100 years on from the Ruskin strike . . .

�‘PLEBS�’�‘PLEBS�’�‘PLEBS�’�‘PLEBS�’�‘PLEBS�’THE LTHE LTHE LTHE LTHE LOST LEGAOST LEGAOST LEGAOST LEGAOST LEGACY OFCY OFCY OFCY OFCY OFINDEPENDENTINDEPENDENTINDEPENDENTINDEPENDENTINDEPENDENTWWWWWORKING-CLASSORKING-CLASSORKING-CLASSORKING-CLASSORKING-CLASSEDUCAEDUCAEDUCAEDUCAEDUCATIONTIONTIONTIONTION

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CONTENTS22222 Post-16 Educator

POSTPOSTPOSTPOSTPOST-16-16-16-16-16EDUCAEDUCAEDUCAEDUCAEDUCATTTTTOROROROROR

Editors: Pat Ainley, Don Carroll, Rania Hafez,Philippe Harari, Rob Hunt, Peter Murry, Jan Pollock,

Colin Waugh, Dave Welsh, Gina Wisker

Address: 221 Firth Park Road, SHEFFIELD S56WW

Telephone: 0114 243 1999Email: post16educator@runbox.com

ISSN 0459-2026

Colin Waugh is an hourly paid lecturer at the College of North West London. The text of this pamphlet repre-sents the personal views of the author. Publication date: 1 January 2009.

The help given by staff at the Working Class Movement Library and the British Library and, especially byChristine Coates and James Goddard at the TUC Collections, London Metropolitan University Learning Centre,

is gratefully acknowledged.

Printed at: Upstream Ltd, 1 Warwick Court, Choumert Road, LONDON SE15 4SE (www.upstream.coop)

1.1.1.1.1. Intr Intr Intr Intr Introduction 3oduction 3oduction 3oduction 3oduction 3

2. Extension to 1899 32. Extension to 1899 32. Extension to 1899 32. Extension to 1899 32. Extension to 1899 3

3.3.3.3.3. R R R R Ruskin to 1902 5uskin to 1902 5uskin to 1902 5uskin to 1902 5uskin to 1902 5

4.4.4.4.4. TTTTThe he he he he WEA to 1907 7WEA to 1907 7WEA to 1907 7WEA to 1907 7WEA to 1907 7

5.5.5.5.5. TTTTThe Left 1902-07 9he Left 1902-07 9he Left 1902-07 9he Left 1902-07 9he Left 1902-07 9

6.6.6.6.6. OxfOxfOxfOxfOxfororororord and d and d and d and d and WWWWWorororororking-Class Educaking-Class Educaking-Class Educaking-Class Educaking-Class Education tion tion tion tion 1212121212

7.7.7.7.7. TTTTThe students�’he students�’he students�’he students�’he students�’ conce conce conce conce conception ofption ofption ofption ofption of educa educa educa educa education 14tion 14tion 14tion 14tion 14

8.8.8.8.8. Inter Inter Inter Inter Intervvvvventions in Rentions in Rentions in Rentions in Rentions in Ruskin 1907-09 17uskin 1907-09 17uskin 1907-09 17uskin 1907-09 17uskin 1907-09 17

9.9.9.9.9. Ple Ple Ple Ple Plebs thinking 1908-09 20bs thinking 1908-09 20bs thinking 1908-09 20bs thinking 1908-09 20bs thinking 1908-09 20

10.10.10.10.10. Ple Ple Ple Ple Plebs action 1908-09 22bs action 1908-09 22bs action 1908-09 22bs action 1908-09 22bs action 1908-09 22

11.11.11.11.11. Conc Conc Conc Conc Conclusion 25lusion 25lusion 25lusion 25lusion 25

SourSourSourSourSources 26ces 26ces 26ces 26ces 26

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33333Post-16 Educator INTRODUCTION / EXTENSION

1.1.1.1.1. Intr Intr Intr Intr IntroductionoductionoductionoductionoductionIIIIIn October 1908 students and former students at

Ruskin College in Oxford founded the League ofthe �“Plebs�”. From 26th March to 6th April 1909 theytook strike action in the college. The Plebs League eventually became a nationalmovement, providing what was called IWCE(independent working-class education). Throughthis movement, which was still functioning in 1964,tens of thousands of working-class people bothtaught and learnt. The basic aim behind IWCE wasthat the working class should produce its ownthinkers and organisers. The autobiographies and reminiscences ofmany labour movement leaders in the 1930s, 40sand 50s refer to the Plebs League and Ruskinstrike. In contrast, few academic historians havepaid attention to these initiatives. Most histories ofadult education, for example, assume that whatcounts is the Workers�’ Educational Association(WEA). They either ignore IWCE altogether or seeit as an obstacle that briefly hampered the WEA.This pamphlet, in contrast, assumes that we needto find out what IWCE was really about and build onit now. The history of IWCE went through three phases.In the first phase, beginning around 1907, themovement was driven by the aims and actions of(mostly quite young) working-class men - mainlyminers, railway workers, textile workers and

engineering workers. In the second phase, begin-ning around 1914, a group of middle class intellec-tuals influenced how the IWCE movement was run.Thirdly, from 1926 to 1964, two people - J. P. M.Millar and Christine Millar - worked doggedly tomake IWCE, now called the National Council ofLabour Colleges (NCLC), the education arm of themainstream labour movement. This pamphlet marks the centenary of the 1909strike at Ruskin. It aims to present a truthful pictureof what happened then. This involves looking intothe background to the strike, both on the students�’side and on the ruling class side as represented bythe WEA and University Extension movement. Itdoes not attempt to deal with what happened later. In 1968, having investigated the IWCE classes inthe North West, the historian Ruth Frow wrote: �‘Thequestion that arises is, has the social change forwhich the stalwarts of the Oldham class and theHyde class, the Liverpool Labour College and theManchester Labour College, the Number 8 Divisionof the National Council of Labour Colleges and theTrades Unions which supported them, beenachieved? Or will the dying flame of IndependentWorking Class Education need to flare again toguide the workers along the path to emancipation?�’ This pamphlet assumes that the answer to thisquestion is �‘yes�’..

2. Extension to 18992. Extension to 18992. Extension to 18992. Extension to 18992. Extension to 1899FFFFFollowing the collapse of the Chartist movement

in 1848, some sections of the ruling classthought that they could forestall future threats totheir power by creating within the working class acompliant layer of articulate spokespersons whowould blunt the edge of class struggle. One waythey tried to do this was by infiltrating the Coopera-tive Movement. Another was by initiatives in thefield of adult education. In the mid 1800s Oxford University was domi-nated by its constituent colleges. Many of thesewere like gentlemen�’s clubs, in which �‘fellows�’waited to be given livings in the Anglican church.There arose, especially in Oxford, a movementwhich aimed to reform this situation. One strandwithin this movement wanted Oxford to do some-thing for working people.

Not everyone who thought this was simply ahypocrite. For example, in 1872, reacting in apersonal letter to the death of some nuns during theParis Commune, the poet and Jesuit priest GerardManley Hopkins wrote: �‘I am afraid some greatrevolution is not far off. Horrible to say, in a mannerI am a Communist. Their ideal bating some thingsis nobler than that professed by any secular states-man I know of . . . Besides it is just . . it is a dread-ful thing for the greatest and most necessary part ofa very rich nation to live a hard life without dignity,knowledge, comforts, delight, or hopes in the midstof plenty - which plenty they make. They professthat they do not care what they wreck and burn, theold civilisation and order must be destroyed. This isa dreadful look out but what has the old civilisationdone for them? As it at present stands in England it

EXTENSION44444 Post-16 Educator

is itself in great measure founded on wrecking. Butthey got none of the spoils, they came in for nothingbut harm from it then and thereafter. England hasgrown hugely wealthy but this wealth has notreached the working classes; I expect it has madetheir condition worse. Besides this iniquitous orderthe old civilisation embodies another order mostlyold and what is new in direct entail from the old, theold religion, learning, law, art, etc and all the historythat is preserved in standing monuments. But asthe working classes have not been educated theyknow next to nothing of all this and cannot beexpected to care if they destroy it . . .�’ By �‘wrecking�’here, Hopkins meant people enriching themselveswhen Henry VIII closed the monasteries. Hisstandpoint was close to the �‘feudal socialism�’ridiculed in the Communist Manifesto. But it wasalso close to the impulse which made WilliamMorris become a socialist. Christian socialists whothought like Hopkins were to play a key role on theruling class side in the Ruskin struggle. The growth of such views among the intelligen-tsia had led to the foundation in 1854 of theWorkingmen�’s College in London. The personmainly responsible for this was the Cambridgegraduate, London and Cambridge professor andChristian Socialist, Frederick Denison Maurice, whoin turn based his approach on measures pioneeredby another Christian socialist Thomas Hughes,author of Tom Brown�’s Schooldays and Tom Brownat Oxford. Maurice wrote: �‘The question is, how toeliminate Owenism and Chartism? Repression hasproved powerless; but the Queen, in a conversationwith Lord Melbourne, has indicated the proper way,to wit, education. But what sort of education will becapable of doing away with Chartism? The one thatwill point out to him [ie the worker] his unjust claimsand will satisfy his just demands�’. Also involved inthe Workingmen�’s College was the Oxford profes-sor John Ruskin, who taught art there for a time. In 1860 Ruskin had published, originally asarticles in the prestigious Cornhill Magazine, a bookon political economy called Unto This Last. Onesection of this was called �‘The veins of wealth�’.Here Ruskin noted, in a figure of speech, that inEngland �‘the servants show some disposition torush riotously upstairs, under an impression thattheir wages are not regularly paid�’. He went on:�‘Since the essence of wealth consists in power overmen, will it not follow that the nobler and the morein number the persons are over whom it has power,the greater the wealth? Perhaps it may evenappear, after some consideration, that the personsthemselves are the wealth, that these pieces ofgold with which we are in the habit of guiding themare, in fact, nothing more than a kind of Byzantineharness or trappings . . . wherewith we bridle the

creatures; but that if these same living creaturescould be guided without the fretting and jingling ofthe Byzants in their mouths and ears, they mightthemselves be more valuable than their bridles�’.Ruskin�’s talk about �‘guiding�’ here shows that hewanted to value workers as human beings but alsoto educate them out of fighting for a better life. Almost twenty years after Maurice�’s experiment,another approach emerged. This was universityextension, where academics travelled around thecountry lecturing to people who could not go touniversity. Cambridge University introduced exten-sion provision in 1873, London in 1876 and Oxfordin 1878. With Oxford, this was administered by abody called the Extension Delegacy. Some of themost successful Oxford extension lectures weregiven in Rochdale by Hudson Shaw, and his mostpopular topic was John Ruskin. In the 1880s, after starving people from the EastEnd of London invaded the affluent West End,another tactic was attempted: the settlementmovement. People from universities went to live inareas like the East End, where they provided,among other things, adult education. The most wellknown settlement, Toynbee Hall, was opened inWhitechapel in 1885, by people from Oxford,mainly on the initiative of Canon Samuel Barnett.Here, as in Hopkins�’ letter and Ruskin�’s words inUnto This Last, we find two conflicting impulses -on the one hand, a genuine concern for the poor,and, on the other, a desire to block the spread ofleftwing ideas. Toynbee Hall, for example, wasnamed after Arnold Toynbee, an Oxford graduatewho died at an early age from an illness he caughtwhile lecturing in the East End. His lectures wereintended to counter the influence of Henry George�’santi-capitalist economics book Progress andPoverty. However, by the 1890s it was clear that themajority of those participating as students in theextension and settlement movements were notworkers but fairly well-off people, especially middleclass women who could not go to university.Overall, 50-60,000 people were attending extensioncourses, but only where organisations like theCooperative Society backed the lectures wereworkers were involved. Classes in politicaleconomy had initially attracted thousands ofNorthumberland and Durham miners, but thisinterest melted away after the big strike in 1887strike, as these workers turned instead to socialistssuch as William Morris. Workers, then, wererejecting extension, and as a result it was failing tocreate a class-collaborationist layer amongst them.

