.

But throughout January the Union was becoming more and more concerned about the splits that were appearing among the membership. Moreover strike pay had dwindled from four shillings a week at the start of the strike, to two shillings by January 1837. Funds had been coming in from Unions up and down the whole of Britain, but this was still insufficient to save the potters from severe hardship.

By the middle of January the strikers resolve began to crumble and the end was inevitable. Agreements were being made between workmen and individual employers but the Chamber of Commerce insisted that the local out continue until all employers secured a return to work on their terms. On 27 January 1837 the lockout officially ended.

The aftermath

The combined strike and lock out had lasted 20 weeks. The potters and their families had suffered a great deal. Potters were left disorganised and demoralised by the failure of the Great Strike. The National Union of Operative Potters had tried to bring about positive changes in pay and conditions, but in the future the unions were more defensive trying to protect their position and opposing change. They had achieved none of their major aims.

However, although the potters were still burdened by 'good from oven' the employers had consented to a number of minor changes:

• That all ware declared faulty due to the maker's hand should be broken.
• That all ware damaged other than by the maker should be paid for.
• That a proportion of the maker's wages could be drawn on account if his ware remained unfired by pay day.

The first two points still lent themselves to much abuse by employers, but the last modification at least ensured that the potter didn't go home penniless on pay-day.

A new union - The United Branches of Pottery Operatives

In 1843 the potters combined to form a new union called The United Branches of Pottery Operatives. The union was formed to combat the growing threat of the Allowance System. The power structure within the union was decentralised, each branch being further subdivided into lodges for each town. The new union was characterised by down-to-earth realism rather than the revolutionary zeal of its predecessor.

The union started its own newspaper called The Potters' Examiner, which sought to influence the actions of employers by a series of 'open letters' reprimanding owners guilty of abuse. The paper had its basis in Christian morality and saw its struggle in a biblical context.

The union had early successes combating the evils of the truck system (which was technically illegal by the 1840s) and in a dispute over plate sizes. But it was with the allowance system that the union scored its biggest victory. The allowance system was instituted after the failure of the Great Strike. It was basically a system of stoppages - a crude reduction in the wages of the workforce. If the trade conditions were bad the workers had to allow 1d in every shilling. This soon rose to 2d and then 3d.

The union hired an eminent lawyer who maintained that in his opinion the system was illegal. Rather than face the union in a court of law the employers agreed to abolish the allowances.

Emigration of pottery workers

Potters were apprehensive about the appearance of mechanisation in the industry. Men were fearful of their future in the industry because of inventions such as the 'paste box' and the mechanical 'flat presser'. This was one factor which weighed heavily with those who were to favour emigration.

William Evans, a Welshman from Abergavenny was the leader of the United Branches of Operative Potters. He favoured emigration to the United States of America. He used the newspaper 'The Potter's examiner and Workman's Advocate' to promote the idea. Evans thought that if potters emigrated there would be no surplus of labour in the Potteries. As a result wages would rise to an economic level.

In 1849 the name of the newspaper was changed to 'The Potter's Examiner and Emigrant's Advocate'. Soon grand plans were made to purchase 51,000 acres in Wisconsin. Land here was available for 5 shillings an acre. With individual subscriptions and society levies the union managed to raise money to buy an initial 4,000 acres of land. This was to be divided in lots of 20 acres.

The new colony in Wisconsin became known as Pottersville. Emigrants were selected by lotteries.

The emigrants were faced with many hardships and the new colony demanded a much greater financial support than had been initially expected. Under the leadership of the hollow-ware pressers, the various branches of the union gave more and more of their funds to emigration. This effectively meant that the once powerful union was denuded of strike funds and suffered a significant loss of muscle power at the bargaining table.

Despite the fact the Society painted the 'new life' in glowing colours the settler found reality very different. Many complained that much of the 'promised land' was peopled by Indians, and, as it was as yet surveyed, they were not allowed to occupy their lots. Others complained that the land was sandy or marsh and was ill-suited to cultivation. There were also problems over the transfer of funds from Staffordshire to America.

Some maintained they were virtually destitute through lack of money. A number of these letters found their way into the hands of the British Press who were critical of Evans and the Emigration Society. The Society had never been able to generate the funds to meet its aims. In six years they had collected £6,000, but of this only a relatively small amount was spent on land. Financial mis-management in England was matched by bungling and incompetence in America.

In Stoke branches and lodges of the Potter's Union were withdrawing support for the Emigration Society. In 1849 the organisation quietly folded. It had succeeded in sending barely 100 people to Wisconsin. In addition it robbed the United Branches of Operative Potters of its strength and much of its credibility.