People's History Museum, Manchester

The People’s History Museum’s collection relates to the history of working people in Britain. The collections of the People’s History Museum have been considerably developed and improved since the museum’s originators, the Trade Union, Labour and Co-operative History Society, ran a museum in Limehouse Town Hall, London during the 1970s and 1980s. Our collections of museum objects and archives were designated as being of national importance by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in 1998 and consist primarily of items from the last 200 years of the organised labour movement in Britain representing the social history of working people. Our collection of 18th and 19th century political cartoons is generally regarded as one of the finest outside the British Museum. There are significant poster collections, particularly some 1500 political posters relating to the Spanish Civil War and to the Labour Party, some 3000 badges from a variety of organisations and an important collection of political tokens and medals. There is a substantial collection of the work of Cliff Rowe, a founding member of the Artists International Association, a collection of commemorative ceramics and some 70,000 photographic images covering labour history, the Labour Party and more general social history. Additions in recent years are collections from the Department for Work and Pensions, the Oddfellows Friendly Society, the Co-operative and the Professional Footballers’ Association. Have a look at a selection of these collections, including Thomas Paine’s death mask, Keir Hardie’s pit lamp and Ben Tillett’s leather bag from the 1889 Dock Strike by searching our collections.