Skip to main content
Sheffield's Ambrose Shardlow workers appeal for missing trade union banner
Ambrose Shardlow workers with their banner at a Barnsley May Day during the 1980s

TRADE unionists who used to work at a Sheffield engineering factory appealed for help today to find their missing banner.

Brian Clark, a former employee of Ambrose Shardlow, told the Morning Star: “In its heyday Shardlows employed over 2,000 people, it was a closed shop so [had] 100 per cent trade union membership.” 

The factory, which manufactures crankshafts for the motor industry, had a confederation of trade unions, the largest of which was the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), now part of Unite, and the banner represents all the unions.

Mr Clark, who became political secretary at Wortley Hall, the workers’ stately home near Sheffield, said: “A few years ago the factory banner was lost having been on a demo in London.

“The lads have tried to find it to no avail. An appeal in the Morning Star might help us find it.”

The banner is pictured raised at a May Day rally in Barnsley.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Similar stories
women workers 1910
Working Class History / 27 October 2025
27 October 2025

ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns

Locomotion
Features / 27 September 2025
27 September 2025

Two-hundred years ago, on September 27 1825, the world’s first passenger railway line was opened between Stockton and Darlington. MICK WHELAN, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, reflects on the history – and the future – of Britain’s railway industry

ALL TOGETHER: Workers from all industries join the ‘mega picket’ — mass solidarity action to support the Birmingham bin strike organised by Strike Map, July 25 2025. Photo: Henry Fowler
Features / 29 August 2025
29 August 2025

Since 2023, Strike Map has evolved from digital mapping at a national level to organising ‘mega pickets’ — we believe that mass solidarity with localised disputes prepares the ground for future national action, writes HENRY FOWLER