RUSKIN 55555Post-16 Educator

3.3.3.3.3. R R R R Ruskin to 1902uskin to 1902uskin to 1902uskin to 1902uskin to 1902RRRRRuskin Hall grew partly out of the same im-

pulses as the extension and settlementmovements. But at the start, because of the way inwhich it was founded, it existed alongside thesemovements without a formal link. In the beginning,it was part of a broader project started by threepeople from the United States. Two of these people,Charles Beard, later a prominent historian in theUS, and Walter Vrooman, had been students atOxford University. The third was Vrooman�’s wife,Amne, part of whose inheritance financed theproject. The Ruskin Hall in Oxford, set up in 1899, wasfrom the outset drawn in two directions. It was botha labour college (that is, an institution controlled bytrades unions and providing courses for theirmembers) and a utopian colony. In its first twoyears some of the students were workers spon-sored by their unions, but others were short-term,non-working-class visitors from overseas, or well-heeled cranks. With Beard, Walter Vrooman (who was influ-enced by the Knights of Labour movement in theUS) did try to organise a movement for workingclass education. They did this by founding colleges,by teaching classes themselves, by lobbying labourmovement organisations, by travelling roundEngland promoting their version of socialist educa-tion, by creating a network of correspondencetuition, and by setting up the Ruskin CollegeEducation League �‘for the purpose of makingRuskin College known in London and the provincialcentres�’. Beard founded another Ruskin Hall inManchester, and others existed briefly in Birming-ham, Liverpool, Birkenhead and Stockport. Vrooman was a sort of socialist. He declared, forexample, that �‘knowledge must be used to emanci-pate humanity, not to gratify curiosity, blind instinctsand desire for respectability�’. Again, in the publicmeeting to launch the college in Oxford, he saidthat �‘The Ruskin students come to Oxford, not asmendicant pilgrims go to Jerusalem, to worship ather ancient shrines and marvel at her sacred relics,but as Paul went to Rome, to conquer in a battle ofideals�’. In line with this, Vrooman and Beardappointed a fairly high profile leftwing socialist,Dennis Hird, as the warden/principal of Ruskin, andanother, Alfred Hacking, as lecturer in charge ofcorrespondence courses. (There were only four fulltime staff in the beginning.) Hird was an Oxford graduate (1875). In 1878 hewas ordained as an Anglican priest and appointed

as a tutor and lecturer to students of Oxford Univer-sity who were not attached to individual colleges.From 1885-87, he was a curate in Bournemouth,and them moved to Battersea, where in 1888 hejoined the (Marxist) Social Democratic Federation(SDF). While there, he also became secretary ofthe Church of England Temperance Society for theLondon diocese. However, in 1893, the Bishop ofLondon, Frederick Temple, found out about Hird�’ssocialist activities and forced him to resign from thisTemperance Society position. In 1893, Lady HenrySomerset appointed Hird to a church living atEastnor in Gloucestershire. But in 1896, after hehad given a talk about �‘Jesus the Socialist�’, shecolluded with the bishop for that area to make himrenounce his orders. This meant he could no longerearn a living as a clergyman. (Published as apamphlet, Hird�’s talk sold 70,000 copies.) By thetime of the 1908-09 events at Ruskin, Hird hadrenounced formal Christianity itself. Working class students at Ruskin came torespect Hird so much that early issues of �‘ThePlebs�’ Magazine carried adverts for plaster busts ofDarwin, Herbert Spencer and Hird himself. Yearslater some former students still had these on theirmantelpieces. As principal of Ruskin, Hird wrote tothe British Steel Smelters Association to say that:�‘Many unions would be glad of an opportunity tosend one of their most promising younger membersfor a year�’s education in social questions�’. Thisgives us an important clue about what he thoughtthe college was for. However, although Vrooman was a socialist, hewas also a Christian, from a well-off nonconformistbackground. His main rebellion against this back-ground had taken place at 13, when he took himselfout of school. The US socialist publisher CharlesKerr was later to say of him that, although hepossessed �‘the greatest enthusiasm for socialismas he understands it�’, �‘Vrooman is hopelesslyerratic . . . he wants to be a dictator in whatever heis doing�’. By deciding to name their project after JohnRuskin, Beard and the Vroomans showed that theywanted it to challenge the existing order, but alsothat, like the Guild of St George founded by Ruskinhimself, its focus would be ethical as much aseconomic. They timed the inaugural meeting forRuskin Hall in Oxford to coincide with JohnRuskin�’s 80th birthday. At this meeting Vroomandescribed his aim in this way: �‘We shall take menwho have been merely condemning our social

RUSKIN66666 Post-16 Educator

institutions, and will teach them instead how totransform those institutions, so that in place oftalking against the world, they will begin methodi-cally and scientifically to possess the world, torefashion it, and to cooperate with the power behindevolution in making it a joyous abode of, if not aperfected humanity, at least a humanity earnestlyand rationally striving towards perfection�’. Thesewords reveal Vrooman�’s intention that the worldshould be changed by action from below (�‘beginmethodically and scientifically to possess the world. . . [and] to refashion it�’). But they also reflect hisreligious feelings (�‘the power behind evolution�’, andthe suggestion that �‘humanity�’ cannot be �‘per-fected�’) and his wish to prevent discontent gettingout of hand. Both labour colleges and utopian colonies had ahigher profile in the US than here. On their return in1902, the Vroomans founded a further Ruskin Hallin Trenton, Missouri, which was eventually ab-sorbed into a university in Illinois. (The editorial inan early issue of �‘The Plebs�’ Magazine was devotedto the struggle round this, and the parallels withwhat happened in Oxford.) Not long afterwards,another US labour college, Brookwood in New Yorkstate, was founded, and survived until the 1930s.The most prominent figure in this was anotherChristian socialist, A.J. Muste. In the US there was also a tradition of utopiancolonies, and where labour colleges suffered from ashortage of union funding the two kinds of institu-tion could overlap, with the college at risk of becom-ing some wealthy backer�’s plaything. For example,just before World War I the US writer and SocialistParty member Upton Sinclair used earnings fromhis novel The Jungle to found a socialist colony,Helicon Home Colony, which he intended to func-tion also as a labour college. In the 1920s, in a laternovel, Oil!, Sinclair dealt with arguments for andagainst such institutions. By this time he hadexperienced the collapse both of his own colonyand the Llano Del Rio colony set up near LosAngeles by Socialist Party members in 1914. Hehad also developed a critique of mainstream highereducation which he spelt out in a privately printedbook, The Goose Step. In Oil!, Bunny Ross, the son of an oil tycoon,wants to use some of his money to set up a labourcollege which will be �‘a gymnasium where peopletrain for the class struggle�’. However, his girl-friend�’s father, Chaim Menzies, a union organiseramongst garment workers, thinks that �‘you didn�’tchange a colony by calling it a college, and a colonyvas de vorst trap you could set for de movement�’,going on to argue that: �‘You git people to go off andlive by demselves, different from de rest of devorkers . . . all de time dey be tinking about

someting else but de class struggle out in de vorld.. . . De people vot are going to help de movementhas got to be in it every hour�’. This expresses infictional form a tension similar to that which aroseearly on at Ruskin Hall in Oxford. Students from a working-class and trade unionbackground soon recognised the ambivalent natureof the Ruskin set-up. Thus in the September 1901issue of Young Oxford, a magazine launched withVrooman�’s support, J.M.K. MacLachlan, a Scottishstudent who was a member of the IndependentLabour Party (ILP), wrote that: �’The present policyof Ruskin College is that of a benevolent tradersailing under a privateer flag. Professing the aimsdear to all socialists, she disavows those veryprinciples by repudiating socialism. Let RuskinCollege proclaim socialism; let her convert hername from a form of contempt into a canon ofrespect�’. However, the direction in which Ruskin wasgoing soon became clear. Between 1899 and 1908,about 450 people attended Ruskin in Oxford as full-time residential students. But over the same periodabout 8,000 enrolled themselves on Ruskin corre-spondence courses. Some of these correspon-dence students also participated in the Ruskin HallScheme. This was an arrangement by whichcorrespondence students could meet in small, localdiscussion groups. By 1902 it had 96 classesrunning across the country, nearly all of them inindustrial areas. It became the main route throughwhich industrial workers progressed to becomeresidential students at Ruskin Hall in Oxford. Thesestudents, in turn, came eventually to form theoverwhelming majority in the college. Thus by 1903,15 out of 20 Ruskin Hall students were tradeunionists. But in 1907, 53 out of the 54 studentswere listed by occupations, including 23mineworkers (thirteen from South Wales, six fromDurham, one from Northumberland, one fromNottinghamshire and two from Scotland), sevenengineering workers, five railway-workers, fourweavers and a variety of other trades. Of these 53,only four did not have a union stated alongsidetheir name. Most were branch officers or districtofficers of their unions. And again in 1908-09, 45 ofthe students were sponsored by their unions. By that stage then, it was clear that Ruskin wasdoing what the extension movement was failing todo: recruiting and retaining working-class activistsas students.

WEA 77777Post-16 Educator

4.4.4.4.4. TTTTThe he he he he WEA to 1907WEA to 1907WEA to 1907WEA to 1907WEA to 1907TTTTThe Workers�’ Educational Association was

founded in the early 1900s by AlbertMansbridge. Mansbridge was exactly what theChristian socialists in the university extensionmovement hoped to produce: a working-classperson who believed in harmony between theemployers and the workers, and who thought adulteducation could bring this about. Mansbridge cameup with a solution to the extension movement�’sproblem. This solution was the tutorial class. The Education Act passed in 1902 was shapedby two people: the Fabian �‘socialist�’ Sydney Webb,and the former Toynbee Hall administrator R. L.(later Sir Robert) Morant. Morant was now thepermanent secretary - the highest ranking civilservant - at the Board of Education. He believedthat unless �‘the impulses of the many ignorant�’were put under �‘the control of the few wise�’, democ-racy would be overcome �‘by the centrifugal forcesof her own people�’s unrestrained individualism anddisintegrated utterly by the blind impulses of merenumerical majorities�’.) The 1902 Act replaceddirectly elected school boards with local educationauthorities (LEAs). Morant wrote into the Act aclause which allowed LEAs to organise or assistevening courses for adults. This applied fromMarch 1903. At the Cooperative Movement�’s 1898 AnnualConference, a conversation took place betweenMansbridge, Hudson Shaw and J.A.R. Marriott thesecretary of the Oxford University ExtensionDelegacy, J A. R. Marriott. In this conversationMansbridge argued that the extension movementcould attract greater numbers of workers if it wereto concentrate more than hitherto on classes inhistory and citizenship. On the strength of this, hewas invited to speak at the University Extensionsummer meeting in Oxford in 1899. The link formedin 1898 between Mansbridge and people who wereinfluential in the Oxford Extension Delegacy wasthe beginning of a fundamental change in theapproach adopted by the extension movementtowards potential students from amongst theworking class. Mansbridge was born in Gloucester in 1876. Hisfather was a carpenter who became a clerk ofworks. His mother was involved in the cooperativemovement. Through her, Mansbridge came to knowthe Toynbee Hall founder, Samuel Barnett, who wasclosely connected to the Oxford Extension Del-egacy. In 1880 the family moved to Battersea.Mansbridge attended Battersea Grammar School,but at 14 his father made him leave. Initially he

worked as a clerk at the Board of Education, wherehe founded the Junior Civil Service Prayer Union�’smagazine. In 1894, he tried and failed to win aCooperative Scholarship to Oxford. Although bothof his parents were Congregationalists, Mansbridgesoon after this he became an Anglican lay reader.Through this he met Canon Charles Gore, andcame to view Westminster Abbey as his �‘university�’. Descended on both sides of his family fromearls, Gore was educated at Harrow School andBalliol College, and became a fellow of TrinityCollege Oxford in 1875. Later he was to becomebishop of, successively, Worcester (1902), Birming-ham (1905) and Oxford (1911). In 1889 he helpedfound the Christian Social Union, and in the sameyear edited and contributed to the book Lux Mundi,an influential collection of essays by left-leaning,upper class Anglo-Catholics. In 1892, he foundedthe Community of the Resurrection. In the early1900s members of this played a leading role in theformation of the Church Socialist League, throughwhich they set out to influence the IndependentLabour Party (ILP). Through Gore, Mansbridge metChristian Social Union members and also followersof the Oxford University reformer T.H. Green.Through these people he then made further con-tacts with Oxford dons. He became involved in anintellectual dining club called the Synthetic Society . In 1896, Mansbridge became a clerk in the teadepartment of the Cooperative Wholesale Societyin Whitechapel, moving shortly afterwards tobecome a cashier in the Cooperative PermanentBuilding Society. Between 1891 and 1901 heattended university extension classes (in chemistry,economics and Greek) at Toynbee Hall, eventuallybecoming himself a teacher there (of typewriting,economics and industrial history). During this periodMansbridge also founded an organisation called theChristian Economic Society. Mansbridge believed that the knowledge whichOxbridge dons possessed was class neutral, andthat this was one of the best things about it. In1903, the University Extension Journal publishedthree articles by him. In one, he argued that: �‘deepdraughts of knowledge�’ would �‘divert the strongmovements of the people from the narrow paths ofimmediate interests to the broad way of . . . rightlyordered social life�’. In February 1903, Mansbridge founded theorganisation which eventually became the WEA.The full title he gave this at the start was: �‘AnAssociation to Promote the Higher Education ofWorking Men, primarily by the extension of univer-

