NATTKE
Following a strike of stage hands at the Adelphi Theatre in August 1890, theatre and music hall workers in London established the United Kingdom Theatrical and Music Hall Operatives' Union.
During the 1890s the union established itself in London and by the early 1900s had established branches in the main provincial centres.
The union changed its name in 1901 to the National Union of Theatrical Stage Employees and affiliated to the Trades Union Congress in 1902.
It changed its name again in 1904 to the National Association of Theatrical Employees (NATE). By this time it was recruiting also among the cinema workers in the moving picture houses. In 1907 the National Association of Cinematograph Operators was formed as a semi-autonomous branch of NATE.
During the Great War, and in the inter-war period, NATE, despite strong competition from the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) built up its membership in cinemas and negotiated agreements, first locally and then nationally, with the Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association. In the same period the union began to organise craft grades and manual workers in film production studios.
To reflect its cinema and film interests NATE added 'Kine' to its title in 1936, becoming the National Association of Theatrical and Kine Employees. Much of the success of the union at this time was due to Tom (later Sir Tom) O'Brien, General Secretary from 1932 to his death in 1970.
In the post-war period membership growth difficulties in theatres, cinemas and film production were largely offset by NATKE's success in establishing itself as one of the main unions in television. In 1947 NATKE, ACT and ETU had reached an important demarcation agreement which established the grades appropriate to each organisation in the film industry.
Ten years later NATKE reached a national agreement with the independent television companies covering the professional and craft grades comparable to those it organised in film production.
At the beginning of 1958 it secured recognition jointly with the ABS for a smaller number of television manual categories in the BBC. In 1970 the union added 'Television' to its title to become NATTKE.
Nevertheless recruitment in television, the decision to organise bingo workers and the takeover in June 1983 of the cinema managers' union, the National Association of Executives Managers and Staffs (NAEMS), did not prevent a decline in total membership from its peak of some 30,000 members reached in the late 1940s.
By the beginning of the 1980s NATTKE had compelling membership and financial reasons for seeking merger discussions with the ABS. These discussions succeeded where talks twenty years earlier had failed and the amalgamated union, BETA, was established in the period 1984-1985.