Keith Flett: Before the Plebs - Independent Working Class Education in the 19th Century at The Epicentre

Keith Flett talks about independent working-class education before the Plebs League, who started with a student strike at Ruskin College and education in Marxism for trade unionists. The space for independent working-class education had been defined by the 1870 Education Act and the compulsory schooling it introduced. It aimed to stamp out alternative education associated with the early radical and labour movement. Flett looks at this lost tradition of radical education in the British working class and reflects on what it might mean for the left today. He is a research historian and convenor of the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research. His many publications include 'Chartism After 1848'.