WEA88888 Post-16 Educator

sity teaching also, (a) By the assistance of allWorking Class efforts of a specifically educationalcharacter (b) by the development of an efficientSchool Continuation System�’. This was a moretruthful name than �‘Workers�’ Educational Associa-tion�’. Mansbridge�’s organisation drew support almostat once from sections of the labour movement andworking men�’s clubs. In July 1903, the first meetingof its provisional committee took place, at ToynbeeHall. (This committee included two members of theTUC parliamentary committee - ie its ruling body.)The organisation�’s public launch took place on 22/8/03 at a special conference in Oxford held duringthe Annual Meeting of the University�’s ExtensionDelegacy, which gave its full support. At this confer-ence, which was presided over by the Bishop ofHereford and the Dean of Durham, the organisationadopted a constitution. According to this constitu-tion its aim was: �‘to construct a working alliancebetween university extension and the working-classmovement�’. At this stage, Mansbridge also won thesupport of Sir William Anson, warden of All SoulsCollege, Oxford and Parliamentary Secretary to theBoard of Education. In 1904 the first local commit-tee of the WEA was established (in Reading). In 1904, the Mansbridge organisation�’s annualconference was again held in Oxford as part of theExtension Delegacy�’s Annual Meeting. By 1905, ithad enough financial backing for Mansbridge, nowliving in Ilford, to become its full time generalsecretary on a salary of £50 a year. Shortly after its1905 annual conference, yet again held as part ofthe Oxford Annual Meeting, the organisationchanged its name to the Workers�’ EducationalAssociation, the declared aim of which was now topromote �‘the higher education of working men,primarily by the extension of university teaching�’.(At the 1905 conference, the WEA also launched ademand that the Government make it compulsoryfor adults to attend evening classes.) By 1905 Mansbridge had developed further hisidea about how to solve the problem of workingclass non-participation. He now argued that, as wellas concentrating on classes in history and citizen-ship, extension should focus less on lectures andmore on �‘tutorial�’ classes. The university would stillsupply a lecturer, but now this lecturer would workclosely with a smaller group of students (ideallyabout thirty). The students would have to committhemselves to a long term (eg two-year) course,with a formal syllabus. They would have to readspecified material and write essays, which thelecturer would mark. Some of them would take anexam at the end. This exam would, in turn, be partof a system of diplomas leading potentially to studywithin the university itself. Mansbridge and those

who agreed with him argued that this method wouldallow the content of what was taught and learnt tobe determined by academic criteria, rather than bythe need to attract large audiences. In present dayterms, then, they saw old-style extension lecturesas �‘dumbing down�’. Gore and Barnett and Morant now threw theirsupport behind Mansbridge�’s approach. Also in1905, a group of eight young tutors at OxfordUniversity joined Mansbridge�’s adherents. Themost important of these people turned out to be R.H. Tawney, another Christian socialist, who, ongraduating from Balliol College in 1903, worked andlived for three years at Toynbee Hall. In his most influential book, based on lecturesgiven in 1922, Tawney was later to write: �‘Compro-mise is as impossible between the Church of Christand the idolatry of wealth, which is the practicalreligion of capitalist societies, as it was between theChurch and the State idolatry of the Roman em-pire�’. This book, Religion and the Rise of Capital-ism, presented an account of how capitalism hademerged from the social order existing in WesternEurope in the Middle Ages but in so doing had alsodestroyed it. Tawney, then, held a more academicversion of the feudal socialist tendency notedearlier in Hopkins. These Oxford tutors referred to themselves half-jokingly as �‘conspirators�’, and also called them-selves the Catiline Club. (This choice of nameindicates that they saw themselves as strugglingagainst the powers-that-be in Oxford University toopen it up to less well-off people.) One of them,Alfred Zimmern, was later to help Mansbridge writethe crucial report, Oxford and Working-ClassEducation. Another, William Temple, later to bearchbishop of Canterbury, was to become in 1908the WEA�’s first president. (Temple�’s father,Frederick, was the bishop of London who in 1893deprived Dennis Hird of his job as London secretaryof the Church of England Temperance Society.) This group set about building a current of opinionamongst the well-off and influential in support ofMansbridge�’s tutorial concept. In May 1905, Barnettpublished an article in University Review backingMansbridge, and this was followed in the Februaryand March 1906 issues of the Westminster Gazetteby eight articles on �‘The University and the Nation�’written by Tawney under the pseudonym �‘Lambda�’.There was also an article by Zimmern in theIndependent Review, and one by Marriott in Fort-nightly Review. Meanwhile, Dr John Percival issuedadvice to the Oxford Delegacy for ExtramuralStudies along the same lines. In 1921, attempting to summarise �‘The W.E.A.spirit�’, Mansbridge would write: �‘The genesis of theAssociation was due to the lamentable situation

WEA / LEFT 99999Post-16 Educator

which had arisen in English life owing to the neglectof education for the people. In this matter theordinary working man was disinherited . . . Therenever was a single occasion upon which the idealsexpressed were not in harmony with the spirit oflabour. The scholars and others who joined themovement were as men watching all the time howthey could assist and forward the wishes of themajority . . . always there was the manifest desire toperceive and understand the spirit and needs ofthose engaged in manual toil. Yet because scholar-ship is a vital force the fusion of it with the experi-ence of life and labour produced a greater wisdomthan could have been the case if scholars had beenabsent or quiescent. That is indeed the whole casefor the Association�’. This reveals a genuine insight into the necessityfor dialogue between people with a high level offormal education and working-class people who

have been denied this. However, Mansbridge�’sproject also fitted in with the desire of a growingsection of the ruling class to draw union activistsinto liberal education and through this, classcollaboration, or - as it was often put at the time - to�‘sandpaper�’ them. This would, it was hoped, createwithin the working class a layer of articulate peoplewho would blunt the edge of class struggle. At this stage the WEA had committees but noclasses, while the extension movement had thesame kind of classes as before. So now the WEA/extension alliance, was looking for a chance to putMansbridge�’s approach into practice. The ambiva-lent character of Ruskin Hall, the fact that it was onthe doorstep of Oxford University and, above all,the fact that it was recruiting and retaining working-class students, meant that sooner or later theywould try to take control of it

5.5.5.5.5. TTTTThe Left 1902-1907he Left 1902-1907he Left 1902-1907he Left 1902-1907he Left 1902-1907IIIIIn the early 1900s a new type of leftwing social-

ism was spreading amongst union activists.When it came to educating themselves throughbooks, however, the members of this movementfaced a problem. Unlike elsewhere in Europe,universities like Oxford or Cambridge did notproduce a layer of educated people who wereprepared to throw in their lot with working-classsocialists. This in turn meant that, when it came toeducating themselves through books, activists wererelied heavily on translated texts. This meant theywere dependent on publishers�’ decisions aboutwhat to translate. Writing in Plebs in 1952, one of the Ruskinstrikers, Stan Rees, took up a claim made by one ofthe Ruskin lecturers, H. Sanderson Furniss. In abook called Memories of Sixty Years, Furniss hadsaid that he �‘lectured on Marx and was chieflyoccupied in refuting Marx�’s theory of value to whichmost of the students clung with religious fervour,but which I regarded as absolute nonsense�’.Commenting on this, Rees wrote that: �‘The majorityof the students had not heard of - never mind, read- Marx when Mr Furniss began to lecture at Ruskin;and it was immediately after one of Furniss�’ lec-tures in which he had criticised Marx that a studentsuggested that the lecturer was not putting theposition but putting up a dummy Marx and thendestroying the Marx of his imagination. The stu-dents then began reading Marx themselves be-cause of Mr Furniss�’ distortions�’.

What was the true position? Were the Ruskinstudents in a position to base themselves on Marx�’sideas? What other ideas did they have access to?What role did socialist groups play when it came toideas? The largest leftwing membership organisation atthe time was the ILP. More of the Ruskin studentsbelonged to this than to any other group In theperiod leading up to the 1909 strike, the ILP pub-lished the Socialist Library series of pamphlets andbooks, which was aimed at countering classstruggle conceptions. This series was edited byRamsay MacDonald. Some of these writings wereby continental �‘revisionists�’ of Marxism such asEduard Bernstein or Emile Vandervelde, whileothers were by Macdonald himself, for example hisSocialism and Society (1905). ILP publications,then, really offered people like the Ruskin strikers asocialistic version of the approach purveyed byLees Smith. Another influential organisation in this period wasRobert Blatchford�’s Clarion movement. It wasBlatchford who had published Dennis Hird�’s Jesusthe Socialist. However, the Clarion movement didnot provide material for activists seeking theoreticalback-up. Thirdly, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) had atthis stage about 15,000 members. It was domi-nated by a group round H.M. Hyndman, the busi-nessman who had founded it as the SDF in the1880s, and whose money kept its paper, Justice,

LEFT Post-16 Educator1010101010going. Hyndman did not believe that strikes orunion activity in general would benefit the workingclass. This did not stop grassroots SDF membersfrom being active in unions, but it did mean that theleadership usually took a negative attitude towardsthe focus on rank and file union activity which wasgrowing amongst activists in the early 1900s. WithHyndman, this attitude towards unions was part of abroader rejection of any notion of socialism frombelow. One of his favourite sayings, for example,was that no enslaved class had ever liberated itself(implying that none ever could). Hyndman�’s view ofthe world was based on Marx�’s economic analysis,but it had little in common with Marx�’s emphasis onworkers�’ conscious self-activity. In a period such asthis, then, when groups of workers were increas-ingly taking action which challenged the capitalistclass�’s right to rule, a tension was bound to developbetween the Hyndman group and workers lookingfor ideas to guide them in union activity. In 1903,after three years of disagreement about whethersocialist politicians should take part in non-socialistgovernments, a part of the SDF broke withHyndman. This breakaway centred on the SDF�’soverwhelmingly working-class membership inGlasgow. Another political group participating in this so-called �‘impossiblist�’ revolt was the Socialist LabourParty (SLP) in the US. The SLP had been domi-nated for nearly ten years by the academic DanielDe Leon. At one stage, De Leon, like Hyndman,had believed in the primacy of electoral politics. Butnow his priority was to break the control exercisedover the working-class movement by trade unionleaders. In the US many of these leaders werehappy to call themselves �‘labour lieutenants of thecapitalist class�’. Craft unions dominated by thisapproach were organised in the American Federa-tion of Labour (AFL), created by Samuel Gompersin a struggle against the Knights of Labour. De Leon believed that the way to defeatGompers was through industrial unions: that is,unions organising all grades of worker in an indus-try (for example mining). He also believed in dualunionism - that is, the idea that a group like the SLPshould set up its own industrial unions. (Manyactivists accepted industrial unionism but rejecteddual unionism.) Following a speaking tour by De Leon in Scot-land and England in 1904, the SDF dissidents inScotland formed a British wing of the SLP. By thetime of the Ruskin struggle, this had developed asmall number of branches in England, includingone in the North East and one in Oxford. In the two or three years after the formation ofthe SLP in Scotland, a much broader layer of unionactivists, especially amongst miners in South Wales

and in the North East, were attracted either toindustrial unionism, or to syndicalism. A key con-cept associated with syndicalism was �‘cleavage�’ -the idea that the conflict of interest between work-ers and capitalists is so sharp that any settlementbetween them - as for example, in a union disputewith an employer - is a betrayal of the workers�’cause. Both industrial unionists and syndicalists tendedto share this view. They also tended to equate�‘politics�’ with electoral activity and parliamentaryspeech-making, which they in turn looked on as atrap to be avoided. This approach gained groundafter the 1906 general election. This was becausethe new Liberal government appointed trade unionofficials to administer welfare measures. Manyactivists regarded these measures as palliativesintended to divert workers from struggle. At thesame time the 37 MPs elected for the first time asthe Labour Party failed to challenge this. (The ideaof class politics as a struggle for state power, asspelt out in the Communist Manifesto or as devel-oped in this period by the Bolsheviks in Russia, didnot play much part in the thinking of activists in thiscountry at the time.) Under the influence of syndicalism, some ofthose active at the time of the Ruskin strike,including several of those who led it, would shortlymove towards a rejection of leadership per se, astandpoint which those who were members of theSouth Wales Miners Federation (SWMF) wouldsoon afterwards embody in the Unofficial ReformCommittee and The Miners�’ Next Step. De Leon had raised the question of leadership intwo lectures which he gave in New York in 1902,which were then published by the SLP in a pam-phlet called Two Pages from Roman History. In thefirst of these �‘pages�’, De Leon dealt with theactivities of the tribunes of the people (plebs) inancient Rome. He detailed how the office of tribunewas brought in after the secession of the plebs fromthe city. He argued that the tribunes did not trulyrepresent the mass of the plebs but rather acted onbehalf of that small section who were acquiringwealth, thereby helping to divert the anger of thepoor into channels which did not threaten the well-off. In the second �‘page�’, which dealt with theGracchi, he went on to spell out the parallel be-tween, on the one hand, the tribunes and theGracchi, and, on the other, present day trade unionleaders. This, then, was part of De Leon�’s case forbuilding new, industrial unions separate from andopposed to the AFL. Just before the end of the first of these talks, DeLeon had said: �‘The Socialist Republic depends,not upon material conditions only; it depends uponthese, - plus clearness of vision to assist the

