The Associated Blacksmiths, Forge and Smithy Workers' Society (ABFSWS) was a trade union representing metalworkers in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The union was founded in 1857 in Glasgow as the Scottish United Operative Blacksmiths Protection and Friendly Society.
[1] Membership was around 3,000 for many years, but grew rapidly under the leadership of John Thomson in the 1910s.
[2] This brought membership up to 13,500 by 1915, and made it the largest union of blacksmiths in the country, ahead of the Amalgamated Society of Smiths and Strikers.
[1] In 1963, the union merged with the Shipconstructors' and Shipwrights' Association into the United Society of Boilermakers, Shipbuilders and Structural Workers, which renamed itself as the "Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers".