Radical childhoods: Schooling and the struggle for social change 9781526111753

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RADICAL CHILDHOODS Schooling and the struggle for social change Jessica Gerrard

Radical childhoods

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Radical childhoods Schooling and the struggle for social change jessica gerrard

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan

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Copyright © Jessica Gerrard 2014 The right of Jessica Gerrard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for isbn 978 0 7190 9021 9 hardback First published 2014 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or ­appropriate.

Typeset in Arno Pro by Koinonia, Manchester

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Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations

page vii ix

Part I: Radical education, childhood and social change   1 Introduction: radical education, past and present   2 Children’s education and the struggle for social change

3 22

Part II: Socialist Sunday Schools, 1892–1930 Introduction 41   3 ‘Waken, children, waken! Justice be your aim!’: the creation of a children’s socialist movement and the ‘religion of socialism’ 43   4 ‘For the workers’ battles are our battles’: challenges and critiques, internationalism and women’s work

80

Part III: Black Saturday Schools, 1967–90 Introduction 117   5 ‘Give them pride in their blackness’: the emergence of the Black Saturday School movement and real and imagined black educational communities

122

  6 ‘We are our own educators!’: black educational authority, gender and community control

155

Part IV: Conclusion   7 Radical childhoods and the struggle over education

185

Bibliography 205 Index 224

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to many in the writing of this book. First, I owe my deepest gratitude to the many past and present teachers and students of Black Saturday Schools who so generously shared their own stories and reflections of these schools. I am thankful to these men and women for taking the time from busy schedules to talk with me, and for their openness and encouragement. I would also like to thank the many librarians and archivists who provided invaluable assistance in navigating the many collections I visited in researching these histories. I am indebted too to Rosa Campbell, who provided me with invaluable and insightful assistance with the Socialist Sunday School archives so crucially at the last hour. Second, I am grateful for the support from the Cambridge Commonwealth Trusts, the Overseas Research Scholarship, and the Poynton Cambridge Australia Scholarship at the University of Cambridge, which combined funded my research programme. Thanks also must go to Jesus College, Cambridge, for providing additional funding for travel expenses. Third, I am particularly indebted to the many friends and colleagues across the four institutions I have resided in as I have researched and written this book – the University of Sydney, the University of Cambridge, the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of Melbourne. Rather than attempt a long list of many, I would like to express a heartfelt thanks to the constructive support of the many wise and intellectually curious critical thinkers who have assisted my own thinking, and whose work inspires my own. I feel fortunate to have found such warm and stimulating intellectual comradery and friendship, and have learnt much from our discussions and debates. I do reserve the right, however, to sneak in a couple of particular mentions. I am deeply appreciative of the critical support, invaluable advice and patient guidance of Phil Gardner and Diane Reay who saw this project through from beginning to end at the University of Cambridge. I am also indebted to Jane Martin and Bev Skeggs for their supportive, considered

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Acknowledgements

and insightful feedback, and to Peter Freebody for starting the research conversations with me. Thanks also to Jo Ball, Harry Blatterer, Isabelle Gerrard and Ariane Welch for their constructive advice on various drafts of this manuscript as I prepared it for publication, and to the generous advice of Lesley Farrell and Julie McLeod as I navigated the publication process. Fourth, thanks must go to Annette, Charles and Therese and the rest of my wonderful family, whose love and support I relied upon when conducting this research far from home. And to Jo in particular, for your love and encouragement, for your intellectual companionship and for sharing the radical commitment. Finally, many thanks to all at Manchester University Press for their support and assistance in preparing this manuscript for publication. Some of the research material in this book has appeared in different form in: J. Gerrard, ‘Gender, community and education: cultures of resistance in Socialist Sunday Schools and Black Supplementary Schools’, Gender and Education, 23:6 (2011), 711–27; J. Gerrard, ‘Tracing radical working-class education: praxis and historical representation’, History of Education, 41:4 (2012), 537–58; J. Gerrard, ‘Self help and protest: the emergence of black supplementary schooling in Britain’, Race, Ethnicity and Education, 16:1 (2013), 32–58; J. Gerrard, ‘“Little soldiers” for socialism: childhood and socialist politics in the British Socialist Sunday School Movement’, International Review of Social History, 58 (2013), 71–96; and J. Gerrard, ‘Counter-narratives of educational excellence: free schools and practices of success in community education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education (in press).

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Abbreviations

Socialist Sunday Schools: list of abbreviations BSP CP ILP IYPO LC LCC LP NCBSSS PSS SDF SSS YCI YCL YS YSCC

British Socialist Party Communist Party of Great Britain Independent Labour Party International Young People’s Organisation Labour Church London County Council Labour Party National Council of British Socialist Sunday Schools Proletarian Sunday School Socialist Democratic Federation Socialist Sunday School Young Communist International Young Communist League Young Socialist: A Magazine of Love and Justice Young Socialist Citizen Crusaders

Socialist Sunday Schools: Archives LHASC Labour History Archive and Study Centre, People’s History Museum, Manchester JML Jewish Museum, London ML Mitchell Library, Glasgow MML Marx Memorial Library, London Socialist Party of Great Britain, London, archives SPGB WCML Working Class Movement Library, Salford WL Women’s Library, London School of Economics

Black Saturday/Supplementary Schools: list of abbreviations BLF BP BPM

Black Liberation Front Black Panthers (Britain) Black Parents Movement

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Abbreviations

x BSS BUFP BYM CCBSS CECWA CRC CTA DES ELBWO ESN GLC ILEA LEA NASS NLWIA WISC

Black Saturday/Supplementary School Black Unity & Freedom Party Black Youth Movement Coordinating Council of Black Supplementary Schools Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association Community Relations Council Caribbean Teachers’ Association Department of Education and Science East London Black Women’s Organisation Educationally Sub-Normal Greater London Council Inner London Education Authority Local Education Authority National Association Supplementary Schools North London West Indian Association West Indian Standing Conference

Black Saturday/Supplementary Schools: Archives BCA GPI IRR LMA MDXRT NA WYAS

Black Cultural Archives, London George Padmore Institute Institute of Race Relations, London London Metropolitan Archives Runnymede Collection, Middlesex University National Archives West Yorkshire Archive Service

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Part I

Radical education, childhood and social change

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Introduction: radical education, past and present

From broad movements for social change to the quiet routines of everyday life, education has long been at the centre of British working-class culture. Like many others resisting inequality and oppression, diverse working-class communities, in diverse social and cultural contexts, have understood knowledge and education as having transformative potential. From the autodidactic traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to women’s reading circles and Mechanic Institute libraries, working-class men and women have variously claimed the authority to master, critique and create knowledge. As Rose put it in The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, the slogan ‘Knowledge is Power’… ‘was embraced passionately by generations of working-class radicals who were denied both’.1 Reflecting Britain’s colonial history, and the interconnected experiences of racism and class, education has also been variously used in the colonies to resist the practices of imperialism and labour exploitation, and by the many migrant communities in Britain to resist the interlocking practices of racism and social class. It was also through education that women activists across generations asserted their right to knowledge, and their ability to create it. In short, education and the struggle over knowledge are central to the pursuit of social change. In many ways, these histories can be told through the various adult education initiatives that emerged out of, and spurred on, the struggles for social change that pattern Britain’s social and cultural history. Certainly, Britain’s numerous social movements – socialism, Chartism, Pan-Africanism, the suffragettes, Black Power, feminism, gay and lesbian liberation, and so on – all, in one way or another, drew on informal and formal adult education as a means to inspire commitment to their cause and develop their critiques of unequal social relations. This would be, however, only one piece of the story. For many workingclass and migrant men and women, it was children and young people who inspired the need for social change, and correspondingly, for

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independent community-based education. Demanding changes to, and expansions in, state schooling, and instigating their own educational opportunities, many across Britain’s history have attempted to extend the educational horizons for children and young people. In one reading it might appear that this history of community control over children’s education easily fits into the wider history of state schooling. The slow march towards comprehensive education in Britain must be understood in light of the myriad public struggles over stateprovided education. The many successive rises in the school-leaving age, institution of free school meals, acknowledgement of sexism and racism in educational practices and curricula, and challenges to testing and ability-streaming practices, for example, cannot be understood without consideration of the many interventionist campaigns led by community members, parents and students. And yet a narrow historical focus on the progressive changes to state schooling glosses over the multifaceted and dynamic character of community-based interventions into education. Indeed, such a history might simplistically claim the stories of community-based education for itself: engulfing diverse community claims to knowledge and education within a neat historical arc of institutional ‘progress’ in state schooling. In this approach, the defining historical objects and events are the changes in state education policy and practice prompted by campaign and political pressure. And while these changes are indeed worthy of study, reflection and examination, a sole focus on such events obfuscates a range of other histories of education and social change. Glossed over are the nuanced and distinct differences in the ways in which the state translates, adapts and puts into practice community campaign demands; the difficult – and contested – struggles within communities to raise their demands; and the many attempts of communities to enact their own educational experiences for their children. As the work of Brian Simon in the 1960s and 1970s reminds us, an ‘acts and facts’ focus only gets us part of the way towards historical understanding.2 Ultimately, education is a site of cultural struggle: state schooling can be understood as an embodiment of the contestations and compromises entailed in the dynamic social and political processes underlying the production of education policies. As Simon puts it, ‘the changes brought about in the educational system were ultimately the outcome of battles fought out amid much noise and dust’.3 It is with this ‘noise and dust’ that this book is concerned, though from the perspective of the communities rather than the state. I take inspiration from many others who have also endeavoured to chronicle the uses of education by communities resisting their social position, which might otherwise

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be obscured by the great histories of official educational reform. I am thinking here of J. F. C. Harrison’s work on working-class adult education and Robert Owen, Bertram Edwards’ work on the ofen forgotten Burston School Strike,4 John Shotton’s exploration of the libertarian tradition in education,5 and the efforts of Richard Johnson and others in the Birmingham Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s and 1980s to write histories of education that incorporated ‘breaks and reversals, stagnations and advances’.6 In addition, I also take inspiration from feminist histories of education, which have refocused the lens of historical scholarship to the work of women educators and reformers: work that has literally defined the provision of education given the vast numbers of women involved in education as teachers, volunteers, campaigners and legislators. As a range of recent scholarship explores, it is often women’s involvement in education that gets left aside in an institutional approach to educational history.7 And yet women have stood at the centre of community-based education provision and campaigns for and around state schooling, including significant contribution to children’s and young people’s educational initiatives.8 I would add to this and say that the contributions of children and young people in the development and maintenance of community-based education also gets glossed over. Of course, none of this is to say that the relationships between state-based and independent forms of education are not paramount. Undeniably, the histories of the two are inextricably interlinked. Community education might have as its primary focus independent provision, but since the arrival of government-funded and -controlled systems of education it is still in some ways a critical response to, and intervention into, state schooling. The point is, however, that by keeping their activities in the background of a history of state education, we risk blurring and smudging their histories altogether. For working-class families and students, this glossing over has important contemporary effects. As I write this in 2014, like many successive governments, the current Coalition government in Britain presents schooling as the pathway to ‘empowerment’ for working-class students and families.9 And yet current policy paradigms extend and entrench the notion that working-class culture is denuded of independent educational agency. As a plethora of sociological research has revealed, policy documentation and practice regularly starts from the presumption that working-class communities are perpetually disaffected and uninterested in education. In such a policy paradigm, working-class communities are regularly constructed as defiant and troublesome, compared with supposed stable and productive middle-class communities.10 Intensified

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further for black and other migrant communities, class differences are encased within a policy discourse of cultural deprivation and deficit.11 Contemporary state policies demand that working-class communities must radically reorienate themselves towards neoliberal middle-class values, attitudes and behaviours in order to be ‘cohesive’, ‘regenerated’, ‘successful’ and ‘empowered’.12 Within this model, educational disadvantage is viewed as symptomatic of working-class organic cultural forms, which in turn become the target of reform.13 For instance, as with New Labour’s Academies, the Coalition’s expansion of the Academy project and introduction of the Free School initiative is couched in terms of community involvement, but in actuality compels particular forms of participation based on competitive practices of market accountability.14 Building upon New Labour’s policy programme, the Coalition government projects the now common vision of successful individualised life pathways waiting behind the door of the ‘right choice’.15 In a distinct turn away from structural understandings of inequality, poverty and disadvantage, we are routinely told that educational and social success comes to those who work hard enough: of ‘success against the odds’ for those who demonstrate effective achievement of the education and employment markets. Yet, unfortunately, without the ‘right’ forms of ‘cultural capital’ in Bourdieu’s terms,16 there is a dearth of working-class parents and students participating in the very school programmes that target their participation, compared with their middle-class peers.17 Indeed, while by no means a universal experience, the current choice model has paved the way for middle-class parents and parents with positive experiences of their own schooling to ‘reflexively’ and successfully support their children’s negotiation of the schooling market.18 Even where schools are given ‘freedom’ to develop community programmes, as is hoped in the Free School initiative and as was instituted in New Labour’s policy initiative of Education Action Zones, working-class parental and student involvement is thwarted by a powerful policy presumption incapability.19 Unfortunately, much contemporary educational policy and practice therefore glosses over the wider impact of negative generational histories of schooling and experiences of unemployment and underemployment, and can work to pathologise the ways in which many working-class and migrant communities do work to support their children’s education.20 The implementation of a rational futureorientated choice model ignores the ways in which social class, gender, disability and race shapes cultures and identities,21 and disregards an understandable ambivalence towards what few future employment opportunities there are for many young people.22 Compounding divisions

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and exclusions, current educational programmes for the working class ignore the difficult social and cultural positions demanded of workingclass students in order to participate,23 a trend mediated also by experiences of race and racism.24 In addition, it appears that state support for families and mothers is conditional and limited. Gillies, for instance, argues that the policy focus on support for families subjects parents to a range of punitive ‘mutual obligation’ measures for their child’s ‘misbehaviour’, including suggested proposals to cuts to welfare payments, and parental ‘re-training’.25 Thus, she contends, ‘Blurred boundaries between concepts of support and coercion reflect the paternalistic view that authoritarian intervention is for the good of those concerned.’26 Of course, the demand for communities to alter their cultural practices is not new. Central to the nineteenth-century middle-class philanthropic education, for instance, was a ‘moral panic’ surrounding working-class culture.27 Couched in the terminology of ‘universal enlightenment’, many ‘progressive’ educational interventions assumed (and reinforced) the ascendancy of middle-class knowledge and culture over existing forms of working-class agency and culture. In adult education, for example, in the 1820s middle-class reformers formed the industry-driven ‘Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge’, in order to define what might be ‘useful knowledge’ on behalf of the working class.28 It is perhaps unsurprising that the radical working-class response was to create the ‘Society for the Diffusion of Really Useful Knowledge’ in an attempt to claim back the right to define what is, and what is not, ‘useful knowledge’.29 Skipping forward to one of the schooling movements explored in this book, similar levels of ‘moral panic’ could be seen throughout the 1960s and 1970s towards African, Caribbean and Asian communities, who also fought to reclaim and redefine their own knowledge, culture and traditions. In response, black parents and students fiercely defended their right to define their own ‘really useful knowledge’.30 This book then, is a critical response to the presentations of workingclass culture as lacking educational intent or initiative. Of course, the effect of this presumption is lived and felt differently, mediated by personal and collective biographies of gender, race and class. Nevertheless, the notion the some students and parents are somehow inherently (whether as a result of culture, history or biology) inactive when it comes to education is a notion tied to social class relations. Compounded, and complicated, by histories of colonisation and imperialism and past and present experiences of racism, this presumption of lack now also encircles black British culture. The politics of race and racism undoubtedly create new discourses and practices, but it is nonetheless a judgement of cultural and social distinction imbued by the politics of class

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­distinction.31 In this book, then, I aim to problematise the notion that working-class and black culture is somehow inherently inactive or uninterested when it comes to education, provoked to action only when inspired or coerced by (white) middle-class interventions. I do so, however, in the hope of avoiding a romanticised or glamourised history of radical community-based education. It is perhaps too easy to slip into reified representations of counter-cultures, and into simplistic categories of ‘dominant’ and ‘counter-’ in the description of political and social struggles for change. To be sure, the educational initiatives explored here were explicitly radical in intent, overtly challenging the unequal status quo, and campaigning for social, political and economic justice. And yet, among all of the ‘noise and dust’ of these campaigns and initiatives, there is diversity, complexity, contestation and even, at times, ambiguity. It is hard not to overstate the difficulty of establishing movements for change, and, in the case of those movements explored here, translating and applying the major tenets of these movements to children’s and young people’s education. Thus, the histories here are not offered as exemplars of practice, or models for intervention. They are not illustrative points for the theory of radical education, or solutions to the contemporary challenges of working-class education.32 They are, rather, investigations into the ways in which men and women, as parents and community members, attempted to resist the narrow, unequal and unjust offerings of education provided by the state through creating independent communitybased alternatives. By looking across history – across temporal, cultural and social space – I explore the ambiguities, contestations and disjunctures that feature in any social history. In other words, this is a kind of genealogy of radical education: a tracing of the diverse experiences of classed positions and the resistance of these through children’s and young people’s educational initiatives. In this sense, it is impossible not to acknowledge that the thread of radical education is defined as much by the common purpose to challenge injustice and inequality, as it is by the diverse interpretations and enactments of this purpose. At the same time however, it is increasingly difficult to pinpoint what we might consider a ‘radical’ education. I explicitly reclaim the language of ‘emancipation’ in response to the slippery terminology of ‘empowerment’ bandied about in policy arenas. Yet what we might understand – conceptually and historically – emancipation in education to be is arguably increasingly unstable. In the 1970s and into the 1980s and 90s Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and the work of Paulo Freire, appeared to give cultural action, such as education, a firm role in the task of radical social change.33 Put briefly, Gramsci and Freire suggest