LEFTPost-16 Educator 11evolutionary process. Nor was the agency of theintellect needful at any previous stage of socialevolution in the Class Struggle to the extent that it isneedful at this, the culminating one of all.�’ In the second �‘page�‘, De Leon also listed what hesaw as characteristics of the �‘proletarian revolution�’,including that it �‘abhors forms�’, that it is �‘relentlesslylogical�’, that it regards �‘palliatives [as] palliations ofwrong�’, that it �‘brings along its own code�’, that it is�‘irreverent�’, that it is �‘self-reliant�’, that it �‘spurnssops�’, that it is �‘impelled and held together byreason, not rhetoric�’, that it �‘deals not in doublesense�’ and that it is a �‘character-builder�’. Here,then, De Leon emphasised, on the one hand, theneed for working class activists to be independentand critical, and, on the other, the need for them touse their intellects to understand society as it reallyis rather than as those in power falsely represent it. Two Pages from Roman History was only one ofmany pamphlets published by the SLP in Scotland.In fact, a key contemporary activist, T.A. Jackson,was later to write: �‘The Labour College, and themovement for independent working-class educa-tion, was in the immediate sense, a product ofS.L.P. and De Leonite literature�’. Jackson cited insupport of this a translation by De Leon of KarlKautsky�’s book Das Erfurter Programm. This wasan explanation of the German Social DemocraticParty�’s 1891 programme, which the SLP in Scot-land made available as a series of four pamphlets.In Jackson�’s view, this �‘gave a reasonably completesurvey of Marxist theory�’, although he added that:�‘De Leon, of course, had taken care (avowedly) to�“adapt�” the translation �“to American conditions�” andthe British S.L.P. cheerfully readapted the adapta-tion to �“British conditions�”.�’ This illustrates a widerproblem that activists at this time had when theyneeded to get hold of theoretical texts. A number of leftwing books were popularamongst militants. These included EdwardBellamy�’s Looking Backward, William Morris�’sNews From Nowhere, Jack London�’s The Iron Heeland Blatchford�’s Merrie England. Some moretheoretical material, such as Auguste Bebel�’sWoman and Socialism (translated by De Leon) andwritings by Kautsky, Josef Dietzgen, AntonioLabriola and Georgi Plekhanov, was also available,mainly via translations produced in Chicago byCharles Kerr. However, when it came to writings byMarx and Engels themselves, several key textswere not available at all in english at this time.These included Marx�’s Economic and PhilosophicalManuscripts 1844, Grundrisse, Class Struggles inFrance and Critique of the Gotha Programme,Engels�’s The Peasant War in Germany, Dialecticsof Nature and Anti-During (except for the SocialismUtopian and Scientific extract), plus the jointly

written German Ideology. There is also no sign thatactivists knew about any writings by Lenin or RosaLuxemburg. Finally, activists - especially whentrying to educate others - were heavily reliant onnon-socialist texts that they perceived to be gener-ally progressive. Such texts included ErnstHaeckel�’s Riddle of the Universe, and material byHerbert Spencer. (Haeckel�’s book, along withDarwin�’s The Origin of Species, was published in aseries of sixpenny reprints by the Rationalist PressAssociation in 1902.) This in turn helps to explainwhy the Ruskin strikers placed what now seemslike too much value on the writings of the pioneerUS sociologist Lester F. Ward, and on JamesThorold Rogers�’s Six Centuries of Work andWages: The History of English Labour. Both the difficulty in getting hold of translationsand the lack of theoretical writings by Britishsocialists reflected a difference between universi-ties in England and in continental Europe. Under the influence of the 1789 revolution inFrance, universities on the continent normallycontained a broad layer of students who, thoughoften close to poverty in terms of their familybackground, were trying to become professionals,especially lawyers. From amongst this layer ofstudents, who were often in or around a highereducation environment for much longer thanstudents here, a radicalised section usuallyemerged. Within this, a smaller section would bedrawn to socialist - and specifically to Marxist -ideas. Some might eventually become lecturers. Intimes of rising class struggle, this group interactedwith working class militants, and it was fromamongst them that most of the classic theorists ofmodern socialism, starting with Marx himself andcontinuing through Labriola, Plekhanov, Kautsky,Luxemburg, Lenin, Pannekoek and Gramsci, weredrawn. In England, on the other hand, the class charac-ter of the two dominant universities was set at theend of the English Civil War rather than in theaftermath of the Enlightenment and French Revolu-tion. Both these universities - and Oxford especially- were tied to the established church. Their mainproducts were Anglican clergy, colonial civil ser-vants and apprentice politicians. The layer fromwhich Marxist intellectuals developed on thecontinent effectively did not exist. There werepeople at Oxford and Cambridge who looked uponthemselves - and were looked on by those inauthority - as �‘socialists�’. However, like the groupround Tawney and Zimmern who supportedMansbridge, they were Christian rather than class-struggle socialists. There was amongst these upper class socialistssome awareness of Marx�’s ideas. Now, however,

Post-16 Educator1212121212 LEFT / OXFORDmore and more of them were coming to viewMarx�’s ideas as both incorrect (the standpointadopted by the dominant academic economist,Alfred Marshall) and dangerous, because attractiveto workers. The students at Ruskin in 1908, then, did nothave access to a group with higher education who

6.6.6.6.6. OxfOxfOxfOxfOxfororororord and d and d and d and d and WWWWWorororororking-Classking-Classking-Classking-Classking-ClassEducaEducaEducaEducaEducationtiontiontiontion

would help them develop the ideas they wanted todevelop. With limited exceptions, such as theinfluence of De Leon, they had to do most of theirthinking for themselves.

UUUUUnder the pressure of rising working-class selfassertion across the country, the extension

movement accepted Mansbridge�’s scheme fortutorial classes. This acceptance was spearheadedby a group of young, socialistic Oxford tutors.Supported by prominent figures in the church, civilservice and ruling class generally, members of thisgroup worked with Mansbridge himself and theother main WEA activist, J. MacTavish, to produceda report, Oxford and Working-Class Education. In 1907, after years of leftwing lobbying, the TUCCongress made a more high profile appeal tounions to give financial support to Ruskin. Thistriggered a drive by the WEA/extension alliance toseize control of Ruskin before it could becomeirreversibly a labour college. During April and May 1907, The Times publishedseveral articles by Catiline Club members. On 27thJuly, in the climate of upper class opinion formed bythese articles, Gore started a debate in the Houseof Lords about the development of both Oxford andCambridge Universities. This in turn set the scenefor the WEA annual conference in August, whichwas held under the title �‘What Oxford can do forWorking People�’, again in conjunction with theannual meeting of the Oxford Extension Delegacy.At this joint event, McTavish, a shipwright andLabour councillor in Portsmouth, who would latersucceed Mansbridge as general secretary of theWEA, made a demagogic speech in which he said:�‘I am not here as a suppliant for my class . . . Iclaim for my class all the best that Oxford has togive. I claim it as a right wrongfully withheld . . .What is the true function of a University? Is it totrain the nation�’s best men, or to sell its gifts to therich? . . . To Oxford I say: Open wide your doorsand take us in; we need you; you need us�’. Following this speech, on 10th August themeeting set up a committee. Seven members ofthis committee were nominated by the vice-chan-cellor of Oxford University. These included the

Dean of Christ Church College, and fellows ortutors of New College, Balliol College and St John�’sCollege, as well as Catiline Club member AlfredZimmern and H. B. Lees Smith, described in thereport�’s preamble as �‘chairman of the executivecommittee of Ruskin College�’. The other sevenwere nominated by the WEA. These includedMansbridge and McTavish, along with Ruskingovernor David Shackleton, �‘representing theParliamentary Committee of the Trades UnionCongress�’. The remit of this committee was toproduce by Easter 1908 a report on Oxford andWorking-Class Education. It met for the first time atChristmas 1907, and in fact put out interim recom-mendations in May 1908. These were followed bythe full report on 28th November. Oxford and Working-Class Education was themanifesto in which the WEA/extension allianceannounced its project to the political class, to themiddle class public, and to sympathetic trade unionleaders. Specific plans for Ruskin College werealso included. The 189-page report includes chapters on:�‘Educational movements particularly affectingworkpeople�’; �‘The University and colleges ofOxford. Their purpose, history and endowments�’;�‘The Oxford University extension movement�’; �‘Thedemand made by workpeople for university educa-tion�’; �‘The establishment of tutorial classes beyondthe limits of the university�’; �‘The admission ofworkpeople to Oxford�’; and �‘The after career of theworking-class students�’, plus a summary of recom-mendations and nearly 100 pages of appendices. Its main recommendations are as follows.Tutorial-type classes should be set up all over thecountry for working class adults. The tutors forthese classes should be supplied by the universi-ties. The funding should come mainly from LEAs.The running of the classes should be controlled bythe students themselves, organised through theWEA. These classes should have three main

OXFORD 1313131313Post-16 Educator

purposes. First, they would make life more enjoy-able for the people who took them. Secondly, theyshould counter bias, and help working-class people,especially those involved in unions and/or theLabour Party, to make objective judgements aboutthe world. Thirdly, they should provide a route bywhich a minority of this group could becomestudents at Oxford University itself. (Here theywould do either a special two year diploma inEconomics, based on one that already existed, oranother, to be introduced, in Political Science. Itwas expected that many if not most of thosefollowing this route would then become unionleaders and/or M.P,s.) The report recommended that the decision aboutwhich members of a tutorial class could progressbeyond it should be taken by a selection committee.This should consist of: �‘the class teacher, twoUniversity representatives, a representative of theWorkers�’ Educational Association, of the localorganisation [ie in the area where the class tookplace], and of the class�’. Among three criteria to beused by this committee should be: �‘the characterand influence of the students, and in particular ofany probability which may exist that they will beasked to hold places of trust and responsibility�’. Thelast point here was important because �‘it is one ofthe objects of the scheme which we recommend togive the broad general training needed to qualifyworkpeople for public positions�’. Students selected in this way should be sup-ported financially - either by Oxford University itself,or by unions, or by local authorities. They should�‘come up [ie to Oxford] either as members of anordinary College, or as Non-collegiate students, oras members of Ruskin College�’. The first year atRuskin should become a route to entering theUniversity as a diploma student. Those doing sucha diploma could do it either via a second year atRuskin or by one of the other routes cited above. If adopted, these proposals would gear teachingat Ruskin to diploma course entry, and transfervirtually all decision-making about what was taughtand learnt there to the university. Alongside these administrative proposals, anxietyabout Marxist ideas was reflected in the modelcurricula attached as appendices to the report, aswell as in the notes about how lecturers shouldhandle such topics. Appendices VII and VIII set out specimen studyunits. Appendix VII does this under the title�‘Courses of study�’, and provides units and detailedreading lists - for Economics, Recent EnglishLiterature (1785-1900), Recent English History,Modern World History, General English History, andPolitical Science - considered suitable for tutorialclasses. Appendix VIII, written by Zimmern and

MacTavish, does so under the title �‘Suggestions forPreliminary Study�’, and includes the followingspecific areas: �‘The study of politics or politicalscience�’; Government and democracy�’; �‘War�’; and�‘The organization of knowledge�’. These units aim togive an idea of what could be done with lower levelstudents, who by this means could be prepared fortutorial class entry. These two appendices revealthe kind of curriculum and teaching method sup-porters of the WEA/extension alliance thoughtsuitable for trade union students. The report contained elements intended specifi-cally to counter Marxist ideas. Thus in Appendix VII,under �‘Recent English History�’, a recommendedunit on �‘The Labour-Socialist Movement in Englandsince 1880�’ suggests to potential tutors that the�‘gradual spread of the movement after 1880�’ wasdue, among other things, to �‘the influence of theContinental Socialist movement (mainly in Lon-don)�’. Reference is also made to Henry George,Marx and Hyndman. Again, a unit on �‘Modern WorldHistory�’ includes a section (XI) on �‘The WorkingClass Movement in Europe and England�’. Thiscovers, among other topics, �‘The Carbonari�’,�‘Robert Owen and the Chartists�’, �‘Communism�’,Karl Marx and the Internationale�’ and �‘Revisionismand Syndicalism�’. Or again, the recommended uniton �‘Economics�’ says that �‘If many members of theclass have socialistic views, it would be well topreface this part of the subject [ie the transition toeconomic theory] by reading Marx�’s Capital. . . .The first nine chapters of Book I contain the es-sence of the whole. The style is rather difficult, buta simplified statement is to be found in Hyndman�’sEconomics of Socialism . . . The teacher whoadopts this course must, however, be very sure thatthe criticism of Marx, implicit in the ordinary text-book, is equally carefully explained . . .�’ Finally, inthe appendix on �‘Suggestions for PreliminaryStudy�’, a discussion question under �‘The Study ofPolitics or Political Science�’ asks �‘Does not anignorant fanatic achieve more in politics than askilled political thinker?�’ Oxford and Working-Class Educationemphasised the need to foster �‘harmony�’ betweenthe classes by giving workers a �‘broad outlook�’ anda �‘synoptic mind�’. Its tone was liberal and progres-sive. Despite this, it assumed throughout that theexisting distribution of wealth and power in societywould stay the same. In the end, it was an attemptby one section of the ruling class to convince othersections, including within Oxford University itself,that the growth of working class power could not beignored or simply repressed, and that tutorialclasses leading to university entrance via Ruskinwere the best weapon for combating it.

1414141414 Post-16 EducatorSTUDENTS

IIIIIn trying to educate themselves about socialism,activists like those at Ruskin began to solve for

themselves the problems about lack of texts and ofsupport from radicalised intellectuals discussedearlier on. Against the model proposed in Oxfordand Working-Class Education they were able to setat least the beginnings of a coherent approach tosocialist adult education from below. In developingthis they brought back to life educational contentand methods that had been developed by working-class organisations in the past. In the ten years or so before the Ruskin struggle,activists began to evolve a set of common assump-tions about what adult education for rank and filetrade unionists should be like. As a result thereexisted amongst at least some of those who werestudents at Ruskin in 1908 a fairly precise concep-tion of what should be taught and learnt. Thisconception was incompatible with Oxford andWorking-Class Education. It revolved round threeelements: Marxist economics; industrial history; andphilosophy. Activists who adopted this approach focusedmainly on Marx�’s version of the labour theory ofvalue, which they saw as the key to understandingthe capitalist social order. They wanted to explainthis to as many workers as possible, and they sawthe study of economics as a way in which theycould equip themselves to do this. In this, they werecontinuing an approach pioneered by Hyndman andMorris. Knowingly or otherwise, however, they werealso revisiting the struggle over �‘really usefulknowledge�’ of eighty years before. (In that struggle,activists had tried to defend the economic ideas ofpeople like Thomas Hodgskin against the Societyfor the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.) Secondly, they knew from experience that thebest way to convince other workers that Marx wasright was by connecting his analyses to theirworking lives. This was a step towards socialismfrom below, because it was about finding things inworkers�’ experience which would help them under-stand underlying forces, rather than simply an-nouncing the law of value from above as the key toeverything. They saw study of industrial history asthe best preparation for activists planning to usethis approach. Thirdly, they based their approach on pointsmade by both Marx and Engels about dialectics.

