IN 1964, when the TUC education scheme was being set up, there were massive battles around it, with the opposition led by Labour College Movement general secretary JPM Millar. The argument was that money talks and the price that the government would extract would be the removal of politics from the trade union education curriculum.

The basic argument of the Royal Commission on Trade Unions was — to put it politely — that it is better to have the unions inside the tent spitting out than outside the tent spitting in, and that funding a national shop stewards’ and safety reps’ training programme would be a way to do that.

So, in a short while, along with lobbying the government and organising Congress, trade union education became a leading and essential activity for the TUC. It is interesting to note that while the Thatcher government was spending millions in grinding down the miners in 1984-5, it was still funding trade union education, and that colleges like Ruskin and Northern — within shouting distance of Orgreave — were able to tap into government funding. This financial support carried on into the Major years and beyond.

But politics had indeed begun to take a back seat. The curriculum was based around established agreements, negotiating skills and health and safety law, and by the Blair years around union learning reps and personal development. Political content was often delivered “under the table,” but this depended on the quality of the tutors, which varied.

But in the years before government funding, trade union education was very different, as the unions paid for it themselves. It was often delivered in partnership with bodies like the labour colleges and the Workers’ Educational Association, and was often a mixture of basic skills like numeracy and a focus on labour history, international solidarity and political action. Labour MPs and councillors and Communist Party activists and officials would often take part in these schools, and opportunities would be there for union activists to develop from home study programmes, weekend and summer schools through to the dizzy heights of the long-term study programme which the NUM offered in partnership with universities like Sheffield, which matched a degree in politics and economics. Trade unions as a movement were always a central feature.

Once government funding came in, the pressure was always to go along with the offer of free training via the TUC. Unions like Unison and Usdaw carried out great work in areas like equalities, and in the T&G we were big enough to continue with our own programme, but executive officers would ask: “Why should we spend a million pounds a year on education when we can get it free from the TUC?” 

Trade union education became more technical, more institutionalised and much less political.So, if the government is to stop this funding, then we need to see it not as the end of something, but as a chance for a new beginning. We need to campaign against the cuts, but also to say: “OK, let’s go back to when we controlled it ourselves.” 

For the new generation who face zero-hours contracts, lack of pensions, lack of agreements and so on, the requirement will not be how to negotiate within a 100 per cent workshop or contact a safety inspector, it will be how to run a fighting campaign and how to organise and lead workers, French-style.

This will involve a lot of hard work. Along with the absence of politics, government funding also brought complacency and the removal of the need to argue the principles and vital importance of trade union education within the unions. There will also be a need to rebuild networks.

In the 1980s, when we were setting up our longer courses in the T&G, we found that there were plenty of academics who would take on a T&G student, Educating Rita-style, for free because they supported the union. These type of networks, real and via social networking, will need to become central to trade union education, just as they were in the 1920s and ’30s. Lastly, there will be a need to bring campaigning and politics back into the centre of the curriculum, to reflect the new reality and to rebuild the movement.

Yes, we may have been kicked out of the tent, but it’s no use sitting there crying. We have to fight against the cuts and protect trade union studies, but also, if necessary, retake full control of trade union education and rebuild it along with rebuilding a new and campaigning trade union movement.

• Dr John Fisher is the retired director of education for the T&G (now Unite) and author of Bread on the Waters — A History of TGWU Education 1922-2000, Lawrence and Wishart, 2005.
  - The Morning Star is in the process of developing material for trade unions to use as part of their education programmes.