IN HIS July 9 article in the Morning Star, Dr John Fisher reminded us of the effect of years of state funding for trade union education.

He who pays the piper calls the tune, which means that a generation of trade union learners have had the political content stripped from their learning.

The form of training delivery has mirrored the neutralised content and helped to teach ignorance and obedience.

The Establishment teach their children to rule from an early age — prep school to public school to Oxbridge.

At heart, they learn the arrogant and confident mannerisms of rulers, adopting an ability to talk about anything as if they know something about it.

They learn some concepts and history — this is why they focus on politics, philosophy and economics.

Once upon a time the best unions would engage workers in these subjects too. Courses would begin with discussions about the world we wanted to live in and the laws that underpin capitalist economics and a socialist alternative.

This was done to develop understandings and convictions that would build our organisations and provide the motivation for learning the skills necessary to win for our members and transform the political scene.

But this tradition was then turned on its head. Trade union training got locked into considerations of a very narrow range of technical and vocational areas, tutors became purveyors of information and facts, classes looked more like school rooms than workers’ discussion circles, qualification replaced empowerment, learners were told what to learn instead of being encouraged to learn from their own experience and rigid curriculums stifled debate.

As state-funded adult education disappeared, so elements of trade union training became a poor substitute, signposting learners to dwindling vocational opportunities while the market let rip.

It was all very interesting knowing the detail of redundancy and health and safety legislation, but all very irrelevant if the workplace was closing down as if because of forces of nature or fate.

Education proved a thin shield as the post-war social democratic consensus and manufacturing-based economy were transformed into today’s neoliberal nightmare.

While most people feel that austerity is wrong, very few can articulate why it has come about or the political and economic alternative to it.

In reality the popular consensus has bought into the wacky idea that the debt and deficit are the causes of our problems.

When bankers say they create wealth, few union reps seem able these days to counter this joke with an assertion of the labour theory of value or a reminder that everything in their marble vaults comes from us.

The effect of falling rate of profit has been forgotten and our problems attributed superficially to “greedy bankers.”

Worse still, workers are being decapitated from the body of knowledge of our history of struggle as a movement.

We have to reconstruct a living appreciation of our past to accelerate a better future. There is clearly a desperate need to revive political, philosophical, historical and economic inquiry as the basis for trade union education.
Equally there is a need to modernise the methods of learning delivery to make it inspirational and life-changing.
A very peculiar thing has happened in Britain in this regard. The progressive debate on how workers learn best and what techniques really inspire them has almost completely bypassed trade union education circles and has been advanced instead in youth and community work, adult education and some school-based traditions of radical pedagogy.

This is not the case in many other labour movements. They have embraced radical learning theories and methods that enhance the development of progressive politics and solid organisation.

At the General Federation of Trade Unions we have been looking at some of their work in Latin America and taking in the lessons from a book called Education for Changing Unions about the Canadian experience.

Consider the work of Paulo Freire or Antonio Gramsci. The way learning is delivered is as important as what is delivered, sometimes more so.

Progressive learning techniques are linked to democratic practice and social change and have a long tradition in Britain going back to the medieval “conventicles” which argued that the Bible should be translated into English so that “the merest ploughboy could read the word of God.”

Ultimately their work led to the collapse of the authority of the dominant Latin-speaking Catholic Church and the aristocracy it propped up.

It continued through the dissenting churches whose ideas very much aided the birth of the trade unions. Many Sunday schools were in fact very socialist.

It flourished in Britain when many female trade unionists developed theories of youth engagement and community work to involve workers outside the workplace in the struggle for reforms.

The richness of this tradition around the world can be explored on the fantastic website www.infed.org.uk.

The new priesthood of neoliberal pundits and politicians and the crowds of dilettante “economists,” who seek ultimately to persuade us that we are too stupid to run society in the interests of the majority, should be replaced by a new generation of deeply educated union activists able to see through the myths and compel us in another direction.

At the GFTU we have opened a forum on our website for all those interested in a progressive future for trade union education to swap notes, share details of good resources and examples and sharpen our minds.

Please join the debate at www.gftu.org.uk. We are also looking for new partners and tutors to join our work delivering the highest-quality independent working-class education.

Let’s change the content and form of trade union education and base it on participative, collective learning to demonstrate that another world is possible with a new kind of PPE student in control of our country.

Doug Nicholls is general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions.