Speaker: Colin Waugh. Colin, author of the pamphlet 'Plebs': The Lost Legacy of Independent Working-Class Education, will explain how trade unionists, mainly miners & railway-workers who were students at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1909, went on 'strike' (actually a boycott of specific lectures & lecturers) in an attempt to prevent the principal from being sacked, in the process creating a national system of socialist adult education genuinely independent of the powers-that-be, parts of which survived until the 1960s. He will say why he thinks there is an urgent need to rebuild this tradition today, & talk about some of the efforts that are being made to do this.
Times 7.30 Buffet (please bring something if you can) 8.00 Talk & discussion, followed by social ending.