In recent years many RMT union Branches and Regional Councils have commissioned new banners reflecting the working lives of the members they organise and various political demands of their union, notably rail re-nationalisation and repeal of the anti-trade union laws.

Here we present an online exhibition of some of those banners past and present. If you have any information about any of the banners shown, or wish to contribute a photograph of a banner or banners to this exhibition please leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get back to you. We intend to maintain and update this exhibition as necessary as a record of the art and culture of our movement. Where possible details of the branch who’s banner is shown, or the museum where the banner is preserved are given below the picture.

Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (Scotland)

(front)
- National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

"A meeting will be held at the Winchester Arms, Southwark Street on Sunday December 3rd (1871) to further the objects of securing ten hours for a day's labour, payment for Sunday duty and weekly payment of wages. Chair to be taken at 6 o'clock. Please inform your mates and solicit them to attend."

Printed on tiny slips of paper four inches by two inches, in order not to attract the attention of the employers, this was the message passed between railwaymen that led to the forming of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. The union held its first delegate conference on 24 June 1872 at the Sussex Hotel, near Fleet Street, London.

In August 1872 the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants for Scotland was formed and continued to exist separately until it amalgamated with the ASRS in 1892, thus placing the making of the Scottish banner within the period 1872-1892.

John Gorman, author of 'Images of Labour' (Scorpion Publishing Ltd, 1985) described the ASRS (Scotland) banner as follows: "The homemade banner has a naive charm that is direct and honest both in mottos and character. The outer border is stencilled onto linen strips while the illustration and lettering are handpainted."

Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) – Rotherhithe branch

(front)

(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

Mersey Quay & Railway Carters' Union - 1889

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

The 'New Unionism' of the late 1880s saw a wave of strikes of which the best known was the London Docks strike and the growth of unions that sought to organise semi-skilled workers and labourers who had been ignored by the 'craft unions'. At this time the General Railway Workers Union was founded along with this example of a union for carters in the Port of Liverpool.

National Sailors' and Firemen’s Union

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), Nine Elms No. 2 Branch

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National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

Nine Elms was the locomotive and carriage depot for Waterloo Station, occupying the site of what is now New Covent Garden market. Unfortunately the banner is seriously decayed, however interestingly the banner indicates that the NUR No. 2 branch was established in 1916 some three years after the founding of the NUR.

NUR Acton & Ealing No. 2 Branch

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(back)
National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR, Bath Branch

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(back)
National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Bath branch was part of the Bristol District Council of the National Union of Railwaymen, which organised all NUR branches falling within the area south of Cheltenham and Stroud, east of Pilning and the Severn Tunnel, north of Mead's Crossing, Bridgwater and west of Weymouth. Bath is now part of the RMT Bristol Rail Branch sphere of influence. Note the front of the banner depicts the famous Bath 'Pump Rooms' and Roman baths with Bath Abbey in the background. Many trade union banners provide evidence of the sense of civic and provincial pride, as well as honouring great engineering or architectural achievements with the branch members wish to be associated.

NUR Bethnal Green Branch No. 503

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(back)
National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

The front of the banner bears the familiar design of four roundels showing examples of the work carried out by members of the branch, while the central motif is borrows from religious and mythical sources to show an angel bearing a scroll with the motto "Unity is Strength", beckoning to a recumbent figure captioned as "Labour Awakening". Beneath the illustration are the words: "Labour Conquers Everything".

The back of the banner depicts a version of the commonly-used image of the union official visiting the grieving widow and mother of a deceased union member while the orphaned children play on the floor of the home. The union official's bag on the bare table emphasises the providential benefits that the union provided and is a reminder of the very high rate of accidents in the railway industry, which gave the early unions one of their prime functions - mutual aid.

NUR Chalk Farm Branch 1076

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(back)
National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Clerkenwell Branch 1176

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(back)
National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Hither Green Branch 537

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(back)
National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

The banner depicts Paddington station, the terminus of the Great Western Railway in a familiar engraving from the NUR ceremonial scroll. Hither Green branch of course organised rail workers on the Southern Railway.

