Working Class Movement Library

Home
United Kingdom
Salford
Working Class Movement Library

A unique collection capturing the stories and struggles of ordinary people's efforts to improve their world.

We hope to reopen our reading room by appointment from 13.4.21 - see https://wcml.org.uk/visit-the-library/visiting-the-library/ for details

21/08/2026

Manchester Cathedral Poetry Competition Opens for 2026 With the Theme 'Unsung City’:

'An open call for poems that seek out stories from the archives that should be more widely celebrated, which reanimate local historical events and shine a light on people and communities around Greater Manchester.

In a year where partner organisations such as People’s History Museum are celebrating the centenary of the General Strike of 1926, we welcome poems exploring radical movements, groups and events. Our judges will be looking for poems written for, through and with local people, especially those with which we have personal connections. Also of interest are poems that survey local landscapes, their buried histories, tangles of industry, development and ecological destruction. We want poems that explore historical memory with lyrical richness and celebrate elements of social life that rarely get memorialised through statues or plaques.

Our judges for the 2026 competition are Tom Branfoot, Ayo Ada Ogolo, Harry Ledgerwood and Dean Rogers Govender.

We are offering a winning prize of £200, with £50 for second place, and £25 for third place. There will be 10 highly commended poems with no financial renumeration.

Grab your notebook and a pen, sing the unsung city. We want your stories!

For more information and guidelines for entering the competition, please visit Manchester Cathedral’s website https://tinyurl.com/mcpoetrycomp26 '

Manchester Cathedral

20/08/2026

Upcoming events -please find below our Autumn/Winter schedule of events:

22nd August 2026- stall at Peel Park 180 year celebrations. 11-3pm. No booking required. Free entry.
https://www.salford100.org.uk/events/our-park-our-story-
celebrating-180-years/

17th September 2026- David Scott talk on the Weavers' Uprising, Annex, 1.30pm for a 2pm start, Free entry. Please book via Eventbrite. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1826-
weavers-uprising-and-chatterton-massacre-commemoration-
tickets-
1995907095852?aff=ebdsoporgprofile&_gl=1*1l0o16k*_up*MQ.*_ga*MTI4NTU2MDIyNy4xNzg3MjIxOTEy*_ga_TQVES5V6S
H*czE3ODcyMjE5MTEkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODcyMjE5MTEkajYwJ
GwwJGgwJGRBQnh6OXdxS0NHV1J5c0FFSzZNemVWbG5jQ
WxSenlJMHlR

October 14th and 15th 2026- Townsend production film screening
and Q and A of ‘The man with the Plan’ Annex, 5.30pm.
https://www.townsendproductions.org.uk/shows/the-man-with-the-plan-a-new-film-starring-simon-callow-as-william-beveridge/

26th November 2026- Engles lecture with Marx Memorial Library and Professor Chik Collins, online. Further details TBA.

5th December 2026- Talk by Chris Hall and the IBMT, followed by a drinks reception, Annex, 1.30pm for a 2pm start. Further details TBA.

14/08/2026

On this day in 1980, workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, went on strike and occupied their workplace. Their action gave birth to Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. It changed the course of European history, helping pave the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the eventual break-up of the Soviet Union.

For a decade, Polish workers had protested low wages, rising living costs and a lack of freedoms, but many had been victimised. The 1980 strike was sparked by the firing of crane operator and union activist Anna Walentynowicz just five months before her retirement.

Led by L**h Wałęsa, who had also previously been sacked from the shipyard for union organising, the workers had carefully prepared for the strike. Families, farmers and bakers brought food to those occupying the shipyard, while the workers used the management's printing presses to mass-produce strike bulletins countering state propaganda.

Although the shipyard workers won their own demands on 16 August, they remained on strike in solidarity with others. Their Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee drew up the famous 21 Demands calling for independent trade unions, the right to strike and freedom of expression. The Gdańsk Agreement was signed on 31 August, leading to the creation of Solidarność as a national trade union movement.

Come and visit the Working Class Movement Library: we hold a wide range of books, pamphlets, radical newspapers and other material on Solidarność, trade unionism in Poland, and international labour solidarity.

12/08/2026

The library will be closed Wednesday 26th August for an exciting day of filming- more to be announced in the future. Apologies for any inconvenience. Watch this space for more information!

11/08/2026

in 1984, thousands of working-class women marched in London in one of the most powerful demonstrations of the UK miners’ strike: the national rally organised by Women Against Pit Closures.

Women travelled from coalfield communities across England, Scotland and Wales to protest the Conservative government’s programme of pit closures and its devastating impact on mining families and villages. The march assembled at Hyde Park and processed to Trafalgar Square, filling the route with banners from local support groups and trade union branches. Estimates at the time put attendance at around 23,000 women and supporters.

Placards and chants made the message unmistakably clear: “Close a pit, kill a community”, “Women united will never be defeated”, and “Coal not dole”. Speakers at the rally included miners’ wives and activists who spoke from lived experience about poverty, policing, and the determination to defend jobs and communities. The demonstration was both a show of solidarity with the National Union of Mineworkers and a declaration of women’s political agency in their own right.

Women Against Pit Closures transformed the strike. Through soup kitchens, fundraising, picketing, public speaking and mass protest, women moved from the margins to the forefront of industrial struggle. The 11 August demonstration stands as a landmark moment in working class women’s organising and resistance.

Come and learn more at the Working Class Movement Library! We hold books, pamphlets, leaflets and posters on Women Against Pit Closures, including many items from Lancashire WAPC, and on the 1984-85 miners’ strike. We also have archive copies of left-wing newspapers that covered the strike and the role of women in it.

We also hold a large number of objects related to WAPC and the strike, from protest T-shirts and badges, to commemorative mugs and plates.

08/08/2026

On this day in 1886, Mary Quaile was born in Dublin. Her family moved to Manchester when she was a young child, and as a young woman she became active in the trade union movement while working at the socialist Clarion Café on Market Street.

A pioneer of women's trade union organising, she helped establish a branch of the National Café Workers' Union, became its Secretary, and played a leading role in the Manchester Women's TUC. She later became Women's Organiser for the Transport and General Workers' Union (today's UNITE) and represented the Trades Union Congress (TUC) both nationally and internationally.

In 1925, she led a delegation of four women trade unionists to the Soviet Union to investigate the conditions of women and children and to develop solidarity links. In 1926, she was active in supporting the General Strike in Britain.

Mary Quaile was the first woman to receive the TUC Silver Badge for long service, presented at a reception attended by more than 400 people at Belle Vue, Manchester.

As the Mary Quaile Club notes:

"For five decades, Mary never swerved from her belief that the best way for working women to improve their lives at work was through trade unionism. She dedicated her life to this cause, and for this she deserves to be remembered, and celebrated."

The Mary Quaile club https://maryquaileclub.wordpress.com/ celebrates Mary’s legacy today, check out its programme of events.

05/08/2026

The library building will be closed on Tuesday 11th August, Friday 14th August, and Tuesday 18th August. There will be no tours on Friday 14th. Apologies for any inconvenience.

29/07/2026

Remembering and Commemorating the 1826 Weavers Uprising and Chatterton Massacre

Just over 200 years ago, thousands of people in Pennine Lancashire and surrounding areas rose up in protest against mass starvation and political ineptitude.

On the third day of the Lancashire Rising, 26th April, 1826, at least six people were shot dead at Aitkens Mill, Chatterton - the now infamous Chatterton Massacre.

This talk details new findings from eyewitness testimonies, legal depositions, letters, 1826 newspapers and parish records and assize records, to discuss the motivation, organisation and legal repression of the uprising and the truth about the indiscriminate killings at Chatterton.

David will also discuss commemorative work that has been undertaken in recent years towards the acknowledgement of state violence and establishing a dignified and respectful public memory of the uprising and massacre victims.

Dr David Gordon Scott works at The Open University. He is founder and chair of the Weavers Uprising Bicentennial Committee, a registered charity formed in 2021 to facilitate the 200th Anniversary commemorations of the 1826 Lancashire Rising and Chatterton Massacre. He has secured several grants from The Open University for collaborative archival research and the creation of new educational resources and was lead author of the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant supporting the bicentennial commemorations across Lancashire in 2026.

Rise Up! Raising Awareness and Transforming Understandings of the 1826 Weavers Uprising

About Us - Weavers Uprising

Tickets and more information here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1826-weavers-uprising-and-chatterton-massacre-commemoration-tickets-1995907095852?aff=ebdssbdestsearch&_gl=1*rhxj6r*_up*MQ..*_ga*Mzk4OTk1ODM5LjE3ODUzMjEwOTE.*_ga_TQVES5V6SH*czE3ODUzMjEwOTEkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODUzMjEwOTEkajYwJGwwJGgw

03/07/2026

⭐️Holding the Line: Object Spotlight ⭐️

This object is a campaign document that summaries the key points of the Grunwick Strike and highlights the need for wide reaching solidarity.
The Grunwick Strike represented a truly intersectional struggle. Most of the Grunwick workers were South Asian women whose gender, race and class shaped their experiences on many levels. Though the language of this leaflet implies the authors underestimated the experience and organisational skills of these women, it highlights that their unique identities were recognised at the time of the strike.

This document is shown as part of a display that examines how the Grunwick Strike was shaped by the gender, race and class of the workers.

See this item and many others in person at our newest exhibition, Holding the Line: A New Look at Grunwick, from the 26th June.

Location: WCML foyer
Opening times: Wed-Fri, 1pm-4pm

To explore similar material for free, head to our website to book a reading room appointment!

26/06/2026

A great new article exploring Manchester’s role in establishing the weekend is now up on the BBC’s website - featuring research by our volunteer Peter Mulholland.

Media requests for the library can be made via: [email protected]

Address

51 Crescent
Salford
M54WX

Telephone

+441617363601

Website

http://www.wcml.org.uk/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Working Class Movement Library posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organisation

Send a message to Working Class Movement Library:

Want your organisation to be the top-listed Government Service in Salford?