7.7.7.7.7. TTTTThe students�’he students�’he students�’he students�’he students�’ conce conce conce conce concept ofpt ofpt ofpt ofpt ofeducaeducaeducaeducaeducationtiontiontiontion

Marx and Engels believed that workers could usedialectical thought to cut through ruling classideology. The Ruskin students focused on theversion of dialectics that was accessible to them.This was Josef Dietzgen�’s The Positive Outcome ofPhilosophy as published by Charles Kerr, whichincluded the essay �‘The Nature of HumanBrainwork�’. Although Dietzgen�‘s approach wasrather limited, this too represented a turn towardssocialism from below, because it was about activ-ists equipping themselves - and helping as manyother workers as possible to equip themselves -with a capacity for reasoning, viewed both as aprocess inside each person�’s mind and as a tool foruse in discussion and debate. The Ruskin students also had a method by whichteaching and learning could best be conducted.This method was arguably the key contributionmade specifically by the SLP to the development ofIWCE. The education historian Brian Simon waslater to claim, convincingly, that it was similar to amethod developed in the late 1700s by the LondonCorresponding Society. Many of the 54 students at Ruskin College in1908-09 were either in or close to the ILP or SDF.However, in June 1908, one of the first year stu-dents, George Harvey, left the ILP and joined thesmall branch of the SLP in Oxford. When he cameto Ruskin, Harvey, born in 1885, was acheckweighman at Follonsby colliery in CountyDurham. (He was later to write books about thestructure of the mining industry, and for many yearsthe Follonsby miners�’ banner carried his portraitalongside that of Lenin.) Harvey was recruited toRuskin via the Ruskin Hall Scheme. SLP ideaswere known about in County Durham as a result ofpeople from Scotland going to speak there. TheSLP branch in Oxford was in existence by July1905 and in 1910, after a period of growth, was stillone of only 13 in England. Its most prominentmember was Leonard Cotton. Cotton had been afounder member of the SLP. From 1910 to 1919 hewas its national secretary. Between 1910 and 1912,Harvey would edit the SLP�’s�’s main publication, TheSocialist. There are grounds for thinking that it was throughHarvey that a teaching and learning methoddeveloped mainly by the SLP came to influence thestudents then at Ruskin. However, other factors too

1515151515Post-16 Educator

bolstered this influence. First, as discussed earlieron, several key items of socialist literature wereavailable to working class people in Britain at thistime only through cheap translations produced bythe SLP. Secondly, the SLP in Britain, partly asresult of De Leon�’s influence, had a more rigorousapproach to the ideological side of socialist activitythan the SDF or ILP. Thirdly, this was the case notonly at the level of the ideas which members held,but also in the means by which they equippedthemselves to argue for those ideas. The over-whelmingly working class composition of the SLPmay well have meant that, even more than othergroups, it had to produce for itself, from amongst itsown ranks, people who could conduct strugglesabout ideas. Tom Bell, later prominent in the CommunistParty, described the SLP method as follows: �‘Ourmethod in the classes was to open with an inaugu-ral survey of the whole field we proposed totraverse, and to make the workers familiar with thesubject as a whole; the textbooks etc, whichincluded Wage Labour and Capital; Value, Priceand Profit; Capital . .. Each student was given aseries of definitions of terms used by Marx. Thesehad to be studied, memorised and discussedthoroughly, for perhaps the first four weeks. Thestudent would study Wage Labour and Capital athome. At the class we would read it over paragraphby paragraph, round the class. This practice aimedat helping students to speak fluently and grammati-cally. At the following class meetings questionswould be put and answered, and the points raisedthoroughly understood by everyone, the results ofeach lesson being summarised by the leader. Thismethod was applied in the same way to industrialhistory. Later on, simple lessons in historicalmaterialism and formal logic were added. So that,after six months of this, every worker who wentthrough the entire session came out a potentialtutor for other classes.�’ Bell also described the classes held in Glasgowon Sunday afternoons: �‘We had two and a halfhours tuition; reading out aloud; questions andanswers to last week�’s lessons; short discussionsand examination of home-work; after which tea wasmade and for another hour we talked and dis-cussed freely on all manner of political and educa-tional subjects. An hour�’s respite and we wouldrepair to Buchanan Street . . . or to Glasgow Green,to hold forth on socialist propaganda to largeaudiences who collected there every Sunday night.�’ It seems likely that this method was devisedbefore the split with the SDF by one of the foundersof the SLP, George Yates. Yates was an engineer-ing worker, who at the time was employed as adraughtsperson but who had also worked as a lab

technician at Edinburgh University. This methodwould have been attractive to students at Ruskinbecause many activists then, especially in Englandor Wales rather than Scotland, would have had onlya basic primary schooling, learning by rote inclasses of up to 100, under the threat of physicalpunishment. Many would have left at an early age,and any text-related education they had beyond thatwould usually have taken the form of privatereading. The SLP method was rather rigid. How-ever, it did involve discussion, it did emphasiseunderstanding and it did produce workers whocould argue with confidence in more or less anycompany. In fact, when he talks about the lectureson Marx�’s economics given from 1906 by the SDF/British Socialist Party member John Maclean, Bellclaims that: �‘MacLean�’s method had the merit ofpopularising economic study amongst large num-bers of the workers, but had the defect of becominga propaganda lecture. The S.L.P. method was moreintensive and produced a crop of competent classtutors, who led classes inside the factories. Nosuch tutors came from MacLean�’s classes in thisperiod . . .�’ Commenting later on equivalent classesorganised amongst SDF members in London in thesame period, Jackson described a similar ap-proach: �‘It was our practice, then, to form classesfor the study of Marx�’s economics. In Scotland,these classes were usually promoted and con-ducted by the S.D.F. branch, officially - and wereoften attended (more or less under obligation) byevery member of the branch. In England, andespecially in London, they were formed by themembers individually . . .�’ He added: �‘I have noted .. . a difference between Scottish and Englishpractice in the matter of economics classes. Thisdifference turned upon . . . the fact that the �‘tradi-tional distrust of theory�’ which Engels notes . . . inEngland, was nothing like so evident in Scotland . .. the level of education in the public elementaryschools was definitely higher in Scotland than inEngland: and in addition, for historical reasons,there was in Scotland a popular respect for learningthat had no counterpart in England. I fancy - thoughthis is only my guess - that an early drilling in theShorter Catechism had something to do with givingour Scottish comrades their taste for, and respect oflogic.�’ The SLP method, then, produced articulateactivists, people who would be confident enough,for example, to challenge the Oxford Universitygraduates employed to lecture on economics atRuskin. As well as possessing a view of what the contentof education should be, and a teaching and learningmethod which went with this, some Ruskin students

STUDENTS

16 Post-16 EducatorSTUDENTSand ex-students also began to develop a critique ofthe dominant university curriculum, which theyreferred to as �‘orthodox�’ education. This critiquewent much further than a narrow demand fortraining in Marxist economics or techniques forwinning debates. That there was an urgent need for a kind oftraining was expressed well by a delegate to theRhondda No. 1 District of the SWMF, when he said:�‘We have to contend with the masters, who havemen thoroughly versed in the laws of supply anddemand, and we want to bring into our ranks youngmen educated in these matters at Ruskin College,able to hold their own against all comers�’. In linewith this, an article in �‘The Plebs�’ Magazine issue 2by the Western Valleys miner Ted Gill (at Ruskin in1907-08), titled �‘The function of a Labour College�’,integrated this need within a broader framework.Gill argued that �‘What he [the working class stu-dent] requires is a knowledge of the social forcesoperating in society, and how best they can beutilized for the benefit of the people. While it may beas well for him to know the other side of the case inthe field of Political Economy, it is essential that heshould know his own side. The theories of men,who dedicated their lives to the Workers�’ cause,should be interpreted to him in a sympathetic andefficient manner. He should be made conversantwith the origin, and growth of all working-classorganizations in the manner which would enablehim to comprehend both their possibilities andshortcomings. The workings of his own organiza-tion should be his special interest in order to detectpossible defects, the removal of which would leadto greater unity�’. Gill�’s formulation, like the poems by activists inthe early issues of �‘The Plebs�’ Magazine, testifiesthat what they wanted was anything but narrowtraining or crude agitation. Rather, there was atradition which encouraged them to be critical ofacademia. We can see this in, for example, thesection of the Communist Manifesto which dis-cusses �‘the ruling ideas�‘, in Morris�’s description ofcapitalist intellectuals as �‘the crowd of useless,draggle-tailed knaves and fools who, under thepretentious title of the intellectual part of the middleclasses, have in their turn taken the place of themediaeval jester�’, in Engels�’s description of Oxfordand Cambridge as �’protestant monasticism�’, or inJosef Dietzgen�’s characterisation of academics as�‘graduated flunkeys�’ - which encouraged them to becritical of academia. Walter Vrooman himself haddescribed Oxford tutors as �‘giants of understanding�’who were �‘walking cyclopaedias crushed like themiser beneath the weight of their possessions�’. Inline with these views, the editorial in �‘The Plebs�’Magazine issue 3 (April 1909) would argue that:

�‘University life is the breeding ground of re-action. Itincites by its very nature toward breaking away fromworking-class aspirations and cleaving unto theideals of the class above. The knowledge that is tobe of any service to the Labour Movement is not tobe gained in that quarter. The problem of theworkshop, the mine and the factory, is not to besolved in the University. All that the latter can do forthe Labour leader is to intellectually enslave him,and through his enslavement to clog and confusethe working-class movement . . .�’ In the polemical struggle against the WEA, whichwas still going on in Plebs in the 1960s, one of thekey charges was that the WEA�’s emphasis ontutorial classes required students to accept �‘ortho-dox�’ education rather than challenge it. It is there-fore not surprising that the Ruskin students rejectedthe WEA�’s central assumption: that all true educa-tion is class neutral. Thus in �‘The Plebs�’ Magazineissue 3, the author of an unsigned article about �‘Ourcritics�’ would address the claim that �“Education isnot a class question�” in the following way. �“Is thistrue? To a large extent it may be true of the physicalsciences, but it is not true of social science, i.e.,history and economics. To the working-class thepresent form of Society is a temporary stage, and apainful one at that, in social evolution; one whoseexit must be hastened as speedily as possible. Tothe other class on the contrary, it is the natural formof Society, just and eternal: �“everything is for thebest in this best of all possible worlds�”. Needless tostate these different views result in different inter-pretations of history and economics. In history,progress will be due to the activities of the ruled orthe rulers: in economics, the owners or employerswill be either benefactors or parasites. In short, inthe world of education there is reproduced theantagonism which prevails in the world of produc-tion. That all workers do not recognize this no moredisposes of the fact, than is the value of industrialorganization discounted, because so many workersremain unorganized. Indeed, there is a curiousresemblance between unorganized labour anduncontrolled [ie by the working-class] education,and in both cases the capitalist class stands tobenefit�”. Or again, in �‘The Plebs�’ Magazine issue 5(June 1909) an unsigned editorial ironicallysummed up the WEA project in this way: �‘Behold Ishow unto you [ie the ruling class] a more excellentway than the ballot box and the lock-out and theinjunction, a way of dividing the working class andof strengthening the status of your class: by theW.E.A. shalt thou conquer�’. In the period leading up to the strike, Ruskinstudents began to teach one another, using themethod described here. There existed in theCollege, then, on the one hand, the official

1717171717Post-16 Educator STUDENTS / INTERVENTIONSprogramme of lectures, the majority of whichincreasingly came to conform to the model set outin Oxford and Working-Class Education, and, onthe other, an alternative model introduced by thestudents from below. Describing his arrival at Ruskin as a student in1908, the former South Wales railway-worker WillCraik would later say: �‘We new arrivals had little orno knowledge of what had been taking place atRuskin before we got there. Most of us weresocialists of one party shade or another . . . Wewere, however, soon made aware that the socialismof the second-year men was hewn from more solidand durable stone than ours. Very soon, too, theywere urging us and helping us to dig with them inthe same quarry. They had been quarrying in theworks of Karl Marx . . . Still earlier students hadbegun to do the same thing by conducting amongthemselves study classes�’. He went on: �‘. . . it wasthe practice in those self-service classes for eachmember to be given one of the more difficult

sections of the first volume of Capital . . . to explainto the class what he understood it to mean.Through these classes and the individual studywhich they involved we gradually gained a knowl-edge which was simply unobtainable from theresident lecture staff, with the exception of thePrincipal.�’ The activists concentrated at Ruskin College in1907-09, then, understood the need for the workingclass to produce from within its own ranks peoplewho, as well as being practical organisers, couldalso think for themselves as socialists, and spreadthe capacity to do this to an expanding circle ofpeople. They also possessed a teaching andlearning method for bringing this about. BetweenOctober 1908 and the strike in March/April 1909,their approach and that of the Extension delegacy/WEA, as set out in Oxford and Working-ClassEducation, squared up to one another within thecollege.

