 Following the strike, the smaller unions merged to form the International Tailors', Machiners' and Pressers' Trade Union, and Lyons agreed to become its full-time president.He campaigned for the removal of middlemen, and for wholesalers which manufactured goods to do so in their own workshops.This was opposed by the employers, and Lyons led a further strike, but the union's members were not fully in support, and at the end of 1891, it split.