NUR Hornsey Branch

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(back)
National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR International Transport Workers' Federation

NUR - International Transport Workers' Federation
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- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Kentish Town No. 2 Branch

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Manchester No. 13 Branch

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- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Manchester District Council

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Maze Hill Branch

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(back)
National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Northwich Branch

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- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Paddington No. 2 Branch

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Women's Guild, Perth

(front)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Richmond Branch

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Rickmansworth Branch

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Smithfield Branch

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Staff

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- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Wakefield No. 2 Branch

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(back)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

NUR Women's Guild Wimbledon Branch

(front)
- National Museum of Labour History, Manchester

In 2005 RMT's South Wales & West of England Regional Council decided to commission a new banner from artist and banner maker Ed Hall. The theme for the banner was dedicated to the Trade Union Freedom Bill, introduced in the House of Commons in 2006 by John McDonnell MP, chair of RMT's Parliamentary Group, on the centenary of the 1906 Trades Disputes Act, which itself originated as a Private Member's Bill introduced by James Keir Hardie, MP. The Trades Dispute Act (1906) was a response to the 1904 'Taff Vale Judgement' by the Law Lords that found that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants had been 'in restraint of trade' by calling on its members employed by the Taff Vale Railway Company to take strike action in 1900 and fined the union £47,000 (over £1 million in today's money). The significance of the House of Lords judgement was not lost on trade unionists who regarded it as the death knell of effective trade unionism and demanded the political repeal of the judgement

RMT South Wales & West of England Regional Council

John McDonnell, MP (left) and banner maker Ed Hall (right) at the launch of the RMT South Wales & West of England Regional Council banner at the GWR Staff Association Club, Bristol Temple Meads on Monday, 11 December 2006.

Banner front: bears the title of the union and the SW&W Regional Council, and depicts the dramatic, classical-style, western portal of Box Tunnel - the most difficult engineering problem that Isambard Kingdom Brunel had to solve when building the Bristol to London line.

The tunnel is 2,939m (1 mile, 1,452 yards) in length, dead straight and descends a one percent gradient from the east, and at the time of opening it was the longest railway tunnel in the world. Construction started in 1836, and when the tunnel opened in 1841 it was generally believed that a tunnel through the hill would be so long and deep as to "stifle and deafen" passengers. Initially some passengers chose to leave the train before the tunnel and rejoin it the other side, having journeyed round by road.

The lives of about ten navvies (railway construction workers) were lost during construction. When the two ends of the tunnel were joined underground there was found to be less than 5cm (2 inch) error in their alignment. It is a testament to the skill of the railway navvies, Brunel and his engineers that the Box Tunnel remains a functional element of the London Paddington to Bristol railway line.

Emerging from the tunnel mouth are a 'Castle' class, steam engine of the Great Western Railway, built in GWR's Swindon works and a 'Intercity 125' High Speed Train, built by British Rail Engineering Limited from 1976 and officially the fastest diesel in the world, with an absolute maximum of 148mph and 125mph regular service speed (200 km/h) on the Great Western mainline. 2006 marked the 30 birthday of the HST and the current re-engineering programme means that the existing fleet may operate through to 2015 or beyond.

At the foot of the banner is the 'spinning wheel' logo of the RMT surrounded by the union's motto, Unity is Strength in English, and Mewn undeb mae Nerth in Welsh.

Banner reverse: the artist has recreated the Rhondda historical mural found at Trehafod railway station between Porth and Pontypridd in Rhondda-Cynon-Taff, South Wales.

The mural represents the close relations between the South Wales Miners and the Railway workers, depicting the production, extraction and distribution process of the South Wales mining industry from pithead in the Cynon valley via the Taff Vale Railway to Cardiff docks.

Beneath the picture is the slogan: "We Honour the Taff Vale Railway Strikers of 1900" and a quote from the 1906 Trade Disputes Act, which for the first time legalised the right to strike: "An action against a trade union … shall not be entertained in any court."