8.8.8.8.8. Inter Inter Inter Inter Intervvvvventions in Rentions in Rentions in Rentions in Rentions in Ruskinuskinuskinuskinuskin1907-091907-091907-091907-091907-09AAAAAchieving control of Ruskin College was central

to the WEA/extension project. From thesummer of 1907 onwards, its supporters threwthemselves into open propaganda, behind-the-scenes lobbying and bureaucratic manoeuvring - allaimed at purging the college of whatever stood intheir way. As well as setting up the committee to overseethe writing of Oxford and Working-Class Education,the August 1907 Oxford Delegacy/WEA conferencealso set up an Oxford Tutorial Classes Committee,with Temple - for the University - and Mansbridge -for the WEA - as its joint secretaries. Under this,and with support from a number of Oxford colleges,eight tutorial classes were eventually started. The first two of these began in January 1908when, on Mansbridge�’s initiative, Tawney, by thisstage a part time lecturer at Glasgow University,began to teach tutorial classes for working peopleat Longton in Staffordshire and in Rochdale. By theway he ran these classes, Tawney showed thatMansbridge�’s approach could work in practice. Atthis point, the WEA/extension alliance moved onfrom promoting tutorial classes to organising them.At the same point, influential backers within OxfordUniversity began manoeuvring to control Ruskin.

In 1899, when Ruskin was founded, there werein Oxford some academics who supported thefounders�’ project. One such, for example, wasProfessor Yorke Powell, who chaired the publicmeeting at which the college was inaugurated.Similarly, the faculty chosen by Vrooman included,along with Hird and Hacking, two Oxford graduateswho were at that stage sympathetic: H. B. LeesSmith and Bertram Wilson. In 1900 Lees Smith,who was now the vice principal, wrote an appeal tounions for funds. He concluded this by saying: �‘Weshall be quite content if we have a Labour College,no more and no less�’. However, the situation beganto change in 1902 when the founders ceased toprovide an income. First, three Oxford professors sent an appealround the university asking for donations, on thegrounds that otherwise Ruskin would becomedependent on union funding alone. Although thisappeal was unsuccessful, Bertram Wilson, asgeneral secretary and treasurer of the collegeexecutive, began to pursue the same goal byappealing to wealthy individuals across the country.In the process, he also distanced himself furtherand further from his initial sympathy with whatBeard and the Vroomans wanted to achieve.

Post-16 Educator1818181818 INTERVENTIONSAmong those who contributed in response toWilson�’s approaches were the Duke of Fife, theDuke of Norfolk, Lord Avebury, Lord Crewe, LordMonkswell, Lord Ripon, Lord Rothschild, LordTweedmouth, Lord Northcliffe, Lord Roseberry, theRight Honourable Sydney Buxton (ie the viceprincipal�’s father), and Alfred Marshall. Clearly, themore �‘non-partisan�’ the curriculum at Ruskin couldbecome, the more chance there was of raisingmoney from such sources. This does not mean that it was part of the WEA/extension project to exclude union funding alto-gether. On the contrary, in 1906 one ofMansbridge�’s clerical supporters, Dr John Percival,Bishop of Hereford, wrote to the Chair of the OxfordExtension Delegacy to advise him that �‘to exerciseits highest influence among the working classgenerally�’, Oxford should work through leadingTUs. The role played in 1907-09 by the Ruskin TUgovernors Bell and Shackleton shows that main-stream union leaders were more than willing tosupport this collaboration. The point was, rather,that the extension side did not want Ruskin to befunded exclusively by unions because they believedthat this funding might eventually come under rankand file control. In 1907, Lees Smith was appointed as a profes-sor at Bristol University. At the same time theRuskin governors made him Director of Studies atRuskin, and chairperson of the college�’s executivecommittee. In this capacity, he acting over the headof Dennis Hird, to appointed one of his friends,Furniss, as a lecturer, and, in October, another,Charles Sydney Buxton, as vice-principal. Neitherof these people claim to have any knowledge of - orconnection with - the labour movement or workingclass. At this time also the governors restructuredthe college executive. They put the vice principaland general secretary in joint charge with theprincipal, rather than under him as before. Following the decisive Delegacy/WEA meeting inOxford in August, the level of direct intervention inthe college rose sharply. Early in the term which began in October 1907,A. L. Smith, a fellow and tutor of Balliol College andone of the Extension Delegacy�’s nominees on thecommittee that had overseen Oxford and Working-Class Education, came to Ruskin to meet thestudents. At this informal meeting he told them thatthere was �‘a sort of committee�’ that was trying topromote closer links between the college and theUniversity. Soon after this, and still within October, thechancellor of Oxford and former viceroy of India,Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who was writing a bookabout how the university as a whole could bereformed - also visited Ruskin. This episode was

later described in the Plebs League pamphlet TheBurning Question of Education as follows: �‘The students were all standing and had formed aring, in the centre of which Lord Curzon spoke. Mr.Hird also advanced to the centre and stood facingLord Curzon while he replied. The contrast betweenthe two men was very striking. The circumstancesin which they met invested the event with a distinctlydramatic colour. Lord Curzon wearing his Doctor ofLaws gown - not the glittering robes of theChancellor�’s office, but robes of dark coloured clothdevoid of ornamentation, as if they represented theUniversity in mourning for the condescensionimplied in his visit. Not so lord Curzon himself,however. He stood in a position of ease, supportinghimself by a stick, which he held behind him as aprop to the dignity of the upper part of his body. Atrifling superiority in height, increased by the use ofthe stick, allowed him to look down somewhat onMr. Hird. It was easy to see that this man had beena Viceroy of India. Autocratic disdain, and thesuggestion of a power almost feudal in its charac-ter, seemed stamped on his countenance. �‘As the purport of Mr. Hird�’s reply reached hiscomprehension, Lord Curzon seemed to freeze intoa statuesque embodiment of wounded dignity. ForMr. Hird was not uttering the usual compliments, butwas actually rebuking the University for havingneglected Ruskin college until the day of its assuredprosperity. As he spoke, the students movedinstinctively towards him as if mutely offering himsupport. Mr. Hird, who had begun with flushedcheeks and a slight tremor in his voice, nowseemed inspired with an enthusiasm and dignitythat only comes to a man who voices the highestaspirations of a great Movement. �‘In substance, he said: �‘My Lord, when you speakof Ruskin College you are not referring merely tothis institution here in Oxford, for this is only abranch of a great democratic movement that has itsroots all over the country. To ask Ruskin College tocome into closer contact with the University is toask the great democracy whose foundation is theLabour Movement, a democracy that in the nearfuture will come into its own, and, when it does, willbring great changes in its wake.�’ As he concluded,the burst of applause that emanated from thestudents seemed to herald the dawn of the dayDennis Hird had predicted. �‘Without another word, Lord Curzon turned on hisheel and walked out, followed by the remainder ofthe lecture staff, who looked far from pleased.�’ As a direct consequence of this - and again stillwithin October - a sub committee of the Ruskinexecutive, composed of half of its members plusLees Smith as director of studies, proposed thatHird be forbidden to continue teaching economics

1919191919INTERVENTIONSPost-16 Educator

and sociology (which he alone taught) and thatinstead he must lecture only on literature and ontemperance. Early in November, when the studentsfound out about this, all except one signed apetition against it. In the spring of 1908, a meeting took place, atthe students�’ request, between representatives ofthe students and the two main trade union gover-nors of Ruskin. These governors were the generalsecretary of the Amalgamated Society of RailwayServants, Richard Bell, and David Shackleton, thegeneral secretary of the Textile Workers Associa-tion. (Shackleton, MP for Clitheroe, was currentlypresident of the TUC, and had from 1902-05 beenchairperson of the Labour Party. He was also anominee of the WEA executive on the committeeset up at the 1907 Oxford Extension Delegacyconference to oversee Oxford and Working-ClassEducation.) The students�’ asked for this meeting sothat they could press these governors to try harderfor union funding. According to Craik, who was oneof the delegates, Bell and Shackleton insisted thatthe college must continue to depend partly onprivate donations. In the summer of 1908 the Ruskin executive,again acting over Hird�’s head, brought in �‘RevisionPapers�’ - compulsory written tests - for all first yearstudents. (Up till then all assessment had been viatutors�’ comments on monthly essays, given in one-to-one interviews. This was the basis on whichworkers were recruited as students. However,whereas Hird and Hacking were good at givingfeedback in this way, Lees Smith and Furniss foundit difficult. Thus in a 1975 interview Jack Parks, aformer Durham miner and friend of George Harvey,who before going to Ruskin had lost a leg in a pitaccident and seen his family evicted as a result,described a confrontation with Furniss. Parks hadmade reference to Marx in an economics essay,and Furniss had written comments on the essay�‘correcting�’ what Parks had said. Parks thenproduced the relevant extracts from Marx, andFurniss conceded, but also refused to change hisoverall mark. After this, as Parks put it, �‘I neverwrote for him again�’.) Students who protestedagainst these �‘Revision Papers�’ were told that theymust either take them or be barred from enteringthe second year. This was a move towards theformalising study at Ruskin in line with the recom-mendations of Oxford and Working-Class Educa-tion. In August 1908, the Cornhill Magazine printed anarticle by the vice-principal of Ruskin, SydneyBuxton. This article included the sentence: �‘Thenecessary common bond [ie between working classpeople and the better-off] is education in citizen-ship, and it is this which Ruskin College tries to give

- conscious that it is only a new patch on an oldgarment, an idealist experiment in faece Romuli�’.�‘Faece�’ literally means dregs. The joint Oxford Extension Delegacy/WEAcommittee, still with Mansbridge and Temple assecretaries, had by this time been made perma-nent, and in October the WEA extension bloc andits supporters, who were now nearly in control ofthe college, started a carrot and stick policy towardsthe students and the two staff members whosupported them. Thus from autumn 1908 through tothe first three months of 1909, students were ofteninvited to tea with Oxford dons. At the same time,there were more and more attempts to clamp downon them speaking at meetings both in Oxford andelsewhere. In October a sub committee of theexecutive had been quick to condemn the formationof The League of the �‘Plebs�’. Because the studentshad now begun to stay away from lectures byFurniss and Buxton, the executive ruled thatattendance at all lectures was compulsory. On 2ndDecember, after Oxford and Working-Class Educa-tion had been officially published, Mansbridge wroteto the labour movement members of the jointcommittee to say that in his view �‘all is now in orderat Oxford�’. In this situation, Dennis Hird, although banned bythe executive from associating himself openly withthe Plebs League, took the students�’ side. At thebeginning of March 2009 the governors claimedthat he was �‘failing to maintain discipline�’, anddemanded his resignation, which he gave. The WEA/extension alliance may well haveanticipated that the students would protest againstthem setting Hird up in this way. As well as this,they probably calculated that they could use theseprotests to identify and purge the most leftwingstudents, and thereby intimidate the others. How-ever, they probably did not realise that the studentsand ex-students had a positive project of their own,and the capacity to carry it through.