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that because education has a role in the processes of social reproduction, it has the potential to be a cultural site of contestation. In recent years, however, a range of feminist, post-colonial and post-structural critiques have called into question the assuredness of this relationship, and have highlighted the messy politics of educational paternalism that can sometimes arise in purportedly ‘radical’ initiatives.34 In addition, the changing nature of social class, and the challenge to class analysis wrought by feminism, post-colonialism, anti-racism, queer politics and post-structuralism, means that radical education cannot be neatly or singularly defined. It is hard not to understate the significance, and impact, of these shifting understandings and analyses of inequality and oppression. Writing in 1972, Brian Simon’s edited collection of key thinkers in radical education – The Radical Tradition in Education in Britain – brought together an all-male, all-Anglo European cast of writers (Godwin, Paine, Carlile, Owen, Thompson, Lovett and Morris), many of whom wrote from privileged standpoints in their proclamation of radical working-class education.35 Just over forty years on, it is no longer possible to address the issues of social inequality, class relations and education in such monochrome terms. It is imperative for both historical and contemporary analyses to seriously consider the changing dynamics of social power in exploring the potential role of education in social change. Black Saturday Schools and Socialist Sunday Schools In taking up these questions, I explore the history and theory of radical working-class education, and with this the changing social experience of class in Britain. I analyse the meaning of emancipation in education alongside histories of radical community-based working-class children’s education. The histories I offer represent two of the most significant education movements in modern Britain: the Socialist Sunday School (SSS) movement, established in the early 1890s, and the Black Saturday (or Supplementary) School (BSS) movement, established in the late 1960s. Both of these movements were initiated and maintained by concerned community members and parents in response to social inequalities and the deficiencies of state schooling. Within their particular sociocultural contexts, both endeavoured to create alternative educational experiences for children and young people, and both attempted to challenge the classed positions that they found themselves in. Socialist Sunday Schools emerged at the end of the nineteenth century among the thriving socialist political milieu. Starting with the first school established by a Social Democratic Federation (SDF) member, Mary

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Gray, at Battersea in 1892, the schools gradually captured the attention, and dedication, of many socialists already involved in education-based campaigning and children’s social activities. The schools co-opted much of the popular and dominant church-based religious cultures of the day, including reworked hymns and socialist songs, ten socialist commandments (later changed to precepts), and a heavy emphasis on the development of a socialist morality or ethic. In addition, they aimed to offset the effects of what they viewed as a narrow and indoctrinating state education system. As a counter-balance, they taught science, literature, socialist interpretations of history and cooperative ethics, and involved students in range of activities to encourage a cooperative and socialist outlook and culture, from needlecraft to rambling, participation in May Day marches, and singing. By 1901 they had their own national monthly magazine, the Young Socialist: A Magazine of Love and Justice. Soon after, following the success of a number of regional unions, the National Council of British SSSs (NCBSSS) was founded in 1909. In similar fashion, Black Saturday or Supplementary Schools emerged within an increasingly defiant wider black politic. Bringing together African, Caribbean, and in some cases Asian, activists, the black political scene of 1960s and 1970s Britain had education – and children and young people’s education – as one of its primary enterprises. Starting in the mid- and late 1960s as a range of informal gatherings and educational opportunities for children and youth, by 1968 BSSs were spotted across black English communities. Drawing on histories of self-education and resistance to colonialism, BSSs endeavoured to foster positive, and politically aware, black identities alongside academic and educational success. Responding to the failures of the British education system, and the implicit and explicit experiences of institutional racism in schools, BSSs combined the teaching of black history and politics with ‘the basics’. In many ways, these movements represent two distinct independent community-based education initiatives. They emerged out of two very different social and historical contexts, and responded to vastly different experiences of inequality, including immense variances in the politics and experiences of race and class. It is also important to recognise other concurrent historical differences. These movements span very different socio-historical periods of gender relations, and the roles that women took in public life. In addition, these movements responded to very different state schooling systems, and shifting public understandings surrounding the right to universal education. SSSs emerged within the messy contestations surrounding the institution of a publicly funded schooling system, and at a time when only one generation of working-

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class children had had the common collective experience of an elementary education, following the 1870 Education Act. Some seventy years later, BSSs emerged within the contentious debates surrounding the expansion of comprehensive education, and in the context of ­significant increases in migration to England. At the same time however, they are also both part of a wider genealogy of community-based education spurred on, and inspired by, vigorous critiques of social inequalities. Writing in one of the first dedicated examinations of the BSS movement in 1981, Stone suggests: The development of Saturday schools within the West Indian community mirrors in many respects the Socialist Sunday school movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, which offered to workingclass children the means to foster a self-image based, not on therapy or charity, but on hard work, disciplined study and the will to succeed. Just as the Socialist Sunday schools were mainly organised and run by working-class people for working-class children, so also in the West Indian Saturday Schools we find ordinary working-class people, who, as part-time teachers, are ‘demystifying’ the teaching and learning process as part of the response to a social structure and its institutions which discriminate against them and their children.36

In exploring the histories of these movements, I focus on their inception and period of initial growth: for SSSs, 1892–1930, and for BSSs, 1967/68–1990. By concentrating on these time periods, I investigate what drove the first generations of men, women, children and young people to establish these schools, and how they laid the foundations for their respective movements. Of course, it is hard to talk wholly in the past tense in relation to the BSS movement. BSSs continue to feature across Britain, and continue to be an important site of black education, community, pride and politics, and as such any history of the schools is invariably connected to a movement still in process. However, this is very much a historical enquiry, and one that does not purport to describe the contemporary experiences of BSS teachers and students. Moreover, what I write here is just one contribution to the understanding of these two important histories. The diversity and breadth of both of these movements means that there is still considerable scope for further historical exploration, including, for example, the slow decline of SSSs into the 1940s and 1950s until their eventual folding in the 1970s and the continued function of BSSs into the present day. Indeed, it is surprising that these movements remain so under-represented in social, political and educational histories of Britain, particularly given their connection to two of the most significant social movements in British contemporary history: turn-of-the-century socialism and mid to

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late twentieth-century black politics. Interestingly, unlike their British counterparts, the US SSS movement has received much more scholarly attention, especially in the work of such historians as Kenneth Teitelbaum and Florence Tager.37 Current knowledge of the British SSSs has in large part been thanks to Fred Reid and Brian Simon’s accounts of the movement in the 1960s,38 and more recently to their appearance in a range of histories that focus on women’s involvement in turn-of-the-century socialism.39 To be sure, Reid’s examination of predominant SSS personalities, the religiosity of the SSS instruction (and the internal dissent to this), and the movement’s response to the First World War, offers a rich and useful history. Unfortunately, however, in the absence of further dedicated historical exploration, the schools have often been thought to be perfect emblems of ‘idealistic’ socialism, as adhering to the fanciful and naïve notion that socialism will come through ‘the cultivation of proper ethical behaviour in the child’.40 Building upon, but without replicating Fred Reid’s chronicle, David Fisher’s recent accounts of SSS lessons in Scotland,41 and the important work on SSSs as part of women’s socialist politics, I present a more contextualised account of the SSS movement; one that takes into consideration its relationship to the socialist milieu from which it arose and to which it aimed to contribute. Since their inception, BSSs have become the subject of a number of investigations. In large part, BSSs are featured in contemporaneous sociologies and ethnographies of black education from the 1970s until the present day.42 Such scholarship has explored the diversity of the BSS movement, the difficult task that BSS teachers faced in establishing independent education initiatives, and the powerful effects of reclaiming educational authority and knowledge for teachers and students. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the work of Diane Reay and Heidi Mirza deepened these analyses by their exploration of the ways in which BSSs constituted spaces of educational authority for women teachers in particular.43 In addition, Brian Alleyne’s Radicals against Race provides an important historical account of the North London activist group connected to the radical black publishing house and book store New Beacon Books, including their involvement in the BSS movement.44 Extending upon this collection of scholarship, I explore the movement, its diversity, and its interconnection with the complex politics of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s Black Power and class struggle. Fortunately, both of these movements included men and women who dedicatedly collected, stored and then donated to public archives and libraries, material from the schools. Much of this constitutes the primary archive material upon which this history is based. The impor-

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tance of this should not be understated: too often, historical enquiry of community-based ventures is hindered by the lack of archival evidence. For both of the movements this includes school workbooks, magazines, pamphlets, meeting minutes, campaign leaflets and correspondence. For the SSS movement the continued existence of the NCBSSS undoubtedly aided in establishing institutional cultures of saving and filing away documents. A range of formal NCBSSS literature and publications certainly bolsters the material available on the movement, including the monthly SSS magazine Young Socialist: A Magazine of Love and Justice (YS), various teachers’ manuals, songbooks and curriculum guides.45 Surviving minute-books of individual schools also provide valuable insight into the day-to-day SSS experience – and, of course, an insight into what was deemed important to document. In addition, unique testimony of the SSS experience is found in a range of historical recollections, oral histories, autobiographies and biographies from the period under examination. This includes correspondence to the NCBSSS in the 1950s from ex-SSS teachers and students following a call for reflections and recollections on the early days of the schools, and the short biographies of teachers and students and reports on schools’ activities provided in the YS, published alongside their photos. Despite the lapse in time, such material assisted to bring to life the SSS movement and the earnest activities of its students and teachers. In particular, the oral history testimonies of suffragettes who attended SSSs as children, recorded by the historian Brian Harrison in the 1970s, provided lively personal perspectives on the movement.46 For the BSS movement, complementing the campaign and schooling material held at a number of different archival institutions,47 I also drew upon oral testimony. My research on the BSS movement led me to visit a number of BSSs, and speak to – and interview – many existing, and past, BSS teachers and students, who provided crucial insight into the memories, understandings and experiences of the schools. For this book, I have included the testimony of twenty-two men and women involved in the BSS movement, selected for their involvement in, and reflections upon, BSSs throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. I am indebted to all of the men and women who took time to meet with me to share their thoughts – often time eked out from their busy teaching schedules in existing BSSs. Invariably, this personal contact with teachers in the schools meant the dynamics of the historical exploration was different from that of the SSS movement. As a white (Australian) woman associated with an elite university, I was acutely aware of my ‘outsider’ status. I was also cognisant of the misrepresentations and hidden structures of racism that have often accompanied the interest of

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a predominantly white academy in black Britain.48 Part of addressing this involved discussing with the interviewees how they felt about the research and their participation in it. While all gladly gave permission for their stories to be included in this work, many (though not all) did not want to be personally identified. Respecting the wishes of those who asked to remain anonymous, pseudonyms have been used for all of the interviewees. Anonymity is particularly important given the continuing existence of BSSs, and the continuing involvement of many of those interviewed in BSSs, black politics and cultural activities. It is therefore not possible to provide detailed biographies of the interviewees, or to name the BSSs within which they were involved. In this absence however, I am aware that there is danger of obscuring the personal narratives that feature in the history of the BSS movement. I endeavour to address this by giving some measure of context and introduction to the men and women interviewed at the beginning of chapters 5 and 6. Indeed, this book should not be read as a history that can be reduced to battles waged long ago with the dust neatly settled. If anything, the histories of the SSSs and BSSs attest to the ongoing tensions lying underneath and within state schooling provision, and the attempts of many communities to maintain independent educational opportunities for children and young people. Thus, this work sits somewhere in between the past and present: speaking back to contemporary contexts and debates through exploration of the complex histories of radical education, and consideration of what a radical, or emancipatory, education might be. In part I, the book begins with a reflection on the conceptualisation of radical working-class education, and the challenges that come with understanding the history of radical education across time. In chapter 2 I raise three key conceptual themes that emerged in the writing of the histories of the SSS and BSS movements. First, I reflect upon the complexities contained in understanding, and representing, class relations in Britain across time and across different sociocultural circumstances. Attending to the interrelated importance of gender and race in particular, I consider the place of a reflexive conception of social class. Second, I explore the slippery nature of what it means to define, identify and examine ‘emancipatory’ education, and then, third, reflect on the relationship of education, and specifically children’s education, to social change. Here working from – and with – Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, I mobilise Nancy Fraser’s concept of ‘counter-publics’ to explore potential ways of understanding the history of radical children’s education. Overall, this chapter establishes the book’s conceptual territory in preparation for the histories of the BSS and SSS movements that follow.

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Part II explores the history of SSSs, 1892–1930, and starts with a brief introduction to chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 introduces the SSS movement, and traces its emergence from within the radical socialist milieu of the turn of the century. The chapter considers the articulation of emancipation in education as put forward by SSSs through examining their connection to the wider socialist political networks, and their interpretation and articulation of socialism for children. Chapter 4 discusses the interrelationship of SSSs with the wider political field. Facing conservative and comradely criticism alike, the schools struggled to maintain the cultural – and material – space for their existence. The movement experienced evictions, conservative backlash, the Seditious Teaching Bill, and lack of interest and dissent from fellow socialists and communists. Examining how SSS teachers, fervent in their desire to bring socialism to children, attempted to create working-class educational cultures, this investigation reveals the significant influence of women within the movement, and at the same time reveals complex interconnected practices of class and gender for both men and women teachers and boy and girl students. In part III, I turn to the history of the BSS movement, 1967–1990, starting with a brief introduction to the subsequent chapters and to the men and women who were interviewed for this book. Following this, chapter 5 traces the tradition of self-help and community radical education from the resistance to colonialism, to the emergence of the BSS movement within the increasingly radical black political milieu in Britain after the Second World War. Faced with institutional racism in state schooling, and the forces of British class relations, Caribbean, African and Asian migrants responded through reclaiming knowledge and education for their children through the political assertion of blackness. Chapter 6 chronicles the ways in which black men and women asserted their authority over curriculum and pedagogy in the schools, and over knowledge in the community more generally; it explores the ways in which black educators challenged, asserted and then defended their educational authority. This analysis reveals also a strong gender narrative, with women featuring significantly as teachers and organisers of the schools. In addition, I consider the changing dynamics between the state schooling sector and BSSs, from hostility and ambivalence to support and incorporation. And finally, in part IV, chapter 7 concludes by drawing out key themes from the two histories. Here, I compare and contrast the SSS and BSS movements alongside a consideration of the concept of emancipatory education, to offer some final reflections on the relationship between education and radical social change.

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  1 J. Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2nd edn, 2001), p. 23.   2 P. Cunningham and J. Martin, ‘Education and the social order: re-visioning the legacy of Brian Simon’, History of Education, 33:5 (2004), 497–504.  3 B. Simon, Education and the Labour Movement 1870–1920 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965), p. 363.   4 See J. F. C. Harrison, Learning and Living 1790–1960: A Study in the History of the English Adult Education Movement (Aldershot: Gregg R ­ evivals, 1961); J. F. C. Harrison, ‘‘The steam engine of the new moral world”: Owenism and education, 1817–1829’, Journal of British Studies, 6:2 (1967), 76–98; B. Edwards, The Burston School Strike (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1974).   5 J. Shotton, No Master High or Low: Libertarian Education and Schooling 1890–1990 (Bristol: Libertarian Education, 1993).   6 S. Baron, D. Finn, N. Grant, M. Green and R. Johnson, Unpopular Education: Schooling and Social Democracy in England since 1944 (London: Hutchinson, 1981), p. 247; R. Johnson, ‘Notes on the schooling of the English working class 1780–1850’, in R. Dale, G. Esland and M. MacDonald (eds), Schooling and Capitalism: A Sociological Reader (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), pp. 44–54.   7 R. Watts, ‘Gendering the story: change in the history of education’, History of Education, 34:3 (2005), 225–41; J. Purvis, Hard Lessons: The Lives and Education of Working-Class Women in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).   8 E.g. J. Martin, ‘To “blaise the trail for women to follow along”: sex, gender and the politics of education on the London School Board, 1870–1904’, Gender and Education, 12:2 (2000), 165–81; J. Martin, ‘Working for the people? Mrs Bridges Adams and the London School Board, 1897–1904’, History of Education, 29:1 (2000), 49–62; C. Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain: Margaret McMillan, 1860–1931 (London: Virago, 1990).   9 A. Wright, ‘Fantasies of empowerment: mapping neoliberal discourse in the coalition government’s schools policy’, Journal of Education Policy, 27:3 (2012), 279–94. 10 G. Craig, ‘Community capacity-building. Something old, something new…?’, Critical Social Policy, 27 (2007), 335–59; R. Levitas, ‘Community, utopia and New Labour’, Local Economy, 15:3 (2000), 188–97. 11 H. S. Mirza, Race, Gender and Educational Desire: Why Black Women Succeed and Fail (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 58. 12 N. Alexiadou, ‘Social inclusion and social exclusion in England: tensions in education policy’, Journal of Education Policy, 17:1 (2002), 71–86; D. Reay, ‘Finding or losing yourself? Working-class relationships to education’, Journal of Education Policy, 16:4 (2001), 333–46. 13 R. Lupton and R. Tunstall, ‘Neighbourhood regeneration through mixed communities: a “social justice dilemma”?’, Journal of Education Policy,

