Tuesday, November 26, 2013

We need to revive workers' education

ROBERT TURNBULL says groups such as the Plebs League played a valuable role on the left. It's time we picked up where they left off

Since the 2010 general election and the Tory and Liberal assault on what remains of the post-1945 settlement, many on the left have concluded that we must get our act together before it is too late.

There is a growing recognition of the need to re-establish a movement for independent working-class education (IWCE) which existed throughout much of the 20th century.

The impetus for such a movement actually came before the last election in the wake of the enthusiastic reception for Colin Waugh's pamphlet 100 Years On From the Ruskin Strike: Plebs, the Lost Legacy of Independent Working Class Education.

That 1909 strike occurred when a group of students, disillusioned with both the standard of teaching and ethics at Ruskin College, seceded, going on to set up their own Central Labour College in London.

Just a few months earlier the Plebs League itself had been formed, reflecting the widespread feeling among Ruskin students that the college was not doing the job for which it was intended.

The League took its inspiration from Daniel de Leon's book Two Pages From Roman History, which described the earliest recorded general strike - the secessio plebis of 494 BC, when the plebeians, the poor people of ancient Rome, walked out of the city in disgust at their treatment by the wealthy patrician governing class.

The Plebs League and after 1921 the National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC), which acted as a co-ordinating body, set up a network of adult education classes for working people which sought to act as an alternative to the liberal mainstream education being offered by the Workers Educational Association at that time.

It has been said that the idea of IWCE was "education for revolution," and this is probably an accurate reflection of the early aims of the Plebs League and the NCLC.

Many of the early leading figures in that movement came from the south Wales coalfield. They included Noah Ablett, Ted Gill and Charlie Gibbons, who were responsible for the famous pamphlet The Miners' Next Step.

In Scotland John MacLean was prominent as a teacher of Marxist theory and in north-east England IWCE supporters included miners Will Lawther, George Harvey and Ebby Edwards.

In London there was a women's college at Bethel House, established in 1915 by Mary Bridges Adams. A generation of labour movement activists gained their political education through NCLC courses.

A major vehicle for promoting IWCE was the Plebs journal, founded by the League but continued by the NCLC after it absorbed the Plebs following the 1926 general strike.

It continued till the mid-1960s when the NCLC was handed over to the TUC education department, although by then the direction had somewhat altered due to changes in the labour movement.

So what can the IWCE movement offer the labour movement and the left in 2013? Is it still relevant as we face the most sustained assault on our way of life that many of us can remember?

I would argue that education has to be at the heart of the resistance to neoliberalism.

It has to begin in schools, in colleges and universities, but it also has to take place in the workplace, in the home - in short, wherever people feel marginalised and dispossessed.

There is more than enough anger out there - we just need to channel it. The Morning Star plays an outstanding role as a daily vehicle for information, education and discussion, but there are too few activists in the labour movement who read it, in part because the overall level of political consciousness is too low.

We have to change that and IWCE can help create that change.

While the conditions which gave rise to the birth of the Plebs League have gone, we still need places where people can meet, discuss and debate free from the impact of the mainstream media.

Perhaps the time is right for the formation of a new Labour College, but one which would take account of modern ways of organising. If there is one thing the Tories fear most it is an educated, motivated working class which is able to ask questions and draw its own conclusions. As the Plebs League put it: "Do your own thinking."

The Independent Working Class Education Network (www.iwceducation.co.uk/) has been established to take forward this vision.

It is in the process of drafting a manifesto and has been holding popular day-schools and similar events throughout the country at places such as the South Wales Miners' Library in Swansea and at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford.

A number of events are planned for 2014 including in Edinburgh, Salford, Brighton and Tolpuddle.

This coming Saturday there will be a day school at the Wallsend Memorial Hall in North Tyneside, and readers are welcome to attend.

The day school Independent Working Class Education: Can we rebuild the tradition? runs from 10am to 4.30pm on Saturday November 30 at the Wallsend Memorial Hall, Frank Street NE28 6RN. Attendance costs £6 including lunch. For further information please contact Robert Turnbull at rcturnbull1968@yahoo.co.uk.

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