ABSTRACT
The millwrights, steam engine-makers, blacksmiths and other skilled craftsmen whose societies eventually formed the national Amalgamated Society of Engineers, first banded together in local clubs for ‘friendly benefits’, i.e. for private mutual help in meeting the problems of sickness, accident and death. The Amalgamated Trades formed their own informal pressure group, however, even before the Trades Union Congress was organized in 1868, when they perceived that there was a threat to the legal status of trade unionism. It is commonly known that William Allan, General Secretary of the ASE, was one of five leaders of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades (later called the ‘Junta’ by the Webbs) who lobbied to win appointment of friendly members of the Royal Commission of Inquiry in 1867. The Independent Labour Party scored impressive successes, notably in the election of the top leadership of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, an industrial-type union.