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23:2 (2008), 105–17; J. A. Gordon, ‘Community responsive schools, mixed housing, and community regeneration’, Journal of Education Policy, 23:2 (2003), 181–92. 14 See J. Avis, ‘More of the same? New Labour, the Coalition and education: markets, localism and social justice’, Education Review, 63:4 (2011), 421–38; E.g. S. Ranson, J. Martin and C. Vincent, ‘Storming parents, schools and communicative action’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25:3 (2004), 259–74. 15 D. Reay, ‘Mothers’ involvement in their children’s schooling: social reproduction in action?’, in G. Crozier and D. Reay (eds), Activating Participation: Parents and Teachers Working towards Partnership (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 2005), pp. 23–38. 16 P. Bourdieu and J. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977), pp. 72–102. 17 See D. Gillborn and D. Youdell, Rationing Education: Policy Practice, Reform and Equity (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000); M. Araujo, ‘“Modernising the comprehensive principle”: selection, setting and the institutionalisation of educational failure’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28:2 (2007), 241–57; L. Kendall, Excellence in Cities: The Characteristics of Gifted and Talented Pupils (London: Nfer, LSE, IFS, 2003). 18 C. Vincent, ‘Social class and parental agency’, Journal of Education Policy, 16:4 (2001), 347–64; Y. Li, M. Savage and A. Pickles, ‘Social capital and social exclusion in England and Wales, 1972–1999’, British Journal of Sociology, 54:4 (2003), 497–526; B. M. Walker and M. MacLure, ‘Home– school partnerships in practice’, in Crozier and Reay (eds), Activating Participation, pp. 97–110; V. Gillies, ‘Working class mothers and school life: exploring the role of emotional capital’, Gender and Education, 18:3 (2006), 281–93. 19 E.g. D. Simpson and M. Cieslik, ‘Education Action Zones, empowerment and parents’, Educational Research, 44:2 (2002), 119–28; J. Whitehead and N. Cough, ‘Pupils, the forgotten partners in Education Action Zones’, Journal of Education Policy, 19:2 (2004), 215–27; M. Dickson, D. Halpin, S. Power, D. Telford, G. Whitty and S. Gewirtz, ‘Education Action Zones and democratic participation’, School Leadership & Management, 21:2 (2001), 169–81; S. Power, G. Whitty, S. Gewirtz, D. Halpin and M. Dickson, ‘Paving a “third way”? A policy trajectory analysis of Education Action Zones’, Research Papers in Education, 19:4 (2004), 453–75; S. Gewirtz, M. Dickson, S. Power, D. Halpin and G. Whitty, ‘The deployment of social capital theory in educational policy and provision: the case of Education Action Zones in England’, British Educational Research Journal, 31:6 (2005), 651–73. 20 D. Reay, ‘Gendering Bourdieu’s concepts of capitals? Emotional capital, women and social class’, in L. Adkins and B. Skeggs (eds), Feminism after Bourdieu (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 57–74; G. Crozier, ‘Beyond the call of duty: the impact of racism on black parents’ involvement in their

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children’s education’, in Crozier and Reay (eds), Activating Participation, pp. 39–58. 21 A. Phoenix and B. Tizzard, ‘Thinking through class: the place of social class in the lives of young Londoners’, Feminism and Psychology, 6:3 (1996), 427–42; S. Ali, ‘“To be a girl”: culture and class in schools’, Gender and Education, 15:3 (2003), 269–83; D. Reay, ‘Shaun’s story: troubling discourses of white working-class masculinities’, Gender and Education, 14:3 (2002), 221–34. 22 S. J. Ball, M. Maguire and S. Macrae, Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-16: New Youth, New Economies in the Global City (London: Rout­­ ledge/Falmer, 2000); D. Reay and S. Ball, ‘“Spoilt for choice”: the working class and educational markets’, Oxford Review of Education, 23:1 (1997), 89–101. 23 Reay, ‘Shaun’s story’; D. Reay, ‘The zombie stalking English schools: social class and educational inequality’, Journal of Educational Studies, 54:3 (2006), 288–307. 24 London Development Agency, The Educational Experiences and Achievements of Black Boys in London Schools 2000–2003: A Report by the Education Commission (London: London Development Agency, 2004). 25 Gillies, ‘Meetings parents’ needs?’. 26 Gillies, ‘Meetings parents’ needs?’, p. 87. 27 R. Johnson, ‘Educational policy and social control in early Victorian England’, Past and Present, 49 (1970), 96–119. 28 Baron et al., Unpopular Education, p. 37; R. Johnson, ‘‘‘Really useful knowledge”: radical education and working-class culture, 1790–1848’, in J. Clarke, C. Critcher and R. Johnson (eds), Working Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory (London: Hutchinson, 1979), pp. 75–102. 29 J. Middleton, ‘The cry for useless knowledge: fear of over-education in late nineteenth-century England’, History of Education Researcher, 76 (2005), 91–9; H. Silver, The Concept of Popular Education: A Study of Ideas and Social Movements in the Early Nineteenth Century (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1965), pp. 201–37; Donald K. Jones offers a useful account of the influence of industry, and of organisations such as the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, on children’s education in his paper, ‘Socialization and social science: Manchester Model Secular School 1854–1861’, in P. McCann (ed.), Popular Education and Socialization in the Nineteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1977), pp. 111–40. Similarly Robert Colls’ examination of children’s education in mining communities in the mid-nineteenth century underscores the relationship of school expansion to industry: R. Colls, ”Oh happy English children!”: coal, class and education in the northeast’, Past and Present, 73 (1976), 75–99. 30 See J. Gerrard, ‘Self help and protest: the emergence of black supplementary schooling in England, Race, Ethnicity and Education, 16:1 (2013), 32–58; B. W. Alleyne, ‘The making of an antiracist cultural politics in post-imperial Britain: the New Beacon Circle’, in M. Cote, R. J. F. Day and G. de Peuter (eds), Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments against Neoliberal Globali-

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zation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 207–26. 31 E.g. see Gillborn’s recent discussions on the intersection of class and race in D. Gillborn, ‘The colour of numbers: surveys, statistics and deficit-thinking about race and class’, Journal of Education Policy, 25:2 (2010), 253–76; D. Gillborn, ‘The white working class, racism and respectability: victims, degenerates and interest-convergence’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 58:1 (2010), 3–25. 32 See M. Depaepe, ‘How should the history of education be written? Some reflections about the nature of the discipline from the perspective of the reception of our work’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23:5 (2004), 333–45; J. Oelkers, ‘Nohl, Durkheim and Mead: three different types of “history of education”’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23:5 (2004), 347–66. 33 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971); P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970); P. Freire, Education: The Practice of Freedom (London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1973); H. A. Giroux, ‘Rethinking cultural politics and radical pedagogy in the work of Antonio Gramsci’, Educational Theory, 49 (1999), 1–21; P. Mayo, ‘Synthesising Gramsci and Freire’ in S. F. Steiner, M. H. Krank, P. McLaren and R. E. Bahruth (eds), Freirean Pedagogy, Praxis and Possibilities (New York: Falmer Press, 2000), pp. 249–83. 34 E.g. E. Ellsworth, ‘Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy’, in C. Luke and J. Gore (eds), Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 90–119; S. Jackson, ‘Crossing borders and changing pedagogies: from Giroux and Freire to feminist theories of education’, Gender and Education, 9:4 (1997), 457–67. 35 B. Simon (ed.), ‘The Radical Tradition in Education in Britain (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1972). 36 M. Stone, The Education of the Black Child in Britain: The Myth of Multiracial Education (Glasgow: Fontana Paperbacks, 1981), p. 148. 37 K. Teitlebaum, Schooling for ‘Good Rebels’: Socialist Education for Children in the United States, 1900–1920 (Philadelphia, 1993); K. Teitlebaum and W. J. Reese, ‘American socialist pedagogy and experimentation in the progressive era: the Socialist Sunday School’, History of Education Quarterly, 23:4 (1983), 429–54. More recently Pritchett offers an account of Brownsville SSS in W. Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Tager also provides an account and analysis of the US SSS magazine in F. Tager, ‘A radical culture for children of the working class: The Young Socialists’ Magazine, 1908–1920’, Curriculum Inquiry, 22:3 (1992), 271–90. 38 Simon, Education and the Labour Movement; F. Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain, 1892–1939’, International Review of Social History, 11 (1966), 18–47. 39 H. Kean, Challenging the State? The Socialist and Feminist Educational

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Experience 1900–1930 (London: Falmer Press, 1990); K. Hunt, Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Federation and the Woman Question 1884–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); K. Cowman, Mrs Brown Is a Man and a Brother: Women in Merseyside’s Political Organisations, 1890–1920 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004); see also K. Manton, Socialism and Education in Britain, 1883–1902 (London: Woburn Press, 2001); N. C. Rafeek, ‘“Against All the Odds”: Women in the Communist Party in Scotland 1920–21: An Oral History’ (PhD dissertation, University of Strathclyde, 1998). 40 T. Linehan, Communism in Britain 1920–1939: From the Cradle to the Grave (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); see also V. Geoghegan, ‘Socialism and Christianity in Edwardian Britain: a utopian perspective’, Utopian Studies, 10:2 (1999), 40–69. 41 D. Fisher, Band of Little Comrades: The Story of Socialist Sunday Schools in Edinburgh 1905–1945 (Edinburgh: Department of Recreation, City of Edinburgh Council, 2000). 42 E.g. N. Dove, ‘The emergence of Black Supplementary Schools: resistance to racism in the United Kingdom’, Urban Education, 27:4 (1993), 430–7; M. Mac an Ghaill, ‘Black voluntary schools: the invisible private sector’, in G. Walford (ed.), Private Schooling: Tradition, Change and Diversity (London, Paul Chapman, 1991), pp. 133–42; A. Cronin, ‘Supplementary schools: their role in culture maintenance, identity and underachievement’, New Community, 11:3 (1984), 256–67; S. Tomlinson, ‘The “black education” movement’, in M. Arnot (ed.), Race and Gender: Equal Opportunity Policies in Education (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1985), pp. 65–77; N.  Clark, ‘Dachwyng Saturday School’, in A. Ohri, B. Manning and P. Curno (eds), Community Work and Racism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 121–7; M. Chevennas and F. Reeves, ‘The black voluntary school movement: definition, context and prospects’, in B. Troyna (ed.), Racial Inequality in Education (London: Routledge), pp. 147–69; L. A. McCalman, ‘African Caribbean Schooling and the British Education System: A Study of Eight Supplementary Schools’ (PhD dissertation, University of Hull, 1983). 43 H. S. Mirza and D. Reay, ‘Spaces and places of black educational desire: rethinking Black Supplementary Schools as a new social movement’, Sociology, 34:3 (2000), 521–44; D. Reay and H. S. Mirza, ‘Uncovering genealogies of the margins: black supplementary schooling’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18:4 (1997), 477–99. 44 B. W. Alleyne, Radicals against Race: Black Activism and Cultural Politics (Oxford: Berg, 2002). 45 This included the extensive uncatalogued collection at the People’s History Museum, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester (hereafter LHASC), and other archives and publications held at the British Library, London (hereafter BL), the Socialist Party of Great Britain archives, London (hereafter SPGB), the Working Class Movement Library, Salford (hereafter WCML), the Mitchell Library, Glasgow (hereafter, ML), the Marx

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Memorial Library, London (hereafter MML), the Jewish Museum, London (hereafter, JML), and the National Archives (hereafter NA). 46 These are held at the Women’s Library, London School of Economics (hereafter WL). 47 These include the George Padmore Institute, London (hereafter GPI), the Black Cultural Archive, London (hereafter BCA), the London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), the Institute of Race Relations, London (hereafter IRR), the West Yorkshire Archive Service (hereafter WYAS), the Runnymede Collection, Middlesex University (hereafter MDXRT), and the National Archives. 48 See E. Lawrence, ‘In the abundance of water the fool is thirsty: sociology and black “pathology’’’, in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain’(London: Hutchinson, 1982), pp 95–142; e.g. H. Walton, White Researchers and Racism (Manchester: University of Manchester, Working Papers in Applied Social Research, 1986); L. Back and J. Solomos, ‘Doing research, writing politics: the dilemmas of political intervention in research on racism’, Economy and Society, 22:2 (1993), 178–99; R. Edwards, ‘Connecting method and epistemology: a white woman interviewing black women’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 135 (1990), 477–90; J. Sunde and V. Bozalek, ‘(Re) searching difference’, Agenda, 19 (1993), 29–36; M. Mac an Ghaill, ‘Young gifted and black: methodological reflections of a teacher/researcher’, in G. Walford (ed.), Doing Educational Research (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 101–21.

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Children’s education and the struggle for social change

Lived experiences and conceptual understandings of class, race and gender shift and change across and within geographical, cultural, political and temporal contexts. Certainly, in documenting the histories of the Socialist Sunday School (SSS) and Black Saturday School (BSS) movements, it is clear that the experiences and understandings of inequality and injustice are neither homogeneous nor stable. Not only did both of these movements emerge out of very different politics and experiences of race and class. In addition, these two schooling movements faced significant differences in the provision of state education; in popular and political discourses surrounding the role of education in society; in British imperialism; in gender relations; and in social and economic life more generally. Nevertheless, these schooling movements also point to the continuing – though shifting – dynamics of class relations in British society, and the enduring importance of knowledge and education in struggles for social change. A history such as this must consider the key conceptual themes related to the relationship of education to social change, and the changing dynamics of the social processes of class, race and gender. At times the discipline of history can be averse to centring conceptual and theoretical considerations in historical work, preferring instead to focus on the ‘empirical’ task at hand. And indeed I share a desire to avoid heavy theoretical overlays placed above social experience, obscuring meaning through the use of fixed categories of explanation.1 Nonetheless, narrative enquiry that focuses solely on carefully documenting chronologies of events are often in danger of proclaiming a ‘full’ history despite the inevitable absences in any chronology, and of ignoring the place of conceptual understanding in any interpretation of history.2 Conceptual understanding does not have to denote fixed and stable explanatory categories, but can rest ‘upon complexity, uncertainty and doubt and upon a reflexivity about its own production and its claims to knowledge about the social’.3

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In this chapter I offer some critical reflections on key themes pertinent to the history of radical education. In doing so, I flag central concepts that arose from investigating the histories of SSSs and BSSs. By bringing them to the fore here, I aim to examine reflexively the conceptual entry-points that surfaced in writing the histories of the SSS and BSS movements. First, this chapter explores the notion of class and its role in exploring inequality across very different social and cultural circumstances. Second, I set out a general orientation for conceptualising ‘emancipatory’ education. Third, and last, I consider the particular conceptual and historical challenges that come with understanding the place of children’s education in social change. Class, race, gender and emancipation This book starts from the premise that to talk about the possibility for education to contribute to radical social change, for education to have an ‘emancipatory intent’, involves first considering the socio­ political dimensions of inequality, injustice and oppression. In recent years, explanations of such inequalities that take into consideration the structured processes of the economy and employment, such as social class, have become increasingly replaced by more individualistic terminology. As Tom Woodin recently remarked, ‘social class has passed from being a central category of historical analysis into a state of virtual oblivion’, despite continued and increasing economic inequality.4 ‘Class’ is replaced by plethora of alternative labels – ‘disadvantage’, ‘exclusion’, ‘marginalisation’ and so on. And while these terms might go some way to describing experience, such as exclusion from social services and political processes and marginalisation from public life and so on, they brush aside wider analyses of social inequality and social power.5 At the same time, the ways in which issues surrounding the distribution of resources interact with long-standing gendered and raced social and economic processes are obfuscated. Most tellingly, this move marks a turn away from understanding inequality and injustice as a product of interconnected lived experiences:6 of competitive meritocratic processes that structurally rely on winners and losers; of the dependence of upward social mobility on downward mobility; of the gender divisions in labour and accompanying power relations related to the social practice of masculinity and femininity; and of race relations born out of the expansion of empire and its search for economic productivity. Using the language and conceptual framework of class therefore provides a means by which to explore the social and cultural dynamics of continuing inequalities, and the potential for struggle against them.

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Indeed, class is, by definition, a concept based in the politics of praxis. In other words, it aims to respond reflexively to the changing nature of social relations and the complex nature of social conditions. Marx and Engel’s original development of class analysis explicitly aimed to avoid becoming a spectral ‘mass’ ‘floating disinterestedly’ above social relations and everyday experiences.7 Breaking from the Hegelian ­tradition that centred on the progression of ideas, Marx started from the notion that it is in fact humans, not ideas, who create the world and the language and concepts to understand it. He writes, with Engels, ‘We set out from the real, active men, and on the basis of their real-life processes we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process.’8 In this way, Marx attempts to create class as a sociological and historical concept, reflecting the socio-political processes that create social injustice and fundamental power imbalances. Undoubtedly, class relations have changed dramatically in recent years in the wake of increased globalisation, profound changes in the labour market, and the rise of the politics of neoliberalism. For instance, what the teachers, parents and students of SSSs experienced as class was remarkably different from experiences of those who established the BSSs, which are different in turn from contemporary processes of social class. Interlinked with the shifting power dynamics of gender, race, sexuality, age and disability, class is not a fixed and stable theoretical category. Rather, it is a social process, ‘something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships’.9 If class is to be based on social experiences, its conceptual reflexivity is imperative in order to avoid becoming an ‘unchanging constant to be set against the movement of history’.10 Following Engels’s reminder that ‘all history must be studied afresh’,11 to understand the continued experiences of class divisions and distinctions requires exploration of the changing dynamics of class relations, including consideration of how other operations of power permeate, mediate and interrelate. Of course, a question remains: what is it about class analysis that retains salience across generations from the time Marx first wrote Das Capital to today, or even, from the SSSs through to the BSSs? This question has particularly plagued sociologists in recent years, as an apparent lack of class-consciousness and class struggle has led many to doubt the original impetus of class analysis; namely that the working class ‘in itself’, has failed to become a class ‘for itself’.12 Subsequently, many recent approaches to class analysis take a ‘kind of forensic, detective’ approach, ‘which involves tracing the print of class in areas where it is faintly written’.13 To be sure, in the absence of large-scale classbased social movements the cultural expressions of class may be less

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overt in recent years. And yet it is important not too place too much of an emphasis on class-consciousness as the defining expression, or the absolute axis, of classed experiences. Class is far more powerful a social experience than that. It describes the need for capital to expand constantly under capitalism, and thus the need to create and proliferate commodities that can be bought and sold through the social world.14 In turn, it refers to the way in which people are incorporated into these relations of production through selling their labour power, and through the infiltration of commodities into the cultural and social realm. Bought and sold in their capacity as wage earners, the working class are locked into a state of exploitative inverse power, disproportionately contributing to, but not gaining from, commodity production.15 Working across time, this book affords the space for the diverse ways in which class relations have come to bear on the experience of inequality, injustice and oppression in Britain. Exploration of the different experiences of the SSS and BSS movements reveals the shifting character of British class relations, including the imprint of British colonialism in the migrant experience after the Second World War. In addition, with high involvement of women in community-based education, examination of these schooling movements provides the opportunity to consider the gendered operations of class, and of emancipatory education. ‘Emancipatory’ education Language reveals much about intended (and unintended) meaning. In distinction to the slippery language of empowerment offered by contemporary policy paradigms, I have made the deliberate choice to refer to ‘radical’ and ‘emancipatory’ education. I do so not to conjure assured abstract theoretical formulations of ‘emancipation’. In fact, if anything, emancipation is one of the most diversely used, reused, and contested terms to describe the desire to challenge fundamentally underpinning social hierarchies and injustices. It is, literally, a term of its own making – or perhaps better, a term of people’s making. The meanings and purposes of emancipation have arisen out of particular social relations, and cultural and historical contexts. ‘Emancipation’ has been variously claimed, discarded and reclaimed across generations: for instance, against slavery, for women’s suffrage and liberation, and in the many working-class struggles for social change. In addition, any one of these movements is itself characterised by diversity and contestation, incorporating myriad perspectives and approaches. These multiple uses of emancipation could arguably be seen to render it conceptually empty. Many have declared emancipation an ‘essentially contested concept’ – a

