A photograph of the Grunwick Strike, 1976.
At the Working Class Movement Library we are home to a nationally and internationally significant library and archive collection that covers over 200 years of campaigning and organising by working class people. Our collection includes a vast library alongside periodicals and pamphlets, magazines and newspapers, correspondence, minute books, posters, artwork, political banners, music, photography, ceramics and oral history recordings. Our collections date from the 1760s to present day and explore:
Our collection began in the 1950s as the personal collection of our founders Ruth and Edmund Frow, who collected material that reflected their personal interests and connections with groups and individuals in the labour movement and activist communities, as well as their connection with the Communist Party of Great Britain. Today we continue to add to our collection so that it reflects contemporary working class movements.
You can use the online catalogue to search all our catalogued items The online catalogue includes the library catalogue and archive database. The Library catalogue database contains details of our books, pamphlets and journals The Archives database contains details of our archival material including...
Our collections tell the story of working class resistance and radical movements from the late eighteenth century onwards through ephemera, publications, photography and memorabilia. Here are some of our highlights…. Anarchism The WCML holds significant collections of material exploring anarch...
The Working Class Movement Library is home to a rich visual archive showing how working class movements have used posters to communicate their message. From the internationalist vision of Walter Crane and his early socialist cartoons, artists have used visual techniques to communicate common themes ...
The Working Class Movement Library was founded by Ruth and Edmund Frow. It started as their own library collection which was created after they met and started a relationship in the 1950s. In a 1976 edition of History Workshop Journal they wrote, “To give some idea of the progress of our bibli...
Grunwick Processing Laboratories was a mail order film processing company, founded in 1965 by George Ward. On 20 August 1976 Devshi Budhi was sacked for working too slowly and three other young men then walked out in protest. Later that day Jayaben Desai was sacked for leaving early and her son Su...
The Working Class Movement Library is home to a rich visual archive showing how working class movements have used posters to communicate their message. From the internationalist vision of Walter Crane and his early socialist cartoons, artists have used visual techniques to communicate common themes ...
