Central Labour College

The Central Labour College, also known as The Labour College, was a British higher education institution supported by trade unions. It functioned from 1909 to 1929.^[1][2] It was established on the basis of independent working class education.

The college was formed as a result of the Ruskin College strike of 1909. The Plebs' League, which had been formed around a core of Marxist students and former students of Ruskin, held a meeting at Oxford on 2 August 1909. A resolution was passed calling for the establishment of a Central Labour College to provide independent working class education, outside of the control of the University of Oxford. The provisional committee controlling the new college was to consist of representatives of Labour, Co-Operative and Socialist societies, following the model of the Labour Representation League.^[2]

The college was supported financially by the National Union of Railwaymen and the South Wales Miners' Federation.^[1] The college was headed by James Dennis Hird, who had been dismissed as principal of Ruskin for supporting the striking students. In 1911 the college moved to Earl's Court, London.^[3]

In 1915 the college was officially recognised by the Trades Union Congress. In 1921 it became the centre of the National Council of Labour Colleges.^[3] In 1926 it was proposed to merge the CLC and Ruskin College into a new Labour College based at Easton Lodge near Great Dunmow, Essex. However, the move was opposed by a number of large unions, and on 7 September the proposal by the General Council of the TUC to proceed was defeated on a card vote.^[4]

By 1929 the mining industry was in severe decline due to the Great Depression. In April a conference of the South Wales Miners' Federation voted to discontinue funding of the college unless additional levies could be raised from members.^[5] No such funding was forthcoming, and attempts to transfer the ownership of the college to the wider trade union movement were unsuccessful. By July it was clear that the college could not continue to operate, and it closed at the end of the month.^[6]

• Scottish Labour College

• Adult Education Committee, Ministry of Reconstruction (1919). Final Report. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office. Retrieved 14 February 2024.
• Craik, William White (1964). The Central Labour College, 1909-29 A chapter in the history of adult working-class education. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
• Gibson, Ian (2008). Marxism and Ethical Socialism in Britain: the case of Winifred and Frank Horrabin (BA thesis). University of Oxford.
• Lewis, Richard (1976). "The South Wales miners and the Ruskin College strike of 1909". LLafur. 2 (1): 57-72. Retrieved 13 November 2024.
• Lewis, Richard (1984). "The Central Labour College: Its decline and fall, 1919-29". Welsh History Review Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru. 12 (1–4): 225-245. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
• McIlroy, John (1996). "Independent working class education and trade union education and training". In Fieldhouse, Roger (ed.). A history of modern British adult education. Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. ISBN 1-872941-66-4. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
• Macintyre, Stuart (1986). A proletarian science Marxism in Britain, 1917-1933. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
• Millar, James Primrose Malcolm (1979). The Labour College Movement. London: N.C.L.C. Publishing Society. ISBN 9780716350101.
• Phillips, Anne; Putnam, Tim (1980). "Education for emancipation: the movement for independent working class education 1908-1928". Capital & Class. 4 (1): 18-42. doi:10.1177/030981688001000103.
• Rée, Jonathan (1984). Proletarian philosophers: Problems in socialist culture in Britain, 1900-1940. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198272618.
• Samuel, Raphael (1980). "British Marxist Historians, 1880–1980: (Part 1)" New Left Review 120.1 (1980): 21-96" (PDF). New Left Review. 120 (1): 21-96. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
• Raphael, Samuel (2006). The lost world of British communism. London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-103-8. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
• Simon, Brian (1992). "The struggle for hegemony, 1920-1926". In Simon, Brian (ed.). The Search for Enlightenment: The Working Class and Adult Education in the Twentieth Century. Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education.

• Catalogue of the College archives, held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick