Congratulations to the Working Class Movement Library, which has been awarded £313,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund over the next three years for its project “The Past Meets the Present: a History of Working Lives”.

The project will bring to life the Salford-based library’s unique collections and make them accessible to the community. The archives, books and documents that comprise the library tell the story  of working people’s fight for social justice and political rights over the last 200 years, and give rich insights into “history from below”, offering a view that is too often left out of conventional  histories which focus on kings and battles.

The library will focus on encouraging use of its collections by schoolchildren, especially in the local Salford area, and by working people involved in lifelong learning activities, encouraging both these groups to use and contribute to working class heritage.  Money has also been awarded to make the entrance hall a more welcoming space for drop-in visitors.

The Working Class Movement Library was founded by Ruth and Edmund Frow in their home in Old Trafford in the mid 1950s. For years they travelled Britain in their holidays with a caravan, collecting items that few then valued. Eventually the collection filled every room in their house. In 1987 the Library, now a Charitable Trust, was offered a new home in Jubilee House, a former nurses’ home, where it now fills 40 rooms.

The library is recognised nationally and internationally as one of Britain’s most important collections of working class history.  It hosts banners, posters, books, pamphlets, photographs, films and much else.  Friends and supporters of the library include Kate Atkinson, Sheila Hancock, Tristram Hunt, Siobhan Redmond, Maxine Peake and Alan Plater.

Eddie Frow died in 1997 aged 91 but Ruth Frow, now in her mid 80s, is still very involved with the library on a day to day basis.

The library contains a number of items of interest to those studying Chartism, and the library’s website includes a short biography of the Chartist leader Ernest Jones written by Eddie and Rurth Frow