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concept ‘that cannot be reduced to one normative idea’.16 It is perhaps also possible to argue that emancipation is a term that, with the ­historical benefit of hindsight, is too fixed and authoritarian, too teleological. Certainly, many mobilisations of emancipation have been shown to be exclusionary and problematic, relying upon ‘western’, male and heteronormative knowledge constructs to assert purported ‘universal’ knowledge claims. There are a multitude of counter-movements that have unveiled gender, race and sexuality prejudices and presumptions rearticulated in supposedly universal movements for change. Ensuing from this, many others use alternative terms in their description and exploration of radical education. Reflecting debates and divisions in the conceptualisation and understanding of oppression, and of the role of education in social change, there are a range of terms used to describe educational practice that might offer resistance to social inequalities and injustices. For some, the name chosen is a means to reflect both the sort of educational practice and social relations they aim to create, as in the case of John Dewey’s, Richard Pring’s and Amy Gutman’s use of ‘democratic’ education.17 For others, terminology offers a means to pose a general orientation or disposition towards the world, along with the types of educational acts that might occur in classrooms: such is the case with ‘critical’ pedagogy,18 and perhaps ‘anti-capitalist’ education.19 Having salience for those responding to exclusions ensuing from Western and male biases, and a perceived privileging of class analyses in political philosophy and theory, are the terms ‘feminist’, ‘anti-racist’ and ‘decolonising’ education.20 I use the terms ‘emancipation’ and ‘radical’ here in a similar vein to Paulo Freire’s use of ‘liberatory’ education,21 in that they signal con­­­ ceptually a relationship between education and the transformation of self and society.22 In this way, the multiple uses and understandings of emancipation – its inherent contingency – is in fact its strength as a conceptual marker for consideration of the relationship between education and the struggle against inequality and injustice. By accepting that ‘emancipation’ cannot be a ‘full’ or total theory, but reliant on the social actors who evoke its imaginary, emancipation’s conceptual usefulness lies within its inherent partiality.23 At a very general level, ‘emancipatory’ theory, practice and education refer to a reflexive questioning and interrogation of existing social relations; or, to use Marx’s definition of a critical social theory, ‘a self-understanding of the age concerning its struggles and wishes’.24 Beyond this, it is also an education that aims to connect critique and action, in order to ‘interrupt particular historical, situated systems of oppression’.25 Emancipation, therefore, is not a romantically universal concept or act, but one that is embedded within

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socio-historical analysis, understanding, experience and critique. At the same time, emancipation problematises the idea that a radical education (or political theory) might have the luxury of shying away from engaging with the normative socio-historical dimensions of oppression, inequality and injustice. As Marx writes, ‘Even though the construction of the future and its completion for all times is not our task, what we have to accomplish at this time is all the more clear: relentless criticism of all existing conditions, relentless in the sense that the criticism is not afraid of its findings and just as little afraid of the conflict with the powers that be.’26 And yet demarcating the terrain of education that carries an ‘emancipatory intent’ is not without difficulty. The genealogy of emancipatory education is patterned with fractures and discontinuities as scholars and educationalists have struggled to address the diversity of oppression.27 As already noted, understanding the operation of class relations also means attending the workings of gendered, colonial, racist and heteronormative political and social power. Thus, emancipation and class are historically mediated and inherently partial conceptual tools. Emancipatory educational experiences are cultural practices imbued with difference, contestation and contradiction. It is important therefore to acknowledge from the outset the historicity of emancipatory education, and thus of the diversity of its mobilisation across epochs, in different social spaces and cultures, and within distinct communities.28 The specific tradition of working-class radical education encompasses a range of relationships to education. These include the embrace, intervention or rejection of formal schooling; the construction of independent formal and informal educational spaces; and the individual and collective development of counter-knowledge.29 The emancipatory intent can therefore make no claim to being dominant in working-class culture, nor necessarily widely popular or influential. Nor can it always be easily identified as resolutely ‘counter’ or ‘radical’. As Stephen Humphries explored in Hooligans or Rebels?, resistance to injustice and oppression can be expressed in a multitude of ways.30 Craig Calhoun, for example argues that cultural traditions can sometimes be thrown into definitions of ‘radicalism’ simply because they contradict or challenge prevailing social norms despite not necessarily having ­explicitly radical intents or outlooks.31 The interlinking currents between traditional and emergent cultures, radical and liberal ideologies, dominant and counter discourses surely complicate a neat story of ‘emancipatory’ education and social move­­­ ments. Raymond Williams’ work on residual, emergent and dominant cultures, for instance, demonstrates the impossibility of orderly cate­gories of radical or emancipatory politics versus dominant or oppressive

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politics.32 Such divisions, when mobilised narrowly, fail to capture the shifting and contradictory ways in which power under capitalism works, and the shifting and contradictory ways in which people adapt, resist and get by. Williams’ conceptual trio of culture – dominant (practices selectively reinforced through social institutions, such as state schools), emergent (the constant creation of new practices), and residual (practices which are not part of dominant culture, but which live on as a residue of previous social formation) – goes some way in identifying the dynamic processes of hegemonic power and its possible contestation. He contends that it is through the constant interrelationship of dominant, emergent and residual cultures that challenges to the status quo are thrown up, and to which dominant culture variously responds. Thus, it is important to recognise that while there are clear radical tuses throughout history, these are themselves part of complex impe­­­ meshes of intellectual thought, culture, and social action. Historical investigations of community-based adult education and campaign work highlight that there are no linear straightforward tales of radicalism in education, but rather many histories of messy, knotty and multifaceted struggles for justice.33 Duffy’s work on coalminers on school boards in the late nineteenth century, for example, explores the conflicts of interest evident in radical working-class networks, and the consequent contestation over the ‘radical’ intent in education and schools.34 Other narrative histories of working-class education have also underscored the ideological contradictions and social tensions that accompanied assertions for an independent right to education.35 Additionally, radical interventions into education are often characterised by a range of prejudices and exclusions. For instance, Hunt’s study of turn-of-the-century socialism reveals complex gendered cultures of radical class politics.36 Women were afforded greater space through participation in both wider and autonomous political spaces (most often study circles), but were at the same time expected to maintain dominant performances of feminine identity and gender relations. Similarly, June Purvis’ important work Hard Lessons highlights the ways in which the reformist impulse of the mid-nineteenth century was ‘more often than not, controlled by men and shaped by their interests; women had to struggle to enter such places and, once admitted, their presence still caused considerable controversy’.37 This field of gender history in education has served to enrich the attention to culture through the use of biographical narrative and social and personal networks within which ‘class politics [can be] grounded in gendered and occupational identities’.38 In doing so, this scholarship has also uncovered the many histories of women resisting, subverting and adapting gender norms in order to take an active role in the struggle for social change.

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Post-colonial histories of the practices of empire also point to the residual effects of colonial ideologies of race in radical movements. Offering criticism of the ways in which class politics glossed over the dynamics of racism and colonialism in Britain, these histories provide a more nuanced account of class relations and the interweaving dynamics of racism.39 Post-colonial histories of resistance through education also point to the need to open up a conception of ‘emancipatory’ education to a range of positions, perspectives and approaches. The centrality of colonialism, imperialism and migration within British history certainly highlights the fact that a focus on ‘white’ working-class struggle in Britain can only present one particular version of emancipatory e­ ducation. Needless to say, acknowledgement and awareness of complexity need not obscure the search for, or investigation of, explicitly radical and emancipatory alternatives. Despite its male- and Anglocentric focus, Brian Simon’s edited compilation The Radical Tradition in Education in Britain reminds us of the enduring importance of the various historical attempts to articulate clearly the goals of a radical project for education. Correspondingly, Wright’s analysis of the radicalism in English education in the 1960s and 1970s emphasises the role of explicit alternative goals and visions.40 More recently, anthologies such as Democratic Schools and The Subaltern Speak point to contemporary iterations of these radical intents, across national, cultural and political contexts.41 The histories of the SSS and BSS movements offer another perspective on the mobilisation of emancipatory politics in education. In moving across different time, from the turn-of-the-century socialist politics to the midand late twentieth century, and across cultural and social experience, I investigate the diverse uses of independent community-based children’s education to struggle against social inequality and injustice. Children’s education and the struggle for social change: counter-publics The histories of the SSSs and BSSs highlight the importance of childhood cultures in the many struggles for social change. Both the BSSs and SSSs are part of a broad and diverse historical genealogy of communities reclaiming knowledge and education for themselves. Both – in very different ways – were inspired by working-class struggle, and both sought to challenge existing inequalities through providing independent educational opportunities for children and young people. Their mutual interest in children and young people set these schooling movements apart from the more common histories of radical adult education. There is, for instance, a range of rich historical work that explores the connec-

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tion of adult education to the struggle for radical social change as seen in a range of cultural and political contexts, such as workers’ libraries, women’s reading circles, radical black bookshops, and the educative aspect of protest movements more generally through speeches and campaign meetings. These histories are useful reminders of the importance of knowledge, education and culture in the project of social change, or, to put it in Antonio Gramsci’s terms, of the centrality of culture to the contestation of hegemonic rule. Indeed, since the English translation of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks in 1971, the theory of hegemony has been particularly influential in the field of education.42 Gramsci’s conception highlights the ways in which social relations are reproduced through knowledge production, education and schools.43 As Williams writes, ‘the educational institutions are usually the main agencies of the transmission of effective dominant culture, and this is now a major economic as well as cultural activity; indeed it is both in the same moment’.44 Correspondingly, Gramsci contends that the sites of cultural and social reproduction also hold the potential to become sites of hegemonic contestation and challenge. For Gramsci, the diversity of social experience points to the multiple ways in which social relations are reproduced through culture and identity, and thus conversely, the multiple ways in which this reproduction could be questioned, disrupted and changed. Hegemony suggests that the reproduction of inequality and injustice occurs through economic and labour relations as well as myriad public and private ‘civic’ points, such as schools, churches, the family and the media. These are, as Gramsci describes them, ‘the cognitive and affective structures whereby men perceive and evaluate problematic social reality’.45 Hegemony is, therefore, an attempt to understand the diverse, fluid and contested social relations that exist within wider operations of social and political power. It therefore grants conceptual attention to myriad collective identities and experiences of oppression and disadvantage. As Gramsci states, ‘The people themselves are not a homogeneous cultural collectivity but present numerous and variously combined cultural stratifications which, in their pure form, cannot always be identified within specific historical popular collectivities.’46 To be sure, hegemony allows recognition of the reproductive role of schooling, at the same time as opening education up as a potential site for developing critical awareness, and contestation, of unequal and unjust social relations. Bolstered also by the work of Paulo Freire in the 1970s and 1980s, and of a range of post-colonial, feminist and antiracist perspectives, many have worked to conceptualise the possibility for education to contribute to social change. And yet, as many of these

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scholars have recognised, while it might be possible to conceptualise – to imagine – what this might possibly look like, engaging education in the project of social change is both messy and difficult. As will be explored in the histories of the SSSs and BSSs here, the claim to ‘really useful knowledge’ is fraught with a range of challenges and dilemmas, from pedagogic relations of authority to deciding on what counts as ‘really useful knowledge’ and sustaining the resources required in creating alternative spaces of education. Feminists, for example, have long highlighted the tendency of proclaimed ‘critical pedagogies’ to disengage from the gender politics embedded in the teaching profession, and the everyday reality of students’ and teachers’ lives.47 Such criticisms draw attention to the pitfalls that come with lauding the power of education, while leaving the wider implications of this education unexplored.48 A range of other scholarship questions the ability of theories of education and social change to capture the multitude of struggles for recognition and equality based on race, gender, sexuality and disability and the problematic potentiality for such theories to speak for others. Such criticisms serve as crucial reminders that the relationship between education and the struggle for social change is historically, culturally and socially bounded. The collective project of knowledge creation and critique is framed and determined by diverse expressions of collective identities, sociocultural contexts and political intents. With children and young people as their primary concern, the SSS and BSS movements can appear to sit on the margins of social change. The prominent history of state schooling can gloss over the many community-based attempts to create independent spaces of children’s education. In addition, explorations of education and social movements often place greater focus on adult initiatives, which perhaps offer more accessible entry-points for exploring the articulation of, and engagement with, radical politics.49 And yet children and young people have long been central to wider struggles for social change. A concern for the next generation, and for the lives of their children, has often spurred on the political activities and commitments of men and women engaged in social struggle.50 Children and young people have often been crucial to radical social change, contributing to, and engaging in, a range of political activities. As Ansell recently argued, it is important not unquestioningly to adopt socially constructed depictions of children and young people as primarily local social actors, involved only in intimate localised relations.51 Exploration of children’s education and children’s culture brings to the fore the intergenerational relations of wider cultures of social change, and of the changing meanings and lived experiences of

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‘childhood’.52 As Carolyn Steedman’s work on Margaret McMillan demonstrates, for instance, children and childhood were crucial to political activity for British turn-of-the-century and early twentieth-century radicals.53 More recently, Jane Martin’s historical work has shed light on the ways in which women have variously used children’s education as a focus for their own political activism.54 Supported also by a range of international literature, such historical work problematises a narrow conception of social change that eclipses the role of children and childhood,55 and that relies upon gendered notions of ‘public’ politics. Writing from a sociological perspective on BSSs, Diane Reay and Heidi Mirza suggest that one way of conceptualising the relationship between education and social change is through Nancy Fraser’s notion of the ‘counter-public’.56 Following from Hannah Arendt’s exposition of the hidden inequalities of the private/public spheres,57 Fraser’s notion of a counter-public mobilises a reflexive understanding of community action that refuses strict a priori definitions between the private and public.58 Specifically, Fraser develops the conception of counter-publics as a critical response to Jurgen Habermas’s theoretical development of the ‘public sphere’. Corresponding with many of the feminist challenges to critical pedagogy,59 Fraser contends that Habermas’s conception of the public sphere contains latent exclusions.60 Fraser argues Habermas’s delineation of the public as the sphere of participatory dialogue, and the state as the potential site of influence, too easily discredits public movements or social issues that are not readily incorporated (or deemed too confrontational for) a dialogical model of public action.61 In other words, Habermas’s focus on rational dialogue may cloak underlying power relations in the public sphere, and between the public and private spheres.62 She suggests that Habermas’s public overlooks actions that do not immediately fit its rational remit, and which may encircle, though not directly target, the state.63 In distinction, Fraser develops the idea of counter-publics, which are excluded and which may voluntarily distance themselves from what is considered formal political contestation in any given historical moment.64 Counter-publics are an attempt to give conceptual meaning to the multifarious cultural and social activities that occur in the contestation of hegemony, and the dynamic interrelationships between what Williams defined as dominant, emergent and residual cultures. Counter-publics are ‘a fluid, fragile realm, where a new politics of images, transgression, authenticity, and playful collective action are central ingredients’.65 Importantly, the notion of counter-publics draws attention to the many arenas of cultural activity that might otherwise go unseen in a restricted focus on social antagonisms directly intervening

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in the state. They are what Fraser describes as often hidden ‘discursive arenas’ that support diverse practices of resistance.66 Giving meaning to the multiplicity of social relations under hegemony, counter-publics highlight the need for new ‘interpretations and situation definitions that cannot at first gain a hearing in mainstream public spheres’.67 By engaging more explicitly with the many challenges to inequality that do not fit within conventional models of state contestation, counter-publics offer a constructive means by which to conceptualise children’s education as potentially emancipatory. For instance, Mirza suggests that educational counter-publics involve the reclaiming of space, knowledge and power often through ‘covert and quiet ways’.68 Such a conceptualisation allows the development of much more nuanced understandings of counter-hegemony in education. Mirza and Reay’s use of the counter-public to examine contemporary BSS practices emphasises complexity and ambiguity in the development of emancipatory knowledge and culture, thus avoiding romantic versions of educational cultures of resistance.69 In this way, counter-publics provide an opportunity to explore emancipatory education not as a notional idea, but as part of complex lived experiences. As will be explored in the following chapters, for the histories of the SSS and BSS movements the notion of the counter-public offers a productive way to understand how these children’s educational endeavours enacted and articulated their aspirations for social change while creating independent educational spaces. Conclusion The historical rendering of the SSS and BSS movements I offer here, therefore, mobilises the notion of counter-publics as a means to exploration and historical understanding. The entry-points into, and lines of enquiry that motivated, my reading of the archives, my interviewing of past and present teachers, and my listening to oral testimony, were guided by an interest in examining the ways in which spaces and places of alternative education contested the social norms that supported presumptions of lack, deficiency and material and cultural inequality. This means, therefore, that across these two histories there are common themes that I took up for investigation. This included for instance, exploring the relationships between radical children’s education initiatives and wider movements for social change; the diverse and coalescing political intents, desires and actions that underpinned these initiatives, including ambivalences and contradictions; and the ways that diverse groups of men, women and children created spaces of educational community across shifting class and social relations, imbued with the

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experience and politics of race and gender. Inevitably, and appropriately, this line of enquiry often required going in different directions for each of these histories. However, this conceptual underpinning brings convergence. The histories of the BSS and SSS movements presented here share a focus on understanding the historical emergence of the schools, their position in relation to radical movements and actions of the state, and the ways in which these movements constructed their political and educational purpose. It is within these broad themes that the conceptual underpinning of counter-publics is found. I take up these conceptual threads more concretely in the concluding chapter, in which I return more explicitly to the themes and questions raised here, and reflect comparatively on the SSS and BSS movements. Notes   1 See J. Gerrard, ‘Tracing radical working-class education: praxis and historical representation’, History of Education, 41:4 (2012), 537–58.   2 See H. White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).   3 S. J. Ball, ‘Intellectuals or technicians? The urgent role of theory in educational studies’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 43:3 (1995), 255–71, p. 269.   4 T. Woodin, ‘Working-class education and social change in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain’, History of Education, 36:4–5 (2007), 483–96.   5 C. Leathwood and L. Archer, ‘Social class and educational inequalities: the local and the Global’, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 12:1 (2004), 5–13; G. Whitty, ‘Education, social class and social exclusion’, Journal of Education Policy, 16:4 (2001), 287–95.   6 See, e.g., M. Savage and K. Williams, ‘Elites: remembered in capitalism and forgotten by social sciences’, Sociological Review, 56:Supplement 1 (2008), 1–24.   7 T. Eagleton, Ideology (London: Verso, 1991), p. 91.   8 K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1970), p. 47.   9 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963), p. 9. 10 M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (J. Cumming, trans.) (London and New York: Verso, 1997), p. ix. 11 S. Hall, ‘Rethinking the “base-and-superstructure” metaphor’, in J. Bloomfield (ed.), Class, Hegemony and Party (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977), pp. 43–72, p. 53. 12 W. Bottero, ‘Class identities and the identity of class’, Sociology, 38:5 (2004), 985–1003. 13 M. Savage, ‘Review essay: a new class paradigm?’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24:4 (2003), 537–41.

