What was the Battle of the Barbican?

Between 1965 and 1967, a protracted period of industrial action on the building site became known as The Battle of the Barbican.

Workers were protesting about safety and pay on the building site. This is a photo taken during the strikes.

Jack Waller, an engineer working on the Barbican site, kept a scrapbook documenting everything that happened during the build.

He collected clippings of news about the Barbican, including articles about the strikes.

Jack Waller's family kindly donated his scrapbook to our Archive. It's an important personal item, and an extensive record of how the media reported on the Barbican.

The scrapbook details how the Battle of the Barbican progressed - and the media's unforgiving reporting of the strikes.

The Battle in question was between unionised workers and the construction companies who employed them. 

These construction companies had been given contracts to deliver the buildings Chamberlin Powell & Bon had designed.

As tensions escalated, the police were frequently called to the building site.

One of the basic demands was for adequate toilets – some workers remember having to go all the way to use the public facilities at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Some of those involved in organising the action -- the union Stewards -- lost their jobs. Some found themselves blacklisted from working elsewhere.

The striking workers had mixed memories of the finished building; from pride to purely thinking of it as where they learnt the importance of trade union organising.

Their testimonies can be read here as part of a University of Westminster project.

In 2021, current and former employees of the Barbican collated a book called Barbican Stories. It details their experiences of discrimination and racism while working at the Barbican. Learn more about Barbican Stories here.

It is an important record of staff members' experiences as well as a piece of well-organised activism, continuing the history of workers standing up for their rights at the Barbican.

In the introduction to Barbican Stories, the authors connect their action to the history of the striking construction workers before them, and to more recent actions like a 2013 strike by Barbican cleaners. 

The book also demonstrates the importance of including as many voices as possible in the Archive, for future generations to understand our history. Learn about our work since Barbican Stories on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.