About
The Working Class Movement Library in Salford holds one of the most remarkable collections in Britain, and it exists because two people decided to build it. Ruth and Eddie Frow, a teacher and an engineer, both communists, began collecting in the 1950s: books, pamphlets, newspapers, banners, badges, minute books, letters and ephemera documenting the organised working class in Britain over more than two hundred years. They filled their house in Old Trafford so completely that visitors had to be shown round it, and in 1987 Salford City Council gave the collection a permanent home in Jubilee House, a former nurses' home on the Crescent.
What the collection covers is the whole span of working-class self-organisation: trade unionism from the combination laws onwards, Chartism, the co-operative movement, friendly societies, the Labour and communist parties, the unemployed workers' movements, anti-fascism and the International Brigades, the peace movement, women's organisation within the labour movement, and the strikes and disputes that punctuate all of it. There is material here that survives nowhere else, much of it because ordinary members kept it and eventually gave it to the Frows.
The building is worth attention in its own right. Jubilee House was designed by Henry Lord and built in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, and the reading rooms and displays now occupy the spaces where nurses lived. Trade union banners hang in the stairwell, and the atmosphere is that of a working library rather than a museum, which is the point.
Access reflects that dual character. Anyone can drop in on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons between 13:00 and 16:30 to see the displays and the banners; using the collections themselves requires a reading room appointment, Tuesday to Friday, 10:00 to 16:00. Entry is free. The Library also runs a busy programme of talks, exhibitions and events.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Drop-in visiting is Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons, 13:00-16:30 - no appointment needed.
- To use the collections you need a reading room appointment, Tuesday to Friday 10:00-16:00; contact the Library first.
- Entry is free for both, and the Library is an independent charity, so donations matter.
- Salford Crescent station is seven minutes away and has step-free access.
- Jubilee House is a listed 1897 building with stairs; ring ahead about access.
- Ask to see the banners even if you have come for the books - they are the collection's showpiece.
- Check the events programme; talks and exhibitions are frequent and often free.
- Combine with Salford Museum and Art Gallery five minutes away, or the People's History Museum across the river.
Highlights
Ruth and Eddie Frow's collection
The Library is one person's obsession multiplied by two. Ruth Frow was a teacher, Eddie Frow an engineer and lifelong trade unionist who had been imprisoned in the 1930s unemployed workers' agitation; from the 1950s they collected the printed and material record of the organised working class, largely on ordinary wages and largely by asking people not to throw things away.
Their house filled up entirely, and visitors were shown round it.
The story matters because it explains the collection's character: personal, comprehensive, and containing a great deal that no institution was collecting at the time.
Trade union banners
The Library's banners are its most immediately striking holdings, hung where visitors meet them rather than rolled in a store. Union banners were expensive, commissioned objects, carried at demonstrations and funerals and treated with real ceremony, and their painted allegories - clasped hands, beehives, figures of Justice and Labour - carry the movement's self-image in a form that needs no explanation.
The collection spans many trades and periods, including banners from unions that no longer exist and from branches wound up when their industry closed, which gives them a documentary value beyond the visual.
Chartism and early radicalism
The collection is exceptionally strong on the early nineteenth century: Chartist newspapers, addresses and petitions, material on the combination laws and their repeal, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Peterloo and the radical press that survived prosecution and stamp duty. Manchester and Salford were at the centre of much of this, and the Library's holdings let visitors follow arguments as contemporaries encountered them, in cheap pamphlets and unstamped papers.
For anyone whose knowledge of Chartism comes from textbooks, the physical smallness and cheapness of the material is itself instructive.
Jubilee House
The Library occupies a former nurses' home designed by Henry Lord and built in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, given to the collection by Salford City Council in 1987 after the Frows' house could hold no more. The building's origins add a layer to the visit: a philanthropic Victorian institution for working women, now housing the record of working people's own organisations.
The rooms retain their domestic scale, and the combination of high ceilings, banners and stacked shelving gives the Library an atmosphere that no purpose-built archive achieves.
Collections
The Working Class Movement Library holds over two hundred years of the printed and material record of working-class organisation in Britain, built from the 1950s by Ruth and Eddie Frow and housed since 1987 in Jubilee House, a former nurses' home of 1897. Holdings include books, pamphlets, periodicals and newspapers, minute books, correspondence and personal papers, photographs, badges, banners and ephemera, covering trade unionism, Chartism, the co-operative movement, friendly societies, the Labour and communist parties, unemployed workers' movements, anti-fascism and the International Brigades, the peace movement, women's organisation, and major industrial disputes from 1926 to the miners' strike of 1984-85.
Displays and banners are open to drop-in visitors; the collections are consulted in the reading room by appointment.
The Frow Collection
How Ruth and Eddie Frow built the Library, and what they thought was worth keeping.
Banners and Badges
Trade union banners, badges and regalia, and the movement's visual self-image.
Two Centuries of Organising
Chartism, trade unionism, co-operation, anti-fascism and the great industrial disputes.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.