2020202020 Post-16 EducatorPLEBS THINKING

9.9.9.9.9. Ple Ple Ple Ple Plebs thinking 1908-09bs thinking 1908-09bs thinking 1908-09bs thinking 1908-09bs thinking 1908-09SSSSSome of the material written by the students and

former students shows that they were movingtowards a coherent theoretical analysis of thefactors at stake in the Ruskin struggle. The 4-page editorial in the first issue of �‘ThePlebs�’ Magazine was probably written by GeorgeSims. Sims was a carpenter from Bermondsey whohad left school at the age of eight to become apage boy in a Park Lane mansion. Although spon-sored at Ruskin by Salter, he had between 1904and 1907 been secretary of Bermondsey andRotherhithe Trades and Labour Council. Sims hadbeen a member of the SDF, but he was expelledfrom it in 1908 for advocating industrial unionism. In1918, while serving as a sergeant major in northernItaly he would write an open letter to Plebs in whichhe would say: �‘I met Marx in 1908. True, he hadbeen dead then some twenty-three years . . . Whocan be dead when his influence appeals to, liveswith one as intimately as the closest of friends? . . .I had tried for years to get a feeling of reality inreligion . . . But with the first reading of the Commu-nist Manifesto, how the pamphlet appealed tosomething in me . . . the Christian looks to themiracle of individual conversion and the fatalist tothe event. We are neither fatalists nor believers inmiracles - simply people who know the inevitable-ness of the end; the inevitability of social evolution,of development and progress based upon materialneeds . . .�’ On Friday 5th February 1909, Sims spoke at aPlebs League social held in the Cooperative Hall,Cowley Road, Oxford. This was reported in �‘ThePlebs�’ Magazine issue 1 as follows: �‘Mr Sims, ofRuskin College, in a short and breezy speech,explained that the object of the �“Plebs�” League wasto bring about a definite and more satisfactoryconnexion between Ruskin College and the LabourMovement. He said in order to promote thoseinterests, it was essential that the teaching theworker received should be in harmony with suchinterests, and that it should not require that mentalcondition known as the open mind, which oftenbetokened an empty mind. It was necessary thatthe control of their institution should be ultimately inthe hands of the workers. Their mandate was �“theeducation of the workers in the interests of theworkers�”�’. The editorial�’s first words were: �‘Enter the�“Plebs�”, not from above but from below, not to fighta sham battle among the shadows by the ordersand for the interests of our masters, but to fight areal battle in the full light and with a clear knowl-

edge of the issue before us�’. Sims then explainedthe purpose of the magazine as follows: �‘To makeclear the real position of Ruskin College, to pointout its present weaknesses, to outline its possibili-ties, to demonstrate its value to the Labour Move-ment if definitely founded thereon, to stimulateactive interest in working-class education and toopen out propaganda of an educational characterfrom the working-class point of view . . .�’. Next, he explained that the management of �‘ThePlebs�’ Magazine �‘will be entirely free from anyconnection with existing organisations�’, adding that�‘we are not appealing to any party or section of theworking-class but to all workers, irrespective ofwhether they are I.L.P.eers, S.D.P.eers, TradeUnionists or Non-Unionists�’. Then, having defined the �‘mission�’ of �‘The Plebs�’Magazine as �‘to bring about a definite and moresatisfactory connection between Ruskin Collegeand the Labour Movement�’, he explained how thiswould require: �‘that this institution shall be open toall workers, that it shall be controlled by a represen-tative assembly of the workers, and finally that theeducation imparted shall be of a kind and of aquality capable of application in the interests of theworkers as a class�’. Sims then gave over a longer section of theeditorial to explaining that there were two irreconcil-able sets of class interests in present day society.Within this, he said: �‘Now the non-producers wantmore and more, and the producers want more andmore. But in order that the former may get more,the latter must take less, and inversely.�’ (He pre-sented, then, a conception of class struggle basedon inequality of distribution rather than on theMarxist conception of exploitation at the point ofproduction.) He moved on to reject the education on offer viaextension, saying that �‘it is essential that theteaching the worker receives shall be in harmonywith [his/her own class] interests . . . that it shall notrequire of the student that particular mental condi-tion known in �“the home of lost causes�” [OxfordUniversity] as �“the open mind,�” open, in order thatthe apologist may write his sweet will upon it andclose it with the seal of the verbal juggler�’. Fromthis it follows that: �‘If the education of the workers isto square with the ultimate object of the workers -social emancipation, then it is necessary that thecontrol of such an educational institution must be inthe hands of the workers�’. In support of this principle of not trusting otherclasses with workers�’ education, Sims cited the

2121212121Post-16 Educator PLEBS THINKINGexample of a factory owner who gives money �‘forthe purpose of promoting the education of workingmen�’ while denying his/her own employees theleisure time needed for study, adding that: �‘Inabilityto recognise the class cleavage was responsible forthe downfall of the Plebs of the Roman Empire�’. Sims next maintained that: �‘Ruskin Collegeprovides the necessary machinery for turning outmen capable of playing an important part in the fightfor freedom�’. He then adds three points about �‘theaims and ideals of the League of the �‘Plebs�’ (ierather than just of the magazine). First, �‘It seeks tobind the students of Ruskin College, past andpresent, in closer union with each other . . .�’ Sec-ondly, �‘It endeavours to permeate the LabourMovement in all its ramifications with the desire forhuman liberation�’. Thirdly, �‘Realising that thepropelling force behind all social progress is socialknowledge, it aspires to the dissemination andcontinuity of such knowledge among those whom itwill reach�’. Restating the mandate of the Leagueas: �‘the education of the workers in the interests ofthe workers�’, he ended by defining the ultimate goalas �‘INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY�’. The other main article in the first issue of �‘ThePlebs�’ Magazine is �‘The relation of Ruskin Collegeto the Labour Movement�’ by the miners�’checkweighman Noah Ablett, who had been astudent at Ruskin in 1907-08. Ablett had been apreacher during the 1904-05 South Wales religiousrevival. Soon after this, however, he joined the ILP.While at Ruskin, Ablett took part in the Oxfordbranch of the British Advocates of Industrial Union-ism (BAIU). In December 1909, Ablett was back in Oxford,speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Oxfordbranch of the Plebs League, held in the Commer-cial Road Schoolroom, St Ebbe�’s. His response toquestions was detailed in �‘The Plebs�’ Magazineissue 1 as follows: �‘Ruskin College was not aneducational experiment in the ordinary sense of theworld. It arose out of the necessities of the LabourMovement. It was a temporary and specializedinstitution, and therefore could not be considered aspart of the national scheme of education. Thepresent institution, Mr Ablett continued, was notowned and controlled by the Labour Movement andthis was a defect that this League of the �“Plebs�”was going to put right . . . If the present institutioncould not be secured, then other institutions mustarise to fulfil this now indispensable function for theworking-class�’. In his article, Ablett argued asfollows. First, he pointed out the growing trend for theworking class to act independently (as for example�‘in the political arena�’) and noted the desperateattempts by �‘the hosts of reaction, in their innumer-

able guises�’ to prevent this spreading to other areasof life. Noting also that: �‘Nowhere is this moreevident than in the controversial sphere of educa-tion�’, he went on: �‘The number of attempts toimpose education from �“above�” are legion. Promi-nent among them stands the University Extensionmovement with its powerful ally the Workers�’Educational Association�’. Conceding that educationin the physical sciences may be class neutral, heinsised that in fields like �‘social science e.g. historyand economics�’, �‘[e]ducation, particularly the kindneeded by the workers, is not that impartial univer-sal thing so much gushed about by educationalists�’.He advocated changes in Ruskin College�’s �‘curricu-lum and governing authority�’ such that it �‘will take itsplace as an integral part of the Labour Movement�’. Posing the question: �‘What is the importance ofthe strategetic [sic] position of Ruskin College tothe Labour Movement?�’, Ablett first pointed out that:�‘It is a rule generally recognized in the tactics of anyconflict that any position which excites the envy anddesire of the opposition, is worthy the effort ofpreservation�’ - in other words, we must deny theruling class this position from which they can attackus. But he then moved at once to a positive casefor �‘the advantages of Ruskin College to the LabourMovement�’, claiming that: �‘The first, and greatest ofthese, lies in the necessary calibre of the students.Here are fifty students annually from the tradeunions, from every industrial quarter of the country.They are essentially men who have already quali-fied themselves for active service in the LabourMovement. And, above all, they have ideals neces-sarily untainted by the commercialism that is suchan unfortunate blot upon most educational institu-tions. In the present loose democracy of the trade-unions, individuals count for much. Such a body ofmen, scientifically trained to adapt themselves tothe needs of the workers with a knowledge of theeconomics of Labour coupled with the ability ofspeech and the pen, would naturally be expected towield a great influence in their respective localities.Gathered together in a little community for one ortwo years; the interchange of ideas; the variousmethods of improving conditions; the lessons to begained by successes, and failures; these thingsconstitute advantages of too great, and unique acharacter to be overlooked�’. Ablett then spelt out the danger faced by thecollege: �‘. . . if the attempt now being made toattach Ruskin College to the University - and theconsequent permeation of University ideas into theminds of the young bloods of Labour - shouldsucceed, then the main source of the futurestrength of the Labour Movement will be drainedaway into channels useless from the point of viewof the mission of the workers stated above�’. He

PLEBS THINKING / ACTION2222222222 Post-16 Educator

added that: �‘There are people who oppose thisview, who think Ruskin College, if attached to theUniversity, would permeate instead of being perme-ated�’, a standpoint he dismisses as �‘ridiculouslydisproportioned�’. Here again, then, we see the idea that thecollege must become fully part of the working-classmovement, that it should produce thinkers andorganisers, and that the WEA/extension projectwould make this impossible. As Ablett put it: �‘If[Ruskin] is absorbed by the University, its interest tothe working class will be nil. They will have to lookin other directions. If on the other hand, the workerstake control of it, a new era will have dawned in theannals of the Labour Movement. The education ofthe workers will assume a new and fuller meaning.�’ We can also see the students�’ and ex-students�’analysis in the post-strike reprint of their pamphlet,The Burning Question of Education. This was nowsubtitled �‘Being an account of Ruskin Collegedispute, its cause and consequences�’. It wasaddressed at least partly to union activists who mayhave been uncertain about whether support shouldnow be withdrawn from Ruskin College. On p7 ofthis, the writer argued that: �‘Every class that hasobtained power in our history has been able tomaintain it only by controlling the educationalmachinery . . . There is as much conflict in theeducational world as in the industrial and politicalworld�’, while on page 17 the writer explained that,as a result of the extensionist take-over of Ruskin,�‘the whole idea of the �“Plebs�” was widened so as toassume the form not merely of an institution, but of

an educational structure similar in magnitude to theTrade Unions and political parties�’. Against thisbackground, it was then argued (p20) that underthe new circumstances: �‘To be loyal to RuskinCollege is to conceal the disloyalty of RuskinCollege to the Labour Movement�’. This was ex-plained (p21) in the following terms: �‘Class interestsand class education are inseparable. An educa-tional institution which either consciously, or uncon-sciously, neglects to recognize this incontrovertable[sic] fact, stands in the way of progress and de-ceives those who believe in it�’. Finally, on pages 14-15, the writer said: �‘Thetheories contained in the �“Social Contract�” was [sic]the means of rallying and marshalling the forcesthat, set into operation, accomplished the FrenchRevolution. But the educational structure of theworking class, training the best young brains oforganized labour, may have to turn out manyRousseaus, who will have to direct a movementmany times larger and more important to the futureof humanity than the movement which came intopower with the French Revolution. How importantthen becomes the control of Ruskin College!�’ (Thelast sentence indicates that at this stage theLeague still hoped to win control of Ruskin, and infact merger talks between the Central LabourCollege and Ruskin did take place - unsuccessfully- after the CLC moved to London in 1911.) Analyses like those quoted here arose from andfed back into the practical struggle over the controlof Ruskin and adult education.

10.10.10.10.10. Ple Ple Ple Ple Plebs action 1908-09bs action 1908-09bs action 1908-09bs action 1908-09bs action 1908-09AAAAAs the students and their contacts amongst

former students became aware of the drive bythe WEA/Extension alliance to take control ofRuskin, they began to organise themselves againstit. During the �‘strike�’ that followed Hird�’s enforcedresignation, a qualitative change occurred in theirstrategy, as a result of which 29 of the currentstudents, again supported by former students,threw their energies into creating a new institution,the Central Labour College. From the early days of Ruskin Hall onwards, itsworking-class students had been forced from timeto time to defend themselves against �‘the university�’- that is, gangs of upper class students - and tofight in the most literal fashion for the workingclass�’s right to freedom of speech and assembly.For a long time, for example, Ruskin students had

held street meetings propagandising for socialismat the Martyrs�’ Memorial in Oxford. These meetingscould involve physical conflict with universitystudents. On one occasion at least this led, in thewords of the miner Jack Lawson, to a �‘free fight,flying Ruskin men and the windows of the Collegebeing smashed with bricks�’. Conflict like this alsobroke out when Ruskin students arranged forpeople like James Keir Hardie, Arthur Hendersonand James Connolly to speak in Oxford. Or again,in 1907 there was a fist fight in the town hall whenstewards tried to stop Ruskin students puttingquestions to the visiting speaker, Lord Carson. In the more complex struggle against the WEA/extension alliance, the students took their firstmajor step in October 1908, by setting up TheLeague of the �‘Plebs�’.

