A new website was launched recently as a partnership initiative between the London Metropolitan University and the Trades Union Congress. The Union Makes Us Strong tells the story of the British trade union movement through digital images of material held in the TUC Library Collections. The site consists of five themed packages:

• Timeline of trade union history illustrated with photographs, documents, posters and audio-visual recordings.
• General Strike - Official reports from both the TUC and the unions themselves tell the story of the build up to the strike, the 9 day shutdown in May, as well as the consequences for the trade union movement as a whole. Contemporary photographs, press coverage, cartoons and local reports complete the story.
• Match Workers Strike Fund Register - This document forms the centrepiece to the story of the famous Match Workers strike at the Bryant and May factory at Bow in East London, 1888.
• The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Every page of the manuscript to this classic novel by Robert Tressell has been digitised and can be read as the author intended.
• TUC Reports - A digital library has been created enabling the user to browse through 100 years of Congress Reports between 1868 and 1968. Users can make searches on people, events and places mentioned in debates throughout the whole period.

The site can be viewed at http://www.unionhistory.info.