The formation between 1858 and 1867 of permanent Trades Councils in the leading industrial centres was an important step in the consolidation of the Trade Union Movement. Local delegate meetings, summoned to deal with particular emergencies, had been a feature of Trade Union organisation, at any rate since the beginning of the nineteenth century. In early times every important strike had its committee of sympathisers from other trade societies, who collected subscriptions and rendered what personal aid they could. But the most notable of these committees were those which started up in all the centres of Trade Unionism when the movement was threatened by some particular legal or Parliamentary danger. Such joint committees had in 1825 contributed powerfully to defeat the re-enactment of the Combination Laws, in 1834 to arouse public feeling in the case of the Dorchester labourers, and in 1838 to conduct the Trade Union case before the Parliamentary Committee of that year. But these earlier committees were formed only for particular emergencies, and had, so far as we know, no continuous existence. By 1860 permanent councils were in existence in Glasgow, Sheffield, Liverpool, and Edinburgh, and their example was, in 1861, followed by the London trades.[378] Like many provincial organisations, the London Trades Council originated in a “Strike Committee.” During the winter of 1859-60 weekly meetings of delegates from the Metropolitan trades had been held to support the Building Operatives in their resistance to the “document.” “At the termination of that memorable struggle,” states the Second Annual Report of the London Trades Council, “it was felt that something should be done to establish a general trades committee so as to be able on emergency to call the trades together with despatch for the purpose of rendering each other advice or assistance as the circumstances required.”[379] In March 1860 the provisional committee formed with this object issued an “Address” to the trades, which resulted, on July 10, 1860, in the first meeting of the present London Trades Council.