2323232323Post-16 Educator ACTION This title tells us several things about theirapproach. In response to Buxton�’s reference to �‘infaece Romuli�’, it was their way of saying that theytoo knew about things like Roman history, and thatworkers were not dependent on people like Buxtonfor such knowledge. It also reflects the influence ofDe Leon�’s ideas, and specifically the fact that thestudents set a priority on workers developing theircapacity to think for themselves. Lastly, it suggeststhat they were prepared, if they judged it necessary,to �‘secede�’ from Ruskin College, as in 494 BC theplebs had walked out of Rome. Secondly, they published later that autumn thefirst edition of The Burning Question of Education.This was their answer to Oxford and working-ClassEducation. (The title echoed De Leon�’s The BurningQuestion of Trade Unionism.) Thirdly, in February 1909 they launched �‘ThePlebs�’ Magazine as a monthly journal. ( This wasprinted at the start by T. J. Fox, a former Ruskinstudent who was now a partner in a local printingbusiness.) Fourthly, they organised the �‘strike�’ itself. Al-though Hird actually resigned on 12th March, he didnot tell the students that he had done this until themorning of the 26th. In a meeting later that day, 46of the 54 students agreed to take action, starting atonce, to get him reinstated. This action, in which all54 eventually took part, continued until 6th April. Itconsisted of a boycott of official lectures and theirreplacement by classes run by the students them-selves. The 26th March meeting passed this resolution:�‘1. That all lectures in the Institution be boycotted,with the exception of Mr Hird�’s.2. That all house duties be carried on as usual.3. That the Committee be instructed to formclasses among the students in accordance with thepresent curriculum.4. That should any student, or number of students,be victimised by any Member of the Faculty, or bythe Executive Council, all the students, now inresidence at Ruskin College, will leave in a body.5. That Mr. Dennis Hird�’s resignation be withdrawn,and the resignations of Messrs. Buxton and Wilsonbe tendered instead.6. That no student shall allow himself to be inter-viewed by any Member of the Faculty or the Execu-tive Council. All matters between the students andthe staff [to] be carried on by correspondence.7. That the Working Committee be instructed todraw up a circular re present situation, and sendcopies to Trade unions, Labour and Socialistorganisations, the Press and past students.�’ (Thestudents signed this as a round robin.) A special supplement on Hird�’s resignation wasadded to the third (April 1909) issue of �‘The Plebs�’

Magazine, which had been due to go to press on23/3/09. The anonymous author of this supplementcommented that: �‘As a matter of fact the Principalof Ruskin College is the only individual in theinstitution capable of maintaining order. Only hedoes not carry about with him a pocket edition ofthe Czar of Russia. He realizes that he has to dealwith men, and not undergraduates or schoolboys,and therefore he acts accordingly. It is the peoplewith schoolboy minds that want schoolboy order . . .He is as far removed from the other members ofthe lecturing staff as a mountain is from a mole hill .. .�’ A little further on, the writer adds in italics: �‘Andthe only man who can secure order is he who hasbeen compelled to resign, because he is said tohave failed to maintain order�’. Moving on to speak of the students�’ response toHird�’s sacking, the supplement�’s author wrote: �‘Thestudents stand united to a man, and they look forthe same united support from the Labour Move-ment . . . The clock has struck for finality of action,and every man is at his post filled with a chronicenthusiasm which goes up as a sheet of flame.Fellow-workers, we are looking to you! Do not failus! The next few days will be of moment and ofmemory. Let it be a memory of triumph.�’ Finally, the students moved from resistance tothe setting up of an independent working-classadult education system. This had two aspects: theformation of local classes and the foundation of theCentral Labour College. Although they had takensome steps towards the first of these aspects inJanuary 1909, they took the final decision about thesecond during the strike itself. The strike was given national press coveragefrom 31st March, some of it fairly sympathetic.However, almost immediately after this, the secre-tary of the college council (ie the governors), theRev. A. J. Carlyle, called the students together andtold them that the council had confirmed theexecutive�’s decision to demand Hird�’s resignation.The �‘strike�’ continued till 6pm on 6th March. Thestudents called it off after the executive, havingdecided to close the college for two weeks, agreedto pay boarding expenses and/or fares back to theirhome areas. During the two-weeks when the college wasclosed, the students who returned to their localareas used the time to build support for classesthere, both by strengthening study circles whichalready existed and by organising new ones. Theclasses in each area were known collectively as its�‘labour college�’. The editorial in �‘The Plebs�’ Maga-zine issue 3 explained the thinking behind this driveas follows: �‘The establishment of working-classColleges throughout the country, owned andcontrolled by the workers themselves, will do more

2424242424 Post-16 EducatorACTIONto hasten the hour of economic deliverance thananything else we know of�’. At the start the main centre of such classes wasSouth Wales, followed by the North East. However,classes quickly took root in many other areas. Forexample, one of the Ruskin strikers organised soeffectively in the WEA stronghold of Rochdale that,between October 1910 and April 1911, IWCEclasses were being held there seven times a week,and 150 people were taking part in them. This wasnot something temporary. By the end of 1917, forexample, about 50 trade union branches wereaffiliated to the Plebs League�’s northeast region,where 16 classes were running, while a newlyestablished Plebs League branch in the Glasgowarea already had 20 classes. By 1926-27, acrossEngland, Wales and Scotland, 1,201 classes werein operation (now under the title of the NationalCouncil of Labour Colleges), with 31,635 students.Even in 1936-37 there were 764 classes with15,018 students. Writing in 1967 the historian Michael Woodhouseconcluded: �‘. . . there is little doubt, from an exami-nation of the reports in Plebs Magazine over theperiod 1910-1920, that the [IWCE] movementestablished itself firmly in a number of importantindustrial areas, London, Lancashire, North-EastEngland and West of Scotland included, andexercised considerable influence in forming theoutlook of some thousands of militants. The wide-spread influence of the Labour College movementis worth emphasising, for it meant that . . . it actedas the main institution for the propagation ofMarxism among advanced workers�’. The decision to set up the Central LabourCollege was taken in a �‘referendum�’ held amongstPlebs League members at Ruskin in the periodbetween Carlyle�’s announcement and the calling-offof the strike. In this referendum, a majority decidedto put their energies into preparing the ground for aseparate Central Labour College. We can work out what arguments were put forthis during the strike from what Sims and Ablett hadalready said, and also from what was written in �‘ThePlebs�’ Magazine after the decision had been taken. In the beginning the League�’s main emphasishad been on bringing about �‘a more satisfactoryrelationship between Ruskin College and theLabour Movement�’. In practice this would havemeant building rank and file pressure on unionleaders to fund Ruskin. However, the editorial in theMay 1909 issue of �‘The Plebs�’ Magazine, whichmust have been written towards the end of April,announces that: �‘Ruskin College has ceased to fulfilwhatever useful function it did perform for theLabour Movement. Henceforth the object of the�“Plebs�” must be to assist in the establishing of

a new educational structure definitely con-trolled by organized Labour�’ [Plebs�’ emphasis].The author then combined this with the argumentagainst bogus �‘impartiality�’, arguing that: �‘the workeris either robbed or not robbed; Labour is either paidor unpaid. To ask the workers to be neutral is bothinsulting, and absurd. the �“impartial education�” ideahas its source in a very �“partial�” quarter, and so longas the control of education comes from that quarterthe working-class movement will be poisoned anddrained. In this light, Ruskin College stands con-demned�’. Except for a short verse quotation, thiseditorial eventually concludes: �‘Working classeducation is the powerful stimulating force thatalone can build up efficient working-classorganisation, and to this end we must press for-ward�’. The fact that classes were starting in localareas must also have strengthened the case for aCentral College to train teachers. Ten students left Ruskin after the �‘strike�’ andthe governors excluded some others shortlyafterwards. Some of those who went back acceptedwhat the college management had done. However,a good many actively supported the Central LabourCollege project. During the strike, the governorshad written to Dr Salter and persuaded him towithdraw George Sims�’s scholarship. Sims re-mained in Oxford and led the activity that made theCLC possible. By the time the editorial for the June issue of themagazine was being written, a timetable had beenlaid down for setting up the CLC. Referring to thedate fixed for the first annual �‘meet�’ of the League,and responding to �‘those who would swing thereactionary rod over the mental life of the workingclass�’, the editorial says: �‘The second day ofAugust will witness the Declaration of WorkingClass Independence in Education, a declarationwhich will express the fact that the workers preferto think for themselves . . . free from the spell of aservile tradition and a slave philosophy, and to lookat the facts as they see them from their standpoint�’. By this stage, each issue of the magazine wascarrying an advert for the League. This advertdefined the League�’s �‘object�’ as: �‘To further theinterests of the Central Labour College, for workingmen and women, at Oxford, and to assist in theformation of similar institutions elsewhere, all of theinstitutions to be controlled by the organized Labourbodies�’. On 2nd August, two hundred prominent socialistand labour movement backers came to the firstannual �‘meet�’ of the Plebs League in Oxford. Theyratified the decision to establish the CLC, andapproved the arrangements which Sims had put inplace.

On 8th September the CLC opened in premiseshired by Sims, with Hird as warden. There were 20residential students, some of them former Ruskinstrikers and some sent by unions which transferredtheir scholarships to the new institution. The CLC

had 15 students in 1910-11, 22 in 1911-12, 17 in1912-13, and 9 in 1914-15. Nearly all these stu-dents were sponsored by the South Wales Miners�’Federation (SWMF).

11.11.11.11.11. Conc Conc Conc Conc ConclusionlusionlusionlusionlusionTTTTThe line of argument in this pamphlet can be

summarised as follows. The Ruskin students saw the need for theworking-class movement to produce for itself itsown thinkers and organisers (Chapter 1). Universityextension was a movement conducted by Christiansocialists which, under the guise of reforming theuniversities and reaching out to the poor, in factaimed at creating a layer of compliant spokesper-sons amongst the working class. By 1899 this wasclearly failing, because workers were rejecting it(Chapter 2). Ruskin College when founded was amixture of socialist education centre and utopiancolony. Once the founders left, it was faced withbecoming either part of the extension movement ora labour college backed by the unions. The stu-dents wanted it to be a labour college, but under thecontrol of rank and file union members rather thanbureaucrats. Either way, it was attracting andretaining working class students (Chapter 3). AlbertMansbridge was a working-class product of theChristian socialist and extension movement. Hesaw that extension was failing to hold working classpeople because it was not providing dialoguebetween them and university tutors (Chapter 4).The class character of the dominant Englishuniversities meant that, unlike on the continent,there was not a layer of people with higher educa-tion who would throw in their lot with the working-class. This forced activists to do their owntheorising (Chapter 5). Mansbridge now argued fortutorial classes. A group of young Christian socialisttutors at Oxford aligned themselves with him. In1907 part of the establishment threw their weightbehind this. Oxford and Working-Class Educationwas produced (Chapter 6). The Ruskin studentshad developed their own conception of education(Chapter 7). Once some tutorial classes wererunning, the WEA/extension alliance began to takecontrol of Ruskin (Chapter 8). The students under-stood what was going on (Chapter 9). Theyorganised against it and for their own project(Chapter 10). By 1910 both sides in the Ruskin struggleprobably thought they had won. The WEA/exten-

sion alliance had taken control of Ruskin andabsorbed it within their project. They had alsosucceeded in setting up tutorial classes in manyareas and these were, for the moment, attractinghigh levels of working class participation. The PlebsLeague had set up a big network of local classesand the Central Labour College. Further historical research can and should throwlight on which side, if either, was right. But theessential struggle between them is still going on,and in the end only we, by our actions, can settle it.

ACTION / CONCLUSIONPost-16 Educator 2525252525

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Horrabin, J. F. and Horrabin, Winifred, Working-Class Education (The Labour Publishing CompanyLimited, 1924)Horrabin, Winifred, �‘In memoriam - G. F. Sims�’ inThe Plebs, Vol. XXXV, No. 11, November 1943Jackson, T. A., Solo Trumpet. Some Memories ofSocialist Agitation and Propaganda (Lawrence &Wishart, 1953)Jennings, Bernard, �‘The Making of the OxfordReport�’ in Harrop, Sylvia (ed.), Oxford and Working-Class Education (Department of Adult Education,University of Nottingham, 1987) pp11-29Kelly, Thomas, A History of Adult Education inGreat Britain (Liverpool University Press, 1962)Kendall, Walter, The Revolutionary Movement inBritain 1900-21: The Origins of British Communism(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969)MacIntyre, Stuart, A Proletarian Science: Marxismin Britain 1917-1933 (Lawrence and Wishart, 1986)Mansbridge, Albert, An Adventure in Working-ClassEducation. Being the Story of the Workers�’ Educa-tional Association 1903-1915 (Longmans, Greenand Co., 1920)McIlroy, John, �‘Two tales about crisis and corruptionat the Central Labour College�’ in Labour HistoryReview, Vol. 72, No. 1, April 2007Melhuish, G. H., �‘The early days at Ruskin�’ in ThePlebs, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, February 1935, pp29-30Millar, J. P. M., �‘The N.C.L.C.�’s twenty-first birthday�’,in Plebs Vol. XXXV, No. 10, October 1942, pp113-114Millar, J. P. M., The Labour College Movement(N.C.L.C. Publishing Society Ltd, 1979)Morgan, Austen, J. Ramsay MacDonald (Manches-ter University Press, Manchester, 1987)Paul, Eden and Paul, Cedar, Proletcult. (ProletarianCulture) (Leonard Parsons Ltd, 1921)Pearce, Brian and Woodhouse, Michael, A Historyof Communism in Britain (Bookmarks, 1969)Pelling, Henry, A History of British Trade Unionism(Macmillan, 1963)Phippen, George, �‘South Wales Miners andI.W.C.E.�’ in Plebs, March 1959, p78Pitt, Bob, �‘Syndicalism in South Wales: the originsof The Miners�’ Next Step ( http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/History/

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SOURCES 2727272727Post-16 Educator

Post-16 Educator seeks to defend and ex-tend good practice in post compulsory edu-cation and training. Good practice includesteachers working with students to increasetheir power to look critically at the worldaround them and act effectively within it.This entails challenging racism, sexism,heterosexism, inequality based on disabil-ity and other discriminatory beliefs andpractices. For the mass of people, access to validpost compulsory education and training ismore necessary now than ever. It shouldbe theirs by right! All provision should beorganised and taught by staff who aretrained for and committed to it. Publiclyfunded provision of valid post compulsoryeducation and training for all who requireit should be a fundamental demand of thetrade union movement. Post-16 Educator seeks to persuade thelabour movement as a whole of the impor-tance of this demand. In mobilising to doso it bases itself first and foremost uponpractitioners - those who are in direct, dailycontact with students. It seeks the supportof every practitioner, in any area of post-16education and training, and in particularthat of women, of part timers and of peopleoutside London and the Southeast. Post-16 Educator works to organisereaders/contributors into a national net-work that is democratic, that is politicallyand financially independent of all otherorganisations, that develops their practiceand their thinking, and that equips them totake action over issues rather than alwayshaving to react to changes imposed fromabove.

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