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14 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (London: Vintage 2010); K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. M. Nicolaus (London: Penguin Books, 1973). 15 K. Marx, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. D. McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 77 [‘Economic and philosophical manuscripts’]. 16 N. Fraser, ‘Identity, exclusion and critique: a response to four critics’, European Journal of Political Theory, 6:3 (2007), 305–37, p. 321. 17 J. Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1944); A. Gutman, Democratic Education (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996); R. Pring, ‘The common school’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 41:4 (2007), 503–22. 18 H. A. Giroux, Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture and Schooling (Colorado: Westview Press, 1997); P. Allman, Critical Education against Global Capitalism (Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey, 2001); P. McLaren, Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture: Oppositional Politics in a Postmodern Era (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). 19 G. Rikowski, ‘Marx and the education of the future’, Policy Futures in Education, 2:3–4 (2004), 565–77. 20 E.g. M. Mayberry and E. C. Rose (eds), Meeting the Challenge: Innovative Feminist Pedagogies in Action (New York and London: Routledge, 1999); C. Tejeda, M. Espinoza and K. Gutierrez, ‘Towards a decolonizing pedagogy: social justice reconsidered’, in P. Trifonas (ed.), Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking Education for Social Change (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003), pp. 10–40. 21 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 22 See M. Fielding, ‘On the necessity of radical state education: democracy and the common school’, Philosophy of Education, 41:4 (2007), 539–57. 23 See N. Fraser, ‘What’s critical and critical theory? The case of Habermas and gender’, New German Critique, 35 (1986), 97–131. 24 K. Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, trans. and ed. L. D. Easton and K. H. Guddat (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1967), p 215. 25 P. Lather, ‘Post-critical pedagogies: a feminist reading’, in C. Luke and J. Gore (eds), Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 120–36. 26 Marx, Writings of the Young Marx, p. 212. 27 See W. A. C. Stewart, Progressives and Radicals in English Education (London: Macmillan, 1972), p. 467; A. Rattansi and D. Reeder, Rethinking Radical Education (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992), p. 11. 28 See R. Watts, ‘Some radical educational networks of the late eighteenth century and their influence’, History of Education, 27:1 (1998), 1–14; P. McCann, ‘Radicalism and education in Britain’, History of Education Quarterly, 22:2 (1982), 233–38; Woodin, ‘Working-class education and social change’; J. Martin and J. Goodman, Women and Education, 1800–1980 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 29 Baron et al., Unpopular Education.

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30 S. Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth 1889–1939 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981). 31 C. Calhoun, The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982). 32 R. Williams, ‘Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory’, New Left Review, 82 (1973), 3–16. 33 J. Rule, ‘Tracing discourses of social action: inner-city Sydney neighbourhood centres’, Studies in Continuing Education, 27:2 (2005), 135–53; W. Cowburn, Class, Ideology and Community Education (London: Croom Helm, 1986). 34 B. Duffy, ‘Late nineteenth century popular educational conservatism: the work of coalminers on the school boards of the North-East’, History of Education, 27:1 (1998), 29–38. 35 E.g. W. J. Morgan, ‘Some political origins of workers’ education in Britain’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 20:1 (1988), 27–36; J. McIlroy, ‘Two tales about crisis and corruption at the Central Labour College’, Labour History Review 72:1 (2007), 69–93; P. Gardner, The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England (London: Croom Helm, 1984); L. Goldman, ‘Intellectuals and the English working class 1870–1945: the case of adult education’, History of Education, 29:4 (2000), 281–300. 36 Hunt, Equivocal Feminists. 37 Purvis, Hard Lessons; see also Watts, ‘Gendering the story’. 38 J. Martin, ‘Thinking education histories differently: biographical approaches to class politics and women’s movements in London, 1900s to 1960s’, History of Education 36:4 (2007), 515–33. 39 E.g. A. Bonnett, ‘Anti-racism as a radical educational ideology in London and Tyneside’, Oxford Review of Education, 16:2 (1990), 255–67. 40 N. Wright, Assessing Radical Education: A Critical Review of the Radical Movement in English Schooling, 1960–1980 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1989). 41 M. W. Apple and J. A. Beane (eds), Democratic Schools: Lessons in Powerful Education (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2007); M. W. Apple and K. L. Buras (eds), The Subaltern Speak: Curriculum, Power and Educational Struggles (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). 42 Mayo, ‘Synthesising Gramsci and Freire’; H. A. Giroux, ‘Rethinking cultural politics and radical pedagogy in the work of Antonio Gramsci’, Educational Theory 49 (1999), 1–21; H. A. Giroux and P. McLaren (eds), Critical Pedagogy, The State and Cultural Struggle (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989). 43 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971). 44 Williams, ‘Base and superstructure’, p. 9. 45 J. Femia, Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 24. 46 A. Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. D. Forgacs and A. NowellSmith, trans. W. Boelhower (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985), p. 195. 47 E.g. J. M. Gore, The Struggle for Pedagogies (New York: Routledge, 1993);

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J. Matthews, ‘“… If radical education is to be anything more than radical pedagogy”’, Discourse, 15:2 (1994), 60–72. 48 S. Cho, ‘The politics of critical pedagogy and new social movements’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42:3 (2008), 1–16; S. Ellison, ‘On the poverty of philosophy: the metaphysics of McLaren’s “revolutionary critical pedagogy”’, Educational Theory, 59:3 (2009), 327–51. 49 R. Sharp, M. Hartwig and J. O’Leary, ‘Independent working class education: a repressed historical alternative’, Discourse, 10:1 (1989), 1–26. 50 E.g. Manton, Socialism and Education in Britain; L. A. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia 1917–1932 (New York and London: Routledge, 2001); Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain. 51 N. Ansell, ‘Childhood and the politics of scale: descaling children’s geographies?’, Progress in Human Geography, 33:2 (2009), 190–209. 52 See P. Hopkins and R. Pain, ‘Geographies of age: thinking relationally’, Area, 39:3 (2007), 287–94; J. Brannen, ‘Childhoods across the generations: stories from women in four-generation English families’, Childhood, 11:4 (2004), 409–28. 53 Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class. 54 J. Martin, ‘Mary Bridges Adams and education reform 1890–1920: an ethics of care?’, Women’s History Review, 13:3 (2004), 467–87. 55 E.g. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades. 56 Reay and Mirza, ‘Uncovering genealogies of the margins’; Mirza and Reay, ‘Spaces and places of black educational desire’. 57 H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 63–73. 58 N. Fraser, Justice Interrupts: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condi­­­tion (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), p. 86. 59 Ellsworth, ‘Why doesn’t this feel empowering?’. 60 Fraser, Justice Interrupts; Fraser, ‘What’s critical and critical theory?’. 61 Fraser, Justice Interrupts. 62 See M. Canovan, ‘Distorted communication: a note on Habermas and Arendt’, Political Theory, 11:1 (1983), 105–16. 63 See also C. Calhoun, ‘Imagining solidarity: cosmopolitanism, constitutional patriotism and the public sphere’, Public Culture, 14:1 (2002), 147–71; P. Beilharz, ‘Critical theory: Jurgen Habermas’, in D. Roberts (ed.), Reconstructive Theory: Gadamer, Habermas, Luhmann (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995), pp. 39–64. 64 Fraser, Justice Interrupts, p. 75 65 K. H. Tucker Jr, ‘From the imaginary to subjectivation: Castoriadis and Tour­­­aine on the performative public sphere’, Thesis Eleven, 83 (2005), 42–6, p. 56. 66 Fraser, Justice Interrupts, p. 81. 67 Fraser, ‘Identity, exclusion and critique’, p. 327. 68 H. S. Mirza, ‘Transcendence over diversity: black women in the academy’, Policy Futures in Education, 4:2 (2006), 101–13.

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69 Similarly, Hoberman’s recent discussion of counter-publics and quasipublics underscores the need to examine the political intentions of cultures on the margins, rather than simply declare them counter-hegemonic: R. Hoberman, ‘Women in the British Museum reading room during the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: from quasi- to counter-public’, Feminist Studies, 28:3 (2002), 489–512.

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Part II

Socialist Sunday Schools, 1892–1930

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Introduction

My Dear Goldwing, I am eleven years of age. What age are you? You must be out of school, because your writing reads so nice. I go to the Kinning Park School. I like it very much, because we are all comrades in it. No difference is made between the boys and girls. All are asked to take a share in the lesson, poems, songs, and dances. We get lessons on work, flowers, profit, wages, natural history, and unemployment. We learn to read poems, repeat texts. We learn how needful it is that all little children should be fed and not go hungry to school. And that no children should go to work in shops and mills till they grow up and are educated. So I like our Socialist Sunday School. I am pleased with it, and I am going to attend it all the time till I grow up. With fond love, dear Goldwing, from Georgina Fulton.1

Writing in April 1909 to ‘Goldwing’, pen name of the SSS magazine’s ‘Children’s Page’ editor Lizzie Glasier, Georgina paints a vibrant picture of her Kinning Park Socialist Sunday School (SSS). Making note of the gender equality, the cultural activities and the political emphasis of the school curriculum, Georgina’s short description offers a lucid, if brief, glimpse at the various practices that formed the basis of her weekly SSS experience. As with Georgina’s school, turn-of-the-century SSSs across Britain constructed their purpose around the principles of socialism, aiming to create a genuine alternative and counterbalance to mainstream educational culture and knowledge. Arriving amid the diverse and optimistic socialist politic at the end of the nineteenth century, SSSs attempted to create educational experiences that could imbue in children a hope for, and determined commitment to, a socially just future. The following two chapters explore their attempt to do this, from the movement’s inception in 1892 until 1930. This period, which saw significant development and change in socialist politics more broadly, represent both a time of growth for the movement and the start of its decline in the mid-1920s.

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Chapter 3 examines the primary characteristics of the SSS movement’s practice and its articulated purpose. Firstly, I outline the emergence of SSSs within the existing socialist initiatives for children. In doing so, this chapter traces the progression of SSSs from a small scattering of schools to a British alliance, complete with a range of institutional and cultural apparatuses including school meeting agendas, alternative socialist curricula and songbooks. Secondly, the SSSs’ creation of a specifically children’s emancipatory education is explored, including their development of alternative pedagogies and curricula. Thirdly and finally, this chapter investigates the ways in which the SSS movement combined a concern for socialist morality and ethics with socialist politics as a means to connect socialism to children’s education. In Chapter 4, the SSSs’ version of socialist emancipation for children is examined in the context of the contestations within the radical and wider public spheres, including the challenge to SSSs brought by conservative campaigners and other radical children’s initiatives. Here the complex interrelationships between class, gender and ‘race’ are particularly brought to the fore through discussion of the way in which the SSS movement developed its notion of a universal working-class selfhood and its portrayal and practice of socialist activism. Note   1 ‘Children’s Page’, YS (April 1909), p. 530.

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3

‘Waken, children, waken! Justice be your aim’: the creation of a children’s socialist movement and the ‘religion of socialism’ 1

Children and turn-of-the-century socialism As the nineteenth century came to a close, a re-energised radical milieu began to establish cultural and activist networks across Britain. Taking inspiration from the traditions of mid-nineteenth-century Chartism, throughout the 1880s and 1890s new radical working-class organisations and networks began to appear across Britain.2 British socialists attempted to provide theoretical clarity, along with a sense of urgency, to this radical impetus, drawing on the likes of Hyndman’s (controversial) interpretation of Marx in the 1881 England for All,3 Edward Carpenter’s Towards Democracy (1883–1902), Robert Blatchford’s Merrie England in 1893, and later Tressell’s seminal Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, published posthumously in 1914.4 Not limiting their critique to Tory politics, working-class radicals of this period challenged middle-class liberal philanthropy and its representation of the working class as helpless, incapable of collective activity or self-governance.5 In a rearticulation of the enlightenment sentiment contained in the Chartists’ call – ‘knowledge is power!’ – socialists viewed their struggles for social change as inextricably interlinked with the struggle over knowledge and self-activity.6 For instance, one of the first organisations of this period, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), put knowledge, and with this education, at the centre of its organising principles. Its early motto declared, ‘EDUCATE – we shall need all our Intelligence, AGITATE – we shall need all our enthusiasm, ORGANISE – we shall need all our force.’7 Connected to the growing socialist movement, then, was an array of adult educational enterprises: from lectures to reading groups and classes on economics, history and politics. Of course, this radical impetus was as contested as it was ardent. The turn-of-the-century British socialist revival was characterised by diverse interpretations and adaptations of Marxism and, ensuing from this, deep divisions in the political practice and understanding of socialism. Reflecting this, organisations flourished and floundered,

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while splits wrought from hotly contested political debates created new ­organisational configurations and relationships. Over the period under examination here, for example, a range of organisations came to represent the different political intents and ideas: from the SDF, to the Fabians, the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist League, the British Socialist Party (BSP), the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and later the Communist Party (CP). In addition, and as is discussed below, a range of other organisations and community groupings provided an outlet for men and women interested in developing and practising their socialist commitment, including of course socialist sections of the emergent suffrage movement. A number of existing histories have already developed considerable insight into the political intents and trajectories of these organisations, and the tensions that characterised the ideological and practical expression of socialism. These histories point to the undeniable influence of both the previous Chartist generation and the intellectual and cultural traditions of Christianity on turn-of-the-century British socialism.8 For instance, Brian Simon points to the reverberated influence of the Christian Chartists in the development of the 1890s Labour Church (LC) movement.9 In addition, Stanley Pierson suggests Christianity was a foundational lens through which British socialism was adapted and translated.10 He argues that the popularity of the socialist revival can only really be understood in relation to a number of mediations and adaptations from Marxism forming three strains of loosely organised socialism he defines as social democracy, ethical socialism and fabianism.11 The tensions wrought between these strains, Pierson asserts, were connected to the personal crises that many lower-middle-class and middle-class men and women underwent in their search for new understandings of their social world. This broader social movement provides the social, cultural and intellectual context for the emergence of the SSS movement. Indeed, many of the ‘notable’ socialist men and women of these organisations were involved in varying capacities in SSS schools, from teachers, to organisers, advocates or occasional speakers. Moreover, as the final section of this chapter will examine the frictions ensuing from the religiously imbued character of much of British socialism had very significant repercussions for SSSs, not just with regard to their borrowed namesake. In addition, however, the SSS movement must be understood in relation to the wider political discourses and practices that were encircling children and their education. By the end of the nineteenth century children and childhood, and in particular working-class children and their childhood, had become key features of political debates across the political

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spectrum. From the middle of the nineteenth century successive government reforms around state schooling and child labour, and an energetic charity and philanthropic sector concerned with the conduct of workingclass families, children and mothers, had already generated an active public discourse surrounding children and childhood. By the 1880s and 1890s children had become a fixture in political debates and in legislative concerns. Within this context, it was particularly working-class children that caught the attention of public legislators and reformers: they were, as Carolyn Steedman writes, ‘investigated, written about, photographed and painted, surveyed and measured’ in unprecedented levels.12 Undoubtedly, this was a complicated political field. Into the twentieth century, for conservatives, liberals and socialists (and everything in between), children and childhood were powerful emblems upon which to etch disputations surrounding ‘morality’ versus ‘immorality’, ‘respectability’ versus ‘disrespectability’, and ultimately, all that was ‘depraved’ or ‘hopeful’ as Britain looked to the next century. Common reform agendas surrounding children and families incorporated both nuanced and starkly opposing political standpoints. Take, for example, the concern for the hygiene of working-class children and mothers exhibited by liberal, conservative and radical groupings alike. Attracting those inspired by the biopolitical traditions of eugenics (and its underpinning racist and classist assumptions) and progressive politics, interest in the issue was varied.13 Taking very different (and contested) standpoints, the British Social Hygiene Council and the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, prominent radical campaigners such as F. J. Gould and Rachel and Margaret McMillan,14 and organisations such as the Communist Party’s Young Communist League (YCL),15 all had an interest in documenting, discussing, and campaigning around workingclass children’s health and hygiene. What counted in such public debates were the unambiguous differences in positions. While common issues may have pointed to overlapping concerns, socialists were clear in developing counter-explanations and solutions. Socialists sought to demonstrate that it was the indecency and immorality in the capitalist system that was responsible for abysmal working and living conditions, distinguishing themselves from conservative and liberal explanations that found indecency and immorality in working-class culture as the foundation for many ‘social ills’. Thus, while the YCL would later come to describe working-class homes in 1921 as ‘dirty dark lanes’, ‘damp cellars’ and ‘dark caves and holes’ that bred ‘tramps, beggars, inmates of hospitals and asylums, or criminals in prisons’, they were clear in identifying the cause of this as unequal distribution of wealth favoured by the capitalist system.16

