Editing Banner (section)

==Trade union banners==
{{See also|Banner-making#Trade union banners}}
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[[File:TU banners.JPG|thumb|Banners of [[Association of University Teachers|AUT]], [[National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education|NATFHE]], Cambridge [[Labour council|TUC]], and [[Cambridge University Students' Union]].]]
[[File:Federated Society of Boilermakers, Iron & Steel Shipbuilders of Australia, Union Banner A928321h.jpg|thumb|Federated Society of Boilermakers, Iron & Steel Shipbuilders of Australia, Union Banner A928321h]]

The [[iconography]] of these banners included mines, mills, and factories, but also visions of the future, showing a land where children and adults were well-fed and living in tidy brick-built houses, where the old and sick were cared for, where the burden of work was lessened by new technology, and where leisure time was increasing. The same kind of banners are also used in many other countries. Many, but not all of them, have [[red]] as a dominant colour.{{why|date=March 2021}}

In Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, trade union banners were unfurled with pride in annual Eight Hour Day marches which advocated 'Eight Hours Labour, Eight Hours Recreation and Eight Hours Rest'. These marches were one of the most prominent annual celebrations staged in Australia by any group. In Sydney alone, by the early twentieth century, thousands of unionists representing up to seventy different unions would take part in such parades, marching behind the banner emblematic of their trade. Most of these banners have not survived; the Labour Council of NSW has the largest surviving collection at [[Sydney Trades Hall]]  in Sussex Street, Sydney.

The [[State Library of NSW]] in Sydney has a small collection of trade union banners that were donated to the Library in the early 1970s such as a Federated Society of Boilermakers, Iron & Steel Shipbuilders of Australia banner thought to have been made c. 1913–1919. The Federated Society of Boilermakers, Iron & Steel Shipbuilders of Australia was formed in 1873 and joined the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union in 1972.

The banner features a kneeling figure in the centre surrounded by scroll work and is decorated with Australian native flowers and images representative of the work of the Union's members such as a New South Wales Government Railways 34 class steam locomotive, the Hawkesbury River rail bridge built in 1889, and a furnace. The reverse of the banner shows the warship ''Australia'' at sea. The banner is canvas and was painted by Sydney firm Althouse & Geiger, master painters and decorators. Founded in 1875, the company is still in operation. The banner is a powerful interpretive tool in communicating the experience and the history of the Australian labour movement.