The TUC Library preserves documents related to labour history in Britain and other countries, especially Europe and the Commonwealth.

The archive contains files from about 1920 up to 2000 consisting of correspondence, internal and external documents, minutes, reports, printed material and press statements.

The TUC succeeded in forcing Sports Direct to undergo an independent review into their treatment of workers in September 2016.

[13] The United Kingdom Alliance of Organised Trades, founded in Sheffield, Yorkshire, in 1866, was the immediate forerunner of the TUC, although efforts to expand local unions into regional or national organisations date back at least forty years earlier; in 1822, John Gast formed a "Committee of the Useful Classes", sometimes described as an early national trades council.

[14] Arising out of the 1897 Congress, a decision was taken to form a more centralised trade union structure that would enable a more militant approach to be taken to fighting the employer and even achieving the socialist transformation of society.

For some years it was unclear which body (the GFTU or the TUC) would emerge as the national trade union centre for the UK and for a while both were recognised as such by different fraternal organisations in other countries.

However, it was soon agreed among the major unions that the TUC should take the leading role and that this would be the central body of the organised Labour Movement in the UK.

As the TUC expanded and formalised its role as the "General Staff of the Labour Movement" it incorporated the Trades Councils who had given birth to it, eventually becoming the body which authorised these local arms of the TUC to speak on behalf of the wider Trade Union Movement at local and County level.

Also, as the TUC became increasingly bureaucratised, the Trades Councils (often led by militant and communist-influenced lay activists) found themselves being subject to political restrictions and purges (particularly during various anti-communist witch-hunts) and to having their role downplayed and marginalised.

In some areas (especially in London and the South East) the Regional Councils of the TUC (dominated by paid officials of the unions) effectively took over the role of the County Associations of Trades Councils and these paid officials replaced elected lay-members as the spokespersons for the Trade Union Movement at County and Regional level.

[citation needed] The 1899 Congress saw a motion "calling for a special conference to establish a voice for working people within parliament.

It was proposed at the 1944 Congress in Blackpool as a tribute to the lives of trade unionists that were lost in World War II.

[22] The TUC endorsed a remain vote at the 2016 European Union membership referendum, and O'Grady participated in a televised debate.