Within the first nine months, Webb estimates that membership was between 10,000 and 20,000 individuals spread across the five counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester.
[1] As a part of establishing awareness and legitimacy, union officials started an unsuccessful weekly paper, the United Trades Co-operative Journal.
This was soon followed in 1831 by a larger publication, the Voice of the People, having the declared intention "to unite the productive classes of the community in one common bond of union.
"[2] With notable exceptions, the association continued to grow and expand, reaching 100,000 members and a circulation of 30,000 for the Voice of the People.
Disagreements between Doherty and the executive committee; the disappearance of the weekly paper; and fractured relations with its constituent unions, particularly from Manchester, ultimately inflicted "a fatality" upon the association.