How This Book Came About

This book has been a labour of love and would not have been accomplished without the dedication and expertise of Dr Annie Ravenhill-Johnson who began her study of trade union emblems in her prize-winning undergraduate thesis, Gender Issues in Trade Union Imagery 1850–1925, followed by an MA dissertation covering the same historical period on Themes and Influences in Trade Union Imagery, 1850–1925. Annie Ravenhill-Johnson's chapters, which form the bulk of the book, build upon her earlier research to reveal the array of cultural influences that gave the emblems their form and meaning.

A classicist by profession, I became intrigued by the Greco-Roman iconography of the New Unions when teaching mid-Victorian Britain at an Open University residential school in the 1990s. I was put in touch with Annie by the Manchester People's History Museum and a friendship and collaboration began, which has never wavered despite the obstacles of distance and the usual pressures of life and work making plans for a sustained project a real challenge in recent years.

Annie contributed a fascinating lecture on the Bricklayers' banner to the Open University DVD, Four Faces of Rome, part of the Classical Studies Department's course Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman Empire (presented 2000–2010), introducing thousands of part-time students to the rich iconography of this surviving emblem housed in the Manchester museum.