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In this political context, socialists aimed to ‘to break the stranglehold – in education, poor relief, housing, health and hygiene – exercised both formally and informally by the proxies of local [and big] businesses’.17 In other words, they inserted a discourse and practice of emancipation that challenged liberal paternalism and its apparent complacency towards unequal social relations and cycles of childhood poverty. As W. W. Young writes in his homage to Liverpool SSS teacher Robert Weare in 1921: The insistent cry of the children of the slums was a fit subject for politics, but just as the Liberal capitalists of the early part of the nineteenth century had opposed the release of the little factory slaves, so are the powerful Liberals of to-day opposed to freeing the little slaves of the degrading results of our sordid competitive system.18

For socialists, then, the lives of working-class children were a powerful reflection of all the errors of the ‘sordid competitive system’, and a hopeful emblem for a possible socialist future. SSSs, therefore, are part of a wider tradition of radical campaigns around children’s education, welfare and labour into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are rich historical accounts of many of the key figures of this period, and the work they undertook: from Steedman’s work on Margaret McMillan to Jane Martin’s more recent examination of Mrs Bridges Adams, and Kevin Manton’s exploration of the educational campaigns wrought by turn-of-the-century socialists.19 Such accounts reveal the plethora of campaigns – local and national – undertaken by socialists of the period. This included campaigning for free school meals and for raising the school-leaving age, serving on school boards, and developing and participating in community-based children’s welfare and educational initiatives.20 As many of these h ­ istories explore, this was an activist milieu that was readily embraced by many socialist women, as the interlocking gender norms surrounding childrearing coalesced with socialist politics. In many ways, these campaigns were carried out in the public sphere ‘proper’ as they explicitly targeted the state and its institutions. In contrast, at least in its formative years, the SSS movement existed somewhat on the periphery, as a counterpublic, targeting first and foremost the creation of alternative educational cultures. Nevertheless, when, in 1892, the dedicated SDF member Mary Gray opened the first British SSS among the radical Battersea dock strikes, she entered into an existing (albeit small) collection of children’s socialist cultural and educational initiatives. Proponents of secularist ethics had already turned their attention to children’s education. As early as the

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1860s, and into the 1880s, the National Secular Society had many branches with children’s Sunday schools attached. In 1884, for instance, the Battersea Secular Society school boasted seventy children in attendance, and used Annie Besant’s paper Our Corner as a text book, teaching elementary physiology, botany, and sound, heat and light.21 In addition, in the 1880s Annie Besant advertised free-thought stories for children and young people in Our Corner.22 Bolstered by transatlantic collaboration with their US counterparts, into the late 1880s and early 1890s ethical societies across England began to focus increasing attention on the production of non-Christian ethical learning materials and stories for children and young people.23 Indeed, in the same year that Mary Gray opened her Battersea SSS, Felix Adler, proponent of the US ethical movement, both addressed the London Ethical Society on moral instruction and published (and distributed) his book The Moral Instruction of the Child in London.24 Later, when in 1897 the Moral Instruction League was established, Adler’s book was cited as having formative influence over the British organisation.25 And yet, having socialists in its ranks as well as borrowing heavily from Christian-imbued ethics, the British iteration of the Moral Instruction League managed to attract commendation from all camps. The organisation’s 1905 collection of stories compiled by A. J. Waldegrave, for example, was published with quoted acclaim from both the Christian Sunday School Union, and the socialist papers the Clarion and the Labour Leader.26 For socialists, the attraction of the Moral Instruction League was their articulation of broad moral principles – justice, truth, work and even manners – outside the boundaries of Christianity. In its review of Waldegrave’s book, the radical paper Clarion wrote: This little book is packed full of pleasure. No class of children could fail to be interested by these lessons. Vivified by the imagination and tact of an enthusiastic teacher, there could be no doubt of their good effect … The full adoption of the method suggested by the Moral Instruction League would work a revolution in the schools which would have tremendous results in a generation, and no reasonable person could object to their introduction, or fail to perceive their superiority over the present system.27

Active in both the ethical and socialist movements, Frederick J. Gould’s influence on the development of a socialist children’s culture, and – more specifically – the SSS movement, cannot be overstated. In 1879 he was employed by the London School Board, eventually resigning in 1896 following prolonged tensions with the chair surrounding Gould’s criticisms of religious instruction in schools.28 Throughout this time, Gould developed and practised secular children’s moral instruction with the children of the members of the East London Ethical Society, of

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which he was a founding member when it was established in 1889.29 Gould was a firm believer of educating through stories, and prolifically published a range of collections throughout the turn of the century, including multiple series of Children’s Book of Moral Lessons, and in 1913, with illustrations by Walter Crane, Pages for Young Socialists. By 1893 Gould was championing alternative Sunday Schools that could be connected to ‘socialist churches’ or ‘ethical societies’, and eventually established his own.30 In writing a brief biography of Gould, the SSS movement’s magazine, the Young Socialist: A Magazine of Love and Justice, declared ‘Ethical Societies and Sunday Schools found an ardent disciple and worker in F. J. G.’, and documented that ‘among the scholars attending “Gould’s Sunday School” were the children of [the prominent socialists] Tom Mann and George Lansbury’.31 Into the 1900s, Gould’s series of secular moral stories provided a much-needed resource for those attempting to create alternative children’s education, including the SSS movement as will be explored below. At the same the, the immigrant working-class Jewish populace were also involved in their own self-education projects. In addition to the Spitalfields Jew’s Free School, in operation since 1817, the Progressive Youth Circle and the Jewish Workers’ Circle represented a marked turn towards radical politics within much of the turn-of-the-century Jewish self-education projects.32 These initiatives were a distinctive, though related, development of children’s and adult radical education embedded within Jewish culture, informed by anarchist, socialist and freethinking politics.33 For instance, Israel Zangwill, ex-pupil and teacher of the Spitalfields school, and friend of Eleanor Marx, also published in 1892 the popular novel Children of the Ghetto, based on East End Jewish family life.34 From within the socialist ranks, by 1894 Keir Hardie was busy appealing to young socialists under the pen name ‘Daddy Time’ in his Labour Leader column, ‘Chats with the Lads and Lasses’. Changing names to ‘Chats with the Crusaders’ in 1896, and taken over by Archie McArthur – ‘Uncle Archie’ – in 1897, the column engaged and corresponded with young socialists, and also publicised the SSS movement, of which both Hardie and McArthur were ardent advocates. 35 Around the same time, Thomas Pennington, a founding member of the Fabian Society, produced the Young Socialist magazine, running for ‘several issues’ in 1896.36 Also utilising the tools of the radical press, the Clarion editor Robert Blatchford used the pages of his newspaper to advertise his idea of ‘Cinderella Clubs’. These clubs aimed to bring relief – and socialism – to working-class children through Sunday afternoon club meetings comprising musical performance, tea and cakes, and by

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the end of the nineteenth century had gathered a significant collection of committed socialists.37 While appearing on the surface to be in the main a charitable act, Cinderella Clubs were clear in their connection to socialist politics. For example, take this entry from the regular Cinderella Club postings in the Clarion on 19 January 1901 that is worth quoting at length: Cinderella work in Liverpool is causing [local clergyman] Canon Hobson great uneasiness. To a representative of the Porcupine, who interviewed him after seeing my remarks in the Clarion, he said: -‘I don’t object to Socialists or anyone else feeding the children in my parish so long as they don’t attempt to imbue their minds with Socialistic ideas. But when they did this I had a right to object.’ In other words, he doesn’t mind how much we spend of our money and our time to alleviate the miseries wrought by an Evil, but let us say one word which will have the effect of doing away with the Evil itself, and out we go, if he can drive us! … [The children] thought we were ‘Temperance Crusade’ people, and asked some of us curiously whether we were teetollars. We said no, … that we wanted to save them from miseries inflicted by unkind sisters and brothers, and to help them to grow up in sun and shine like pretty flowers. And I HOPE THOSE WICKED “SOCIALISTIC IDEAS” WILL SINK IN DEEP!38

In similar vein, the LC, heavily involved in Cinderella Clubs, but eager to extend their own work to children’s education, created their own Sunday Schools and published a ‘Cinderella Supplement’ in their main organ, the Labour Prophet.39 Thus, while Mary’s school may have marked the beginning of what would become an almost century-long school movement, her initiative was not the single flame of inspiration that led the movement forward. The proceeding and coexisting educational initiatives gave context and support to the emergence of SSSs, and contributed to the development of a broad criticism of capitalist society and schooling practices. Just like those before and around her, Mary’s own impetus to start a SSS came from her fervent critique of capitalism and its effects on children. She herself had experienced ‘the harder side of life’, owing predomin­ antly to her husband’s regular bouts of unemployment resulting from his ardent trade unionism.40 Tracking her down in 1935, the SSS organiser Alf Blackburn asked her to recount how she established the first SSS.41 Witness to profound poverty around the docks, Mary placed the inspiration for the Battersea SSS in one particular moment. Serving at the Battersea SDF soup kitchen in 1892 Mary had amassed a small pile of crumbs from cutting up pieces of bread. She was about to throw them away when a local boy asked her to save the crumbs for his younger sister. After finding out that his father was unemployed, Mary resolved

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to open a school that could teach children about the reasons for their poverty and the hope for a possible alternative future. After a period of difficult lobbying of her SDF comrades for support, many of whom were not convinced by her idea (a theme to plague the SSS movement as is discussed in chapter 4), Mary established the first SSS in Britain with two in attendance, her daughter Florence and a neighbour, Ernest Clark.42 Each week Mary set about teaching increasing numbers of children principles with which to guide their developing understandings of the world. Basing her instruction on the four principles of socialism as she interpreted it – ‘honesty, truthfulness, cleanliness and brotherhood’ – Mary aimed to, in her own words, ‘point out the rottenness of the present system, and our object – socialism’.43 Socialist Sunday Schools: the creation of a movement Amid the many ventures into creating alternative children’s culture and education, there was something in the idea of a SSS that garnered significant support. Of course, growing interest and involvement in SSSs did not preclude continuing participation in other initiatives. Robert Weare, for example, spearheaded both the Cinderella Club and the SSS in L ­ iverpool, 44 and the prominent educationalist Margaret McMillan lent her support to SSSs while also running her own initiatives.45 Nonetheless, SSSs did attract enough attention to incorporate many of those already involved in children’s education at the same time as recruiting a new set of socialists to its cause. As a consequence, SSSs grew beyond their predecessors and contemporaries, and lasted well into the latter half of the twentieth century, thanks to a small handful of dedicated proponents. At first, connected to existing locales of socialist activism, the spread of the schools across England was gradual. In March 1901, in its first year of circulation, the YS reported fifteen schools in existence: Bradford, Edinburgh, Halifax, Huddersfield and Paisley could all make claim to having their own SSS, while Glasgow boasted six schools, and London had four. In addition to these, there were likely many more undocumented SSSs. Liverpool, for instance, not counted in this 1901 listing, apparently had a thriving SSS from 1896 with nearly one hundred children in attendance.46 The strength – in numbers and enthusiasm – of the Glaswegian contingent was important for the SSS movement. The Glaswegian Archie McArthur, having taken over from Keir Hardie in editing the Labour Leader’s children’s column, set about establishing a nationwide SSS magazine in 1901, which he hoped would help spur on the growth of

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the movement. Another formative influence in Glasgow was Caroline Martyn, who called the first meeting for a Glasgow SSS in 1896.47 Alex Gossip’s move from Glasgow to London with his wife and fellow SSS organiser Isabella Gossip (née Neave) in 1901 greatly strengthened the growth of the movement in London.48 Signalling the growing number of schools into the first decade of the twentieth century, by 1906 a number of regional unions were already in operation, which supported the development of the schools, and provided the opportunity for teachers to share resources, including both the Yorkshire Union and Lancashire and Cheshire unions.49 By 1907 there were officially sixty schools, with thirteen in Glasgow, and a further four across Scotland, eighteen in London, thirteen in the Yorkshire District and twelve in Lancashire.50 The spread of the schools even reached Ireland, when in 1916, a small Belfast school announced its establishment proclaiming ‘we have the honour to be the first SSS in Ireland’ with forty students in attendance across three classes.51 Arguably, the first apparatus to grant a collective sense of a ‘movement’ for SSSs was the monthly YS magazine. Signing off in his familiar pen name ‘Uncle Archie’ in its first edition in January 1901, McArthur addresses the ‘dear socialist children’, stating that the YS ‘is put forth to keep a place warm for a better thing in days to come, and to place it in the power of the Socialist children of a hundred years hence to say that they and those who had gone before them had carried on a Magazine of their own right through the Century’.52 Developing quickly from a small A4 typescript into a glossy illustrated publication, the YS was an invaluable device for communication among teachers and students. Alongside articles about current industrial disputes, socialist and naturalist poems, and biographies of celebrated socialist figures, were regular school reports, letters from children, notes on the development of the SSS movement, correspondence from international SSSs, and brief teacher and student biographies. By 1909 there was enough broad support to justify the e­ stablishment of the National Council of British Socialist Sunday Schools (NCBSSS), with Alex Gossip as its first president.53 The NCBSSS met annually, attended by delegates from school and regional unions, which were formally incorporated into its structure. In an effort to resource, and develop common standards for, the growing SSS movement, the NCBSSS developed a range of ‘bureaux’ through which to develop and promote SSS practice. This included the Education Bureau, which prolifically published curriculum and pedagogy ideas, starting with the ‘Socialist Interpretation of History’ in 1914; the International Bureaux, which corresponded with SSSs around the world; the Dramatic and

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­ntertainment Bureau, which distributed ideas for dramatic plays E and music; and the Educational Needlecraft Bureau, which promoted aesthetic craft work.54 In addition, the NCBSSS published various editions of hymn (later named song) books, a manual for teachers in 1924, suggested a uniform SSS meeting agenda, and organised the theme and content of annual ‘National Sunday’ lessons in which all SSSs taught the same socialist maxim once a year.55 Clearly borrowing from the dominant culture of religious Sunday school education, SSSs created alternative, but familiar, educational cultures for their students and teachers, as is discussed below. Take, for example, the well recognisable church order of service pattern of standing and sitting, call and response, addresses, lessons and songs reiterated within the typical SSS meeting agenda: SSS Agenda 1. Opening Aspiration (children rise and repeat after Superintendent). 2. Song. 3. Roll Call (the meaning of the ‘Builders’ Roll’ should be occasionally explained in the school). 4. The minutes of the previous Sunday’s gathering are read and endorsed. The purpose of this is to train the observation and memory of the young people in view of later Trade Union, Co-operative and Socialist duties. 5. Song. 6. Precepts or Text (repeated separately from memory by the scholars and explained by teacher). 7. Recitations or other contributions by the Members. 8. Song. 9. Lesson – Address (maximum 20 minutes), children to be invited to answer questions as the lesson proceeds). 10. Announcements (including Birthday Card and greetings to any scholar) to be expressed by a young comrade on behalf of the school. Greetings and wishes to be sent to any scholar absent through illness. 11. Closing song and aspiration.56

Such NCBSSS institutional apparatuses and cultural practices assisted to create a common culture that could inform, and inspire, a SSS ‘movement’. Describing the roll as the ‘builders’ roll’ the NCBSSS wanted to foster a belief that every student and every teacher was part of a collective movement, building a world for socialism. Indeed, the collective identification of a ‘movement’ was of profound importance for the SSS movement. In large part, identification of this ‘movement’, of a kind of SSS political and cultural solidarity, was found in their allegiance to the ten socialist commandments, which, as will be discussed in chapter 4, were later changed to precepts. Reflecting a common ethos towards

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children’s socialism, these were the political and ethical cornerstone of the movement, recited by children and teachers in SSS meetings, and used as the basis for lesson ideas. SSS Ten Socialist Commandments/Precepts 1. Love your schoolfellows, who will be your fellow-workmen in life. 2. Love learning which is the food of the mind; be as grateful to your teacher as to your parents. 3. Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions. 4. Honour the good, be courteous to all, bow down to none. 5. Do not hate or speak evil of anyone. Do not be revengeful, but stand up for your rights and resist oppression. 6. Do not be cowardly. Be a friend to the weak, and love justice. 7. Remember that the good things of the earth are produced by labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers. 8. Observe and think in order to discover the truth. Do not believe what is contrary to reason, and never deceive yourself or others. 9. Do not think that those who love their own country must hate and despise other nations, or wish that, which is a remnant of barbarism. 10. Work for the day when all men and women will be free citizens of one fatherland, and live together as brothers and sisters in peace and righteousness.57

Nonetheless, apart from this pledge, the formalised structure provided by the NCBSSS never demanded high levels of compliance, though it did seek to promote a common approach. In reality teachers were largely free to teach as they saw fit, and indeed the ways in which schools developed their practice relied heavily on the particular political perspectives of the local socialists. To this end, the NCBSSS retained a limited remit: to assist in opening SSSs and provide literature suitable for use in them.58 Thus, while the articulation of a collective identity as a ‘movement’ was of profound import for the SSS movement, this rested on a strong commitment to localism and school autonomy. The NCBSSS encouraged a broad and incorporative definition of socialism, and hoped that this would engender wide-reaching support for the schools across the broader socialist movement. Fostering this, the NCBSSS and various political parties, such as the ILP and SDF, regularly sent greetings and delegates to each other’s conferences.59 Correspondingly, schools reflected a wide range of socialist affinities: independent socialists, the LC, SDF, ILP and later the BSP all had SSS branches, and many branches incorporated a diversity of socialist perspectives.60 The ex-SSS participant Mrs Scarlett, for instance, recollected that together ‘Mr Pye of the Ethical Society and Mr J. Shepparth of the BSP were mainly responsible for the opening’ of her local SSS.61

