ABSTRACT
The Potters’ Trade Union history up to the Great War falls into three stages: 1824-1831, 1831-1850, 1850 to the decade which opens with the Great War. The Potters were kept together under the capable and often queer leadership of another Welshman, William Evans, who became the editor of one of the finest journals in Trade Union literature. The National Society of Pottery Workers is more an industrial organisation concentrating on trade benefits than a friendly benefit society, like the earlier small craft organisations. Since 1917 there has been a strong National Joint Industrial Council of the Pottery Industry, representing workers and employers equally, with a few honorary and co-opted members. The extraordinary leap in the membership of the National Society of Pottery Workers during the last year may have been the direct result of the adoption of a scheme of Holidays with Pay. In the eighteenth century the Master Potters overtly combined to raise the prices of commodities.
