Transport and General Workers' Union
trade union in the United Kingdom
The Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU or T&G) was one of the largest general trade unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland—where it was known as the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union (ATGWU)—with 900,000 members (and was once the largest trade union in the world).
The TGWU was officially founded on 1 January 1922 with the amalgamation of 14 individual trades unions. Ernest Bevin served as the union's first and longest serving General Secretary.
In 2007, the union voted to merge with Amicus to form Unite the Union.
History
Establishment
In March 1920, the London-based Dock, Wharf, Riverside & General Labourers' Union (DWRGLU) began talks on forming a unified dockworkers' union with the Liverpool-based National Union of Dock, Riverside and General Workers (NUDRW).
The two unions' delegations agreed on a provisional amalgamation committee with Ernest Bevin as its Secretary, and Harry Gosling as its chair, with the committee agreeing to invite other unions related to the docks industry.
In ballots of the various unions on amalgamation, only the ballots put to the Amalgamated Stevedores Labour Protection League, the Scottish Union of Dock Labourers (SUDW) and the Cardiff Coal Trimmers memberships failed.
While the new union was being established, the official publication of the union, The Record, published its first issue in August 1921. The first issue cited its predecessor publications as the Dockers' Record of the DWRGLU; Quayside and Office of the National Union of Docks, Wharves and Shipping Staffs; The Record of the United Vehicle Workers; and The Vehicle Worker of the National Union of Vehicle Workers.
On 1 January 1922, fourteen trades unions officially amalgamated to form the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU), with Ernest Bevin as its first General Secretary.
The public source identifies “Transport and General Workers' Union” as trade union in the United Kingdom. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Transport, General and Workers'.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3091316. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1922, 2007, 1920 and 1921.
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This entry incorporates text from “Transport and General Workers' 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.