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An important account of how trade unions fought for education in Britain.
Trade unions played a massive part in shaping Britain’s democracy. But today it’s easy to forget that one of their signal achievements was transforming access to education for working people.
In Libraries gave us power, Gavin McCann tells the story of how the trade union movement fought for education, untapping the potential of millions. Following the self-taught activists who refused to accept exclusion, he traces their struggles across two-hundred years of history, highlighting successes such as the creation of Oxford’s Ruskin College and the earliest elections of working-class MPs. This is a story that carries on into the present, as unions continue to offer essential support through training, learning programmes and campaigns to help workers in a changing economy – all rooted in values that would be instantly recognisable to the movement’s pioneers.
Rescuing a history that is fast disappearing from view, Libraries gave us power is essential reading for anyone who wants to know the truth about education, democracy and working-class power in modern Britain.
Introduction: after bread, education
Prologue: you go off and learn Russian, pet
Part I: The age of the autodidacts, 1800–1945
1 The early nineteenth century: education and the development of trade unions
2 Respectability in the second half of the nineteenth century
3 Education and power: the 1870 Education Act, school boards and the birth of labour’s political voice
4 New unionism, socialist education and the Labour Party
5 Ruskin College and the Workers’ Educational Association (1899–1909)
6 The Labour College Movement
7 Citadels of intellect: the growth of learning communities
Part II: The river of union learning, 1945–2026
8 Trade union education: a new concept
9 The liberation of untapped potential: Ford EDAP and the Republic of South Yorkshire
10 NUPE/UNISON and Return to Learn
11 The 1990s and a response to industrial decline
12 Things did get better: the Union Learning Fund and union learning reps
13 2020–25: member-learning in England post ULF and the continuing successes of the ULF in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Conclusion
Index