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General union

All-sector bargaining entity

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 11, 2025
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

A general union is a trade union which represents workers from all industries and companies, rather than just one organisation or a particular sector, as in a craft union or industrial union. A general union differs from a union federation or trades council in that its members are individuals, not unions. The creation of general unions, from the early nineteenth century in the United Kingdom and somewhat later elsewhere, occurred around the same time as efforts began to unionise workers in new industries, in particular those where employment could be irregular.

Editorial summary

“General union” enters the record as all-sector bargaining entity. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what General, union and All-sector can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 91-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around General, union and All-sector.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“General union” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, General, union and All-sector provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 11, 2025.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “General union”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow General union primary sources, General union archive and General research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “General union”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “General union” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.