Education for the people - the struggle for democratic education

have an interest in rebuilding a movement for universal and democratic education.

But one critical lesson from the history of education is that periods of advance like the late nineteenth century, the 1940s and the 1960s depended on the creation of broad social alliances, able to exert sustained political pressure at a time when the ruling class was under more general pressure from the labour movement. The Communist Party argues that the social basis for the formation of such alliances exists now.

Broad social alliances for education The only fraction of the economy who really stand to gain from the outright privatisation of the education system is finance capital, the very same interests who brought the British economy to the point of ruin. The same interests have little commitment to the creation of a skilled workforce, as they are able to suck in the labour they need from a global labour market.

Just as the social basis for a programme of economic and political renewal based on the AEPS exists among the working class and fractions of industrial and other capital, so alliances for educational advance can be built on the same interests.

These alliances will have to be articulated at national level, in particular to pose a direct challenge to the Labour Party. The education unions and labour movement should attempt to win the widest unity in favour of policies to build a democratised education system, encompassing employers’ bodies and industrial sector organisations wherever possible. These alliances should also be regionally articulated with Regional TUCs perhaps playing a key role, alongside regional economic bodies, chambers of commerce and democratic agencies like city councils.

Perhaps most importantly of all, the movement needs to be built at local level among working class communities. Some good local and national campaigns have been built around the defence of local authority schools from Academy conversion or around communities of those who depend on FE colleges, like learners of English for Speakers of Other Languages or other adult learners. Other good local campaigning alliances have been built between university staff and students, particularly around campaigns to privatisation in the wake of the raising of tuition fees. Unions have played key roles in these campaigns. But too few school or university campaigns locally have properly mobilised large numbers of their users.

The work of uniting ‘producers’ and ‘users’ of education must now be moved away from purely reactive campaigns and turned to the work of developing sustainable local campaigns that put the struggle for democratic education education for the people 25