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Undoubtedly, the initial expansion of the movement was linked to the ease in which association to SSSs could be made. The movement was proudly ambivalent towards members’ religious (or lack thereof) and political affiliations. Indeed, meeting on the one day available for workers, SSSs most often met on Sunday afternoons in part to accommodate possible religious Sunday school attendance in the mornings. Providing some sort of commonality across the diverse attendees, SSSs demanded only commitment to their broadly articulated principles of socialism, as expressed in the ten commandments/precepts and their declared principles: NCBSSS Declaration Question 1. What is our object? Answer. Our object is to realise Socialism. Question 2. What is meant by Socialism? Answer. Socialism means common ownership and control of those things we all need to live happily and well. Question 3. Why is Socialism necessary? Answer. Socialism is necessary because the present system enables a few to enrich themselves out of the labour of the People. Question 4. How would Socialism benefit the People? Answer. Socialism would benefit the People as wealth would then be produced for the use of all. Question 5. What is wealth and how is it produced? Answer. Wealth is everything required to enable us to live and is produced by the work of hand and brain. Question 6. Will Socialism provide the opportunity of a healthy and happy life for all ? Answer. Yes. Under Socialism there will be neither idle rich nor unemployed poor, but all shall share in the work of the world and in the joy of life. Question 7. On what principles does Socialism rest? Answer. Socialism rests on the great principles of Love, Justice and Truth. Question 8. How can we apply these principles? Answer. By cultivating the spirit of service to others and the practice of mutual aid we can apply these great principles and so hasten the advent of Socialism.62

In addition, the NCBSSS tolerated (albeit at times begrudgingly) a consistent presence of unaffiliated schools, including those that regularly slipped into arrears. Indeed, the highly localised and disparate character of the schools made centralised organisation routinely difficult. For instance, in February 1910 the YS editor described three years of struggle to conduct a ‘census of school attendances’ owing to a lack of replies by school secretaries.63 Conference and meeting proceedings at both national and regional levels also often made frustrated reference to the lack of correspondence and contact from individual schools.64 In similar style to Mary’s school, SSSs (and even regional

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unions) appeared where local socialists showed interest and disappeared when interest or resources waned, or when attention was diverted to other more immediate campaigns. In 1926, for instance, delegates from the Lanarkshire District Union reported that no more SSSs could be opened until after the mining dispute was resolved, while the Lancashire District Union was noted to have lapsed.65 Reflecting the working-class character of many of the schools, their transience was often down to ‘hard times’ or lack of access to appropriate rooms. One Bradford SSS teacher, for example, recollects that the Bradford movement ‘went through difficult times for want of workers and for finance’, while another teacher remembers that the SSS was ‘held at a comrade’s house’ and wasn’t sure how long it was able to function.66 Bridgeland’s brief exploration of Bradford SSSs also notes the financial difficulty faced in many of them.67 Importantly, the assertion of localised control remained a central concern for the NCBSSS. The movement fiercely protected the autonomy of local schools and regional unions. For example, a motion put to the 1913 annual NCBSSS conference partly to centralise decision making over which motions would get tabled at future conferences was strongly defeated 71:15.68 It was not until 1921, owing to ‘the present conditions of unemployment and high railway fares’ that made it ‘impossible for the majority of schools to send a delegate’, that the NCBSSS Annual Conference, clearly suffering from a decrease in numbers, conceded thirty-one to two to a more centralised organisation of regional unions. Having attempted a looser arrangement of school affiliation in 1920, the change buttressed four regional unions (north and midlands, south England, Scotland and Ireland) as the key link between individual schools and the national council.69 Unemployment and economic hardship also meant that the NCBSSS abandoned its hopes of a paid official in 1921. Importantly, this structural change reinforced the autonomy of the unions, with NCBSSS asserting: ‘Each union will be responsible for its own organisation and propaganda which will be discussed at a yearly [union] conference.’ Perhaps attesting more strongly to the localised character of the movement, into the 1920s and 1930s the movement’s regional unions were not limited to these four as outlined by the NCBSSS. Yet, despite the enthusiastic uptake of SSSs across Britain, and the expansive organisational structures of the NCBSSS, the SSS movement could never lay claim to mass popularity. At its peak in the early 1920s, a national census of the schools recorded just over 8,000 participating children and adults (6,210 and 1,932 respectively).70 And while actual participation levels would have been considerably higher, with only 93 of the known 140 SSS answering the census, these numbers clearly

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indicated a lack of large-scale support.71 As early as 1922 the NCBSSS Annual Conference noted the difficulty of keeping schools open, and in the following years the movement’s decline was regularly reported.72 From the 1930s there appeared recurrent discussion lamenting and questioning the dramatic decline in schools,73 and in 1961, the year before the NCBSSS changed its name to Socialist Fellowship in a bid to become more relevant and appealing, there remained only nineteen schools.74 Nonetheless, in the period under examination here (1892– 1930), on the whole the SSS movement experienced expansion and did so within a sanguine socialist milieu. Socialist children’s education Among the archive collections of the SSS movement is a SSS Christmas bookmark.75 On the front is pictured an image of a girl peacefully asleep in her bed, with jolly Santa Claus poised ready at the door clutching a bevy of gifts. Below it, in an attempt to relate the Christmas festive season to socialism, are the words ‘Santa Claus will come to ALL boys and girls when socialism comes.’ Though perhaps an overly simplistic example of SSS rhetoric, this Christmas message usefully underscores the centrality of childhood in the movement’s translation of socialism. Guiding the development of SSS educational practice was a fundamental commitment to protecting childhood and the capability of socialism to achieve this. Reflecting this, as already noted, SSS teachers dedicated themselves to a range of educational and campaign work, including struggles against child labour, and for better educational and welfare provisions. As a counter-public then, SSSs were connected to the wider socialist movement through the support of socialist knowledge, culture and education and through the diverse political actions of their teachers. This common concern to create socialist cultures of childhood, and to campaign around the rights of the child, attracted both men and women organisers, and both working-class and middle-class radicals. As is explored in greater depth in chapter 4, the gendered nature of childrearing invariably affected SSSs and, as with other campaigns around childhood, opened the space for high numbers of women participants.76 And though many prominent campaigners lent their name to the SSS cause, including for example Keir Hardie, Philip Snowden, and Bruce and Katherine Glasier, the schools were products of their local communities and the men and women socialists within them. Reading through the many ‘Portrait Gallery’ entries in the YS, which give short introductions to various local SSS teachers and students, and autobiographies and biographies of known teachers, it is clear that personal experiences

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of childhood hardship was a primary motivator for their commitment to the SSS movement. In particular, accounts of and by working-class teachers constantly make reference to their lack of childhood and their early introduction to work. Across SSS literature, teachers represent SSSs as a welcome relief from their own difficult personal histories and as a means by which to break the generational repetition of such experiences. Take, for example, the factory stoker William Wilson’s reflections on his involvement in his SSS: I had to commence work when I was nine years of age, and I have had a hard uphill fight ever since, first with the famers as a boy, then for a short time on the locomotives on the railway, and now in my present situation as stoker in a large factory for over twenty years … The happiest years of my life have been spent among the Socialist children. It is five years since I began to train the children physically. I have had classes for flower-drill, expanders, dumbbell and tambourine drill all going on at the same time.77

Robert Weare, who was both at work and a primary carer for a younger sibling at the age of nine, gave his ‘life and soul’ to SSS teaching in Liverpool in his later years.78 Similarly, the one-time YS editor John Searson recounted starting work on the handloom at the age of ten, and rejoiced that, since becoming Superintendent of the Bridgeton SSS in Glasgow, he had learnt much more than any student.79 Such personal associations give concrete significance to the way in which the SSS movement constructed a protected sphere of childhood. SSSs were an opportunity to provide children with a distinct period of growth and maturation that had been denied to many of the teachers. Giving support to this conviction, the increasingly influential discipline of progressive pedagogy provided the resources for, and credibility of, their approach. Indeed, the SSS interest in, and development of, pedagogy coincided with a broader public interest in pedagogy found in, for instance, Alexander Bain’s 1879 Education as Science, reprinted on numerous occasions throughout the 1880s and 1890s.80 In developing their own version of a child-centred socialist pedagogy, the teachers of the SSS movement drew on a range of resources. First and foremost, they sought guidance from those around them who had already devoted significant attention to children’s ­education, such as Margaret McMillan. SSSs found resonance in McMillan’s assertion of childhood as a particular, and protected, period of unique growth and development.81 McMillan, with her sister Rachel, was already heavily involved in campaigning around children’s education throughout the 1890s, and published a range of texts on children and childhood, including Early Childhood (1900), Education Through the Imagination

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(1904) and Labour and Childhood (1907).82 Regularly contributing to the YS throughout the 1900s and 1910s, McMillan’s views on childhood and education were of significant influence on the SSS movement. As early as 1901, John Bruce Glasier, a prominent ILPer and SSS proponent, reported in the YS on an ILP discussion around McMillan’s paper on the Education of Children, within which ‘frequent reference was made to the Socialist Sunday-Schools’.83 A ­ dditionally, the NCBSSS’s 1925 Notes for Teachers, recommended Margaret M ­ cMillan’s books to teachers to assist in ‘the study of the child’, along with the progressive educationalist A. S. Neil, and Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.84 Connecting these thinkers with socialism, the Hyde SSS organiser George Whitehead reviewed Spencer, Froebel and Marx in his pamphlet on SSS pedagogy and curriculum.85 Expressing commitment to socialist childhood experiences in the ilk of progressive pedagogy, the NCBSSS urged teachers to ‘remember that each child is a unique personality to be developed carefully and not moulded to a preselected pattern’.86 It was also quick to develop pedagogies and curricula that sought to meet the needs of particular periods of children’s growth. Schools were encouraged to separate children into different age groups for lessons so that material could be appropriately related to their prior knowledge. Huddersfield SSS, for example, had separate classes for under-fives, five-to-ten-year-olds, ten-to-twelve-yearolds, twelve-to-fourteen-year-olds, fourteen-to-sixteen-year-olds as well as an adult class.87 Across schools sunbeam groups were established to cater for the youngest children, who were introduced to ‘idea of comradeship’ and ‘community’ through play.88 Sunbeam teachers were encouraged to ‘forget oneself and revel in the child’s delight’, and were reminded that ‘freedom to enjoy and express must be allowed’.89 In an effort to cater for adolescent youth, and to counter the highly successful conservative and militaristic Scout and Girl Guide movements, in 1913 the NCBSSS established the Young Socialist Citizen Crusaders (YSCC).90 It listed eight objectives, including encouraging interest in world peace, nature, an active lifestyle, mutual aid, self-reliance and a disdain for militaristic cultures.91 The YSCC hoped to mimic the broad non-partisan political alliance of SSSs and attempted to extend the organisational principles of the NCBSSS to its remit: The SSS has made it its proud boast that within its folds it has always provided a common rallying ground for all who people in a world of emancipated workers, whose freedom has been achieved by themselves. Let us have a real national Socialist young people’s organisation, with a Socialist international outlook.92

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However, the YSCC never succeeded in attracting large numbers to its cause, and remained a small complement to SSSs. In 1925 the lack of local uptake of YSCC branches prompted a motion to disband it, but general support of its function at the national level meant that the motion was defeated.932 Supporting these age-specific initiatives, general SSS practice also con­­­firmed the importance of childhood through a range of rituals that celebrated each and every child scholar. Writing anonymously in a teachers’ notebook, one SSS teacher describes how even sibling babies of the child scholars are ‘never forgotten’ and are noted in the roll call and have their birthdays remembered.94 Recognising children’s birthdays, noting their absences, observing achievements, creating opportunities for performance, and the tradition of welcoming babies through ‘naming ceremonies’ (as a socialist alternative to christenings) were all seen as encouraging socialist principles through the recognition of childhood. Correspondingly, the NCBSSS took seriously teachers’ role in creating socialist childhoods. In its 1925 Notes for Teachers, the NCBSSS recommends careful selection of teachers and teacher training through demonstration lessons and collegiate support, warning that membership of a SSS ‘does not qualify an adult as a teacher of its children’.95 A manual of 1924 to assist teachers provided a syllabus of age-appropriate lessons and literature.96 For instance, the syllabus for children from eight to ten years of age included lessons on ‘Coal: its formation and mining’, ‘Autumn nature studies’, ‘Forests, woods and its uses’, ‘Factory life’ and ‘Spring: stories from nature’.97 Meanwhile, students aged fourteen to sixteen years might have found themselves learning abnout ‘Charles Darwin and his teachings’, ‘The problem of capital’, ‘Where wealth comes from and where it goes’, and ‘Functions and health of the mind’. In addition, the manual provided teachers with ‘model lessons’ on the topics of private property, common ownership of land and money, complete with stories to illustrate the socialist point of view. Short stories, poems and suggestions for teaching topics were also provided in the YS. Indeed there is an impressive breadth of material covered in the YS: reports from campaigns; brief biographies of historical radical figures in the ‘Socialist Saint’ column; the correspondence with the young readers published on the ‘Children’s Page’; and the many ‘songs of labour’, poems, pictures, cartoons and stories all aimed to create a broad socialist culture and aesthetic. From moral fables intended to promote a socialist ethic, to the soaring prose of socialist songs and poems, and editorial columns that addressed themselves to the ‘dear socialist children’ and ‘the children of the future’,98 the YS incorporated a range of material for SSS teachers to use in their schools.99 F. J. Gould’s

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stories, for instance, regularly appeared in the YS, such as ‘Pages from the Story of Europe’ in which he urged students strive towards ‘mutual respect in the world of the commonwealth’,100 and ‘Science and the Boy’ that urged children to remember the ‘human note’ obscured by a neutral pursuit of scientific knowledge.101 Of course, as these examples from the YS suggest, the SSS expression of progressive or child-centred pedagogy occurred through their unapologetic socialist outlook. Supporting the active construction of childhood, the SSS movement invoked a powerful metaphorical use of children and youth as representative of the regenerative potential of socialism. Eric Hobsbawm has already noted the use of women within socialist iconography as emblems of socialist principles and futures (rather than labouring subjects).102 In much the same way, children were marked as harbingers of socialism. For instance, the imagery of children as moving forward into the light of socialism featured heavily in the YS and SSS birthday and greeting cards, often contributed by such artists as the renowned Walter Crane, and the little-known but prolific work of the SSS teacher F. J. Bourne.103 Indeed, though Crane’s contribution to socialist iconography is well documented, his specific contribution to socialist children’s literature and the SSS movement has largely gone unaccounted. His illustrations often appeared on the pages of the YS, and he designed a number of key images for the SSS movement including the header illustration for the ‘Children’s Page’ in which a woman figure with wings emerges from a tree, shading a happy group of children below. F. J. Bourne’s contribution is even less accounted for. His brief biography pieced together in John Gorman’s Images of Labour offers a brief glimpse into the life of this SSS teacher and organiser, whose illustrations featured prominently in the YS and SSS artefacts, including postcards and birthday cards, as well as F. J. Gould’s Pages for Young Socialists (1913).104 Children were, for many in the wider socialist movement, important parts of a moment that aimed not only for workplace reform, but wholesale reform of social relations. Children’s presence at May Day marches and events, noted in both mainstream and socialist press, assisted to present a sought-after image of socialist politics that extended well beyond the factory floor and to the next generation.105 Take, for example, this description of May Day in 1910 by Alex Gossip in the YS: Big Ben strikes three, the brakes begin the move. They have started and we are privileged to take the lead. With the Socialist Sunday Schools Union banner in the front we followed with our 103 brakes. We pass up Northumberland Avenue through Trafalgar Square. What a sea of faces! As far as the eye can travel it is faces, faces. We cheer, we sing. After passing

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thousands of people who line the route, we at last arrive at Hyde Park and make for our platform, where we have Comrades Gossip, Kahan, Bramley and others to tell us all about May Day at home and abroad. Around our platform are over 2,000 children whose voices sweeten the air as they sing ‘England Arise’, and from the platform can be seen 100,000 people who have helped to celebrate May Day.106

Directly addressing the SSS children, the YS editor of 1912 put it this way: ‘It is upon you, little Comrades, that all our efforts, self-sacrifice, and aspirations are centred. We want you to grow up into strong, bright, intelligent men and women, to carry on the good work which your teachers have begun.’107 Across the SSS movement individual teachers passionately echo this sentiment. For Harry Snell of Huddersfield SSS, for example, children were the hope of the future, and thus teaching them was a cause, he hoped, to which socialists of all persuasions would surely support.108 He remarked that ‘in the work of the Sunday School there is no difference of outlook and to be present at one of our anniversaries where old ILP warriors and BSP critics foregather as comrades should, is as refreshing as a day in the country’. For Snell, it was children who bought socialists together ‘and makes them forget their differences’. Similarly, Mr Priestly of Halifax SSS keenly emphasised in his lessons that ‘the future was entirely in the hands of the children’.109 Interlinking their commitment to socialism with their commitment to child-centred development, SSS teachers took a ‘gentle’ approach to the inculcation of socialist ideals. In 1931, Arthur Booth, a prominent Yorkshire SSS organiser, described it as a desire not to create ‘little … party members, but people who would have a [socialist] principle, and would live up to that principle’.110 Consequently, teachers aimed to ‘gently and naturally … prepare [children] for the understanding and reception of the Socialist ideal in later life’.111 Popular socialist songs sung by the children in their Sunday afternoon school sessions reinforced this notion that the children were being prepared for future socialist work. John Bruce Glasier’s song ‘Here we gather in a ring’, for instance, proclaims, ‘We are children, but some day, We’ll be big and strong and say, None shall slave, and none shall slay, All shall work together.’112 It was on this basis that the non-partisan position of the NCBSSS and the movement more generally, was so important to SSS organisers. Maintaining distance from the sectarian political disputes, SSSs aimed to provide children with the independent space in which to grow and develop their own political positions: It is necessary first and last to think of the children with whom we are dealing. We must … not expect immature minds to understand or to accept conceptions which appeal only to the adult. Definite socialist teaching

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should be the work of the Adult Class, which should, and does, set itself to hammering out, from conflicting proposals, what appears to be the best method of creating a social system based upon justice.113

Nevertheless, in creating their particular socialist-imbued version of pro­­­­­ gressive pedagogy, the SSS movement challenged both Churchbased and state educational practices. As Fred Coats, a member of the Lancashire and Cheshire SSS Union argued in his 1911 YS article, ‘The Teaching of Socialist Children’: Whether we like it or not our children are compelled to attend public elementary schools. While there they are given ‘religious’ lessons which are often opposed to Socialism; they are given history lessons that present distorted or imperfect views of society; in the whole school curriculum there is a bias – intentional or unintentional – in favour of the existing social institutions. In view of these influences are we, because of a theoretical belief in the right of a child to remain unbiased, to allow the child to be biased in every other direction than a Socialist direction. Surely not. In practice, then, we shall and must continue to discuss our socialism with and in the presence of our children … Socialist Sunday School is just an organised extension of the influence for Socialism which must exist in all Socialist homes, and is the means … by which our children shall be educated and trained for active work in the Socialist movement.114

The SSS movement understood their practices as fundamentally honouring the natural development of children, while also providing the tools for critical intellectual capacities – and ultimately the seeds for a socialist outlook: … the majority of our children are affected from infancy by these social problems – poverty and unhealthy environment marring many of their bodies, and robbing them of the bright and happy playtime of life. The sooner, therefore, the young mind begins to grapple with causes and effects of social injustices, the more chance is there of the fully developed adult taking his place in the fight for freedom.115

Thus, alongside emphasising pedagogies that welcome the ‘entire free­­­­dom of debate’,116 there was also explicit confidence that SSSs pro­­­ vided a necessary, justified and correct remedy to capitalist schooling and ideology. This approach was reinforced by a belief in the Marxian principles of scientific evidence, and ultimately, historical materialism. The NCBSSS asserted that SSS teaching was based on a scientific method that included only knowledge that could be ‘tested’ and ‘accredited’.117 Subsequently, it declared that creed and belief ‘falls outside the scope of the work in our schools’.118 Responding to criticisms that the schools were ‘dogmatic’

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the YS editorial in 1917 argued that ‘there are two kinds of dogma, that which relates to the region of unprovable things, and that which is said to do with tangible and understandable things. The dogma that asserts men, women and children, should be fed, clothed, sheltered, and educated is a dogma which any rational person might subscribe to. After all, if you teach at all, you must teach dogma of some kind.’119 And yet the SSS movement was eager to demonstrate that they taught, and did not indoctrinate, unlike the ‘deceitful’ state and religious schools.120 Teachers were therefore encouraged to allow active student participation, open-ended questioning, and to respect children and their contributions.121 Writing to announce the newly established Belfast SSS, school secretary and student Eileen Beattie’s report certainly indicates that, at least for some, a progressive ideal was central to the function of the school: Already we have a social run by ourselves – the scholars; 60 sat down to tea and 60 most thoroughly enjoyed themselves. … What pleases us most, I think, is the trust the teachers put in us, we really and actually carry on the schools ourselves with the exception of the teaching and even there we are encouraged to express exactly what we think. This is not what we have been used to.122

Of course, the extent to which this open-ended teaching was implemented across local schools is less clear; traditional approaches would have undoubtedly remained in many schools. It appears that at least for some the implementation of a more open-ended lesson structure was something that had to be worked at. For instance, Jessie Macmillan, Secretary of Glasgow College SSS, reported in 1919 that ‘the opportunity for asking questions of lesson givers has not been taken advantage of. We hope this will be improved on during the following lesson.’123 At the same time, child-centred pedagogy’s emphasis on universal natural capacity and developmental growth provided assurance for SSS teachers of the possibility for education to transcend dominant notions of (in)capability as locked within class locations. With this as their guiding aim, teachers implemented a wide curriculum, much of which had been unseen in state schools for working-class children: economics, history, geography, social geography, nature, evolution, secular morals, politics, as well as critical analysis, reason and observation were all covered in the NCBSSS syllabus.124 In addition, the YS Children’s Page provided opportunity for children to send in a range of contributions, including poems, school reports, essays and personal reflections. The surviving school minute books of this period are unfortunately brief in their description of SSS lessons, but do offer critical insight into the variety of topics covered in SSSs. For example, the child scholar

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entries in Plaistow SSS state that on 3 February 1924, ‘Comrade Mr Norman told us a story entitled the land of ‘Common Sense’ with the moral that labour is the real wealth’, on 19 May ‘[Mr Mayne] told us about some Nature’s works and showed us the flower called Cuckoo Pint and Wild Drum in order to illustrate his words’, and on 19 August 1925 ‘Miss Praddock our speaker told us a little story dealing with the ‘Capitalist System’ which was both interesting and instructive. Many questions were asked and fully answered.’125 Notebooks of teachers also offer a useful insight into the preparation and content of lessons. One anonymous contribution outlines a lesson on the science of springtime,126 while G. Abbey’s lesson notes on ‘False and True’ aimed to ‘guard against many of the terrible results which follow in the wake of those who are deceived’.127 The SSS pursuit of knowledge and critique extended beyond social analyses, and into the development of cultural skills and experiences. Writing to the YS, George Pollock of Paisley SSS gives a description of a typical SSS celebration: Dear Flora – I now take great pleasure in giving you a description of how we spend Saturday, the 11th February in the ILP Hall. Being the 13th Anniversary of the Sunday School, all the scholars were to have a treat. The fun commenced at 4 o’clock and, the children preceded with a march, which is generally the opening of our At Homes. Then doing my little part, I led off by translating in English the Esperanto letter which appeared in ‘The Young Socialist’. Two songs were then sung. Then we had general fun until tea time, when we received one or two cups of tea, together with a bag of dainties. After tea our games in progress again until six o’clock when we closed the entertainment by singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. I take this opportunity of writing, as my mother is away at the sewing class, which has been got up in aid of our magazine, ‘The Young Socialist’.128

Complementing the curriculum was a range of activities that aimed to broaden children’s life experiences, and ‘waken’ the ‘finer’ emotions through poetry, drama and singing.129 Esperanto was taught as an introduction to the new socialist working-class culture of internationalism. Monthly ‘At Homes’ aimed to engage children in leisure activities (singing, musical performance, dancing) so as to encourage communal attitudes and provide relief from the drudgery of working-class life.130 Rambling and cycling was intended to develop an appreciation of nature denied by crowded city living. And needlecraft, open to both girls and boys as is discussed in chapter 4 and particularly championed by Lizzie Glasier, was introduced because ‘among all the sordidness of the capitalist system we must try to reach out for all that is beautiful’.131

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Children’s socialism and the ‘religion of socialism’ ‘It is said,’ he remarked at last, ‘that we are in the habit of inculcating hatred and class animosity – Boys and Girls. This is not true, Boys and Girls. Our gospel is the gospel of peace and love. If I had been born the son of a duke I don’t doubt I should have the same outlook on life as he has. We don’t hate such people – Boys and Girls – we pity them. For we believe in the brotherhood of man, and we must not forget that even dukes are human beings like ourselves. I ask you, Boys and Girls, in all these months do you ever remember an occasion on which I had attempted to inculcate hatred of class-animosity?’ There was no answer. The Comrades opened their mouths and gaped at each other; but even the baby was silent. Then the invaluable Hettie piped up: ‘No, Comrade, Never!’ The situation was saved. And we rose up and sang in our childish trebles: So on we march to battle, With hearts that grow more strong; Till victory ends our warfare We sternly march along.132

Published in 1923 amid the strong conservative criticism of the socialist movement’s youth sections, this excerpt from A. P. Herbert’s work of fiction Man about Town captures much of the complex moral and political tensions contained within the SSS movement’s emancipatory intent.133 Herbert appears to mock the disjuncture between SSS teaching and socialist rhetoric: between the proclamation of love and justice on the one hand and the support for class struggle on the other. Yet, for the SSS movement, these two pursuits went hand in hand. SSS teachers connected class struggle to the lived experiences of their students through creating counter-cultures of socialism, based on what they understood as the broad underpinning ethical and political principles of socialism. These were counter-publics that sought to exist both independently of, and in challenge to, state education. Like their radical predecessors in the century prior, many turn-of-the-century socialists connected their challenge to state political and economic power to the development of counter-communities and culture.134 Throughout the 1880s and 1890s and into the early twentieth century, not only was the fundamental economic character of capitalism questioned, but through various other movements for change, hegemonic norms surrounding identity, sexuality, marriage, femininity and community were also challenged. This broad radical socialist political milieu had (informal and formal) interconnections with a range of other campaigns including the suffragettes, the Jewish Workers’ Circle, and a small cohort of same-sex partnership supporters led in large part by the SSS advocate Edward Carpenter.135 Additionally, although substantive and far-reaching racism

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within British trade unionism and left politics persisted, there was also notable overlap with the burgeoning field of Pan-African politics (particularly following the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900), as will be explored in chapter 5.136 Such varied political interests were reflected in the different inflections of radical politics and their accompanying (often transient) groupings. Anarchists, suffragettes, Christian socialists, the co-operative movement, Pan-Africans, the Fabian Society, LC, SDF, ILP, BSP, Communist Party (CP) and Socialist Labour Party: all attempted at various times to mark out their own particular orientation. Though this broad radical politic brought with it a range of organisational contestations and interrelationships, it was often the localised operation of these groupings that constituted the foundational experiences of socialism for local men and women. Young’s discussion of the SDF and its branch activities in suburban London, for example, demonstrates how socialists created micro-communities in which to discuss, live and promote their politics within their immediate g­ eographies.137 Beyond involvement in various trade union campaigns and the attendance of party meetings and lectures, socialists therefore developed a range of life practices. The former SSS student Jessie Stephens described this approach in her father as ‘living socialism’ – a dedication to living out as much as possible the principles for which he was also struggling in the public domain.138 For some, this meant taking up alternative lifestyles in conjunction with their radical politics. Upon visiting Edward Carpenter’s farm in 1884, for example, William Morris admired the selfsufficiency and simplicity of Edward’s life in response to the excesses of capitalism.139 Others were inspired in the project of establishing socialist communes, such as Edith Lees (member of the then New Fellowship, later the Fabian Society), who, as described by Carpenter, attempted to create a ‘communistic Utopia’ with her fellow comrades.140 Alternative relationships also appeared in socialist and anarchist circles, challenging traditional conceptions of a monogamous and binding marriage in both the socialist and mainstream communities, and of the gendered roles that follow from this. The most prominent of these was SDF member Edith Lanchester, who was forcefully admitted into a mental hospital by her middle-class family for going to live a life of ‘free love’ with her working-class partner.141 Often meeting in halls provided by the ILP, SDF or BSP, SSSs were informally projected into, and contributed to, this wider socialist network. Beyond their direct educational remit, the existence of the schools assisted to create a broader socialist culture that embraced Sunday as the day for political development. It was not unusual, for example, for visiting weekend speakers ‘to talk to us children in our Socialist

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Sunday School, on Sunday afternoon, as well as addressing the public meeting in the evening’, as recollected by ex-SSS student Jenny Lee.142 In addition, various party newspapers, magazines and campaign information were often available in SSSs, and used by the schools as supplementary material for lessons. Schools were part of vibrant, diverse, political and cultural spaces. In response to a call in the 1950s by the NCBSSS for historical information on the SSS movement, one anonymous letter describes the vibrant broader cultures of socialist activity around the same time as the 1895 opening of the Huddersfield SSS: There used to meet of Saturday night many of the old pioneers like my father, Jimmy Green, Joe Dyson, William Wheatley, Willie Pickles, and many others. They called there doing their shopping. My father played the piano for their dancing. The women ran a buffet at the farther end of the room, where pork pies and cups of tea could be had. Tea and Yorkshire relish was also sold, and the papers The Clarion, Yorkshire Factory Times and the Labour Reader or The Miner. Other commodities were also sold. … I was about four years old during this period, and used to go down with my parents to the Saturday night hops … We used to love sliding down the slippery floor between dances, encouraged by a member called Mr Frith who was very fond of children …143

This interest in building broad communities of socialism also seeped into the SSS movement. SSS teachers turned their attention towards establishing alternative communities and moral codes for their students: they wanted to ‘build up the City of Love in our own hearts, and so by-and-by help to build it up in the world’.144 Translating this into Sunday afternoon educational and cultural activities, teachers aimed to ‘surround the children with the Socialist atmosphere, and imbue them with the Socialist sentiment; to develop the feeling of FELLOWSHIP AND THE COMMONWEAL – the working together, ‘as brothers and sisters’, for the common good’.145 In turn, and demonstrating the influence of the ethical movement, children were encouraged to express their commitment to socialism through their daily lives. The first official NCBSSS birthday card, for example, asks its recipients: There are little words of kindness that only you can say, And little deeds set in between the bounds of each short day There are little fights and victories that only you can win And childhood’s passing oh-so-fast, had you better not begin?146

SSS scholars were therefore expected to represent socialist morality in their actions and deeds, in much the same way that members of the Scouts and Girl Guides were expected to perform their moral C ­ hristian

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duties. This was a socialism moving seamlessly between the notion of a socialist ethic that established cultural codes for personal and community relationships, the creative imagery of a socialist future, and the support for existing working-class socialist activism. The concern of the SSS movement to develop a socialist morality for everyday life, led teachers to draw upon – and develop – utopian images of future socialist society. The songs, stories and poetry used and created by the SSS movement were imbued with buoyant visions of a possible socialist future. Take for example this verse from ‘May Day Song’, sung at the Halifax SSS in 1914: Send abroad the proclamation Over land, and stream, and sea, Peace and love to every nation, Greetings of fraternity. Hope triumphant, hovers o’er us, B’ds us forward, one and all, As we swell the mighty chorus Of the International.147

The imagery of such songs clearly references a religiosity also present in the wider culture of SSSs. In addition to socialist hymns and the ten socialist commandments, the YS also ran a regular series on historical figures of note called ‘Socialist Saints’, and schools incorporated a range of church-like cultural functions, including ‘naming ceremonies’ and socialist marriage services.148 To be sure, drawing Christian socialists into its ranks, the SSS move­­­ ment pro­­­vided an opportunity for some teachers to unite unambiguously their religious convictions to socialist politics. A number of Christian socialists were also SSS supporters, such as Margaret Bondfield,149 and celebrated figures, such as Charles Kingsley, featured as YS ‘Socialist Saints’.150 And yet this union was not one that unequivocally reiterated Christianity through the lens of socialism. Rather, for many, Christianity and church culture formed a basis from which to create a kind of socialism that could reach beyond economic concerns and into the moral and ethical domain of everyday life. With the SDF’s move to place religion on the ‘periphery’ of socialism,151 it was the ILP that appeared to have the most political synergies with the SSS movement. Indeed, from this ‘famously chapel-bred’ party came many of the SSS movement’s most ardent organisers and supporters:152 Archie McArthur, Keir Hardie, Lizzie Glasier, Caroline Martyn and Margaret McMillan were all card-carrying ILP members. For these, and many other SSS teachers, their rejection of atheism reflected a fervent belief in the necessity for socialist morality built upon selected Christian principles.

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This was, unsurprisingly, expressed multifariously. F. J. Gould found purpose in developing alternative moral codes outside religious dogma. Others were less apologetic for their overt use of religious tropes, such as the prominent SSS organiser Lizzie Glasier. Defending SSS practice in reply to Sunday school teachers in 1907, she writes, ‘Socialism … is a Faith – a faith based on Divine brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity – irrespective of class, colour, or creed. It is a Religion – a religion greater than creeds of dogmas.’153 Similarly, Philip Snowden, also a committed ILP member, was keen to ensure that the NCBSSS maintained a clear aversion to atheism. Writing to Fred Coats, NCBSSS secretary in 1911, he asked Fred to help settle a matter with a fellow MP by formally refuting ‘the statement that our schools teach atheism’.154 In part, this apparent religiosity of the SSS movement must be understood as part of the wider ‘religion of socialism’ political cultures.155 The concern for socialism to transform the moral and economic character of capitalism, and the pervasive influence of church culture in turn-ofthe-century Britain, resulted in a complex intertwinement of socialism and religion. For many, socialism became an entire way of life, of being in the world with others. Men and women ‘converted’ to socialism, holistically replacing their Christian worldviews with the socialist alternative.156 SSS teachers speak of such ‘conversions’ as significant and total shifts in faith, often prompted by initial exposure to radical ideas through Christian circles.157 For instance, in recounting his introduction to socialism the SSS teacher Alfred Russell speaks of at first joining the ‘Christian Socialist League’ in 1894 and admits that his ‘views of religious matters have vitally altered since then’.158 For Agnes Dollan joining the Glasgow SSS signified the rejection of ‘her staunch Protestant upbringing’. Demonstrating her ‘conversion’, in later years she successfully campaigned for her son to be the first student at his mainstream school to be exempted from religious instruction.159 The notion of conversion, however, can unnecessarily simplify the persistence of religious tropes in this period. The need for socialism to provide a comprehensive moral and political alternative was also related to the highly volatile political context. Social and cultural activities, such as SSSs, cycling and rambling clubs, were often a way to protect against the conflict and criticism in families, friendship circles and wider communities when turning to socialism.160 Robert Tressell describes the public disdain towards socialism in the political novel Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: One Sunday morning towards the end of July, a band of about twentyfive men and women on bicycles invaded the town …. [with] a small flag of crimson silk with ‘International Brotherhood and Peace’ in gold letters

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… The strangers distributed leaflets to all those who would take them, and they went through a lot of the side streets, putting leaflets under the doors and in letter-boxes … Meantime the news of their arrival had spread and as they returned through the town they were greeted with jeers and booing. Presently someone threw a stone, and as there happened to be plenty of stones just there several others followed suit and began running after the retreating cyclists, throwing stones, hooting and cursing.161

Experiences of community isolation and agitation certainly created the need for socialists to create their own communities of solidarity, and to be resolute in their political commitments. This was true too for SSS teachers and students. Ex-SSS students speak of violent attacks, community ostracism and employer bullying in response to their commitment to both socialism and women’s rights.162 In this context the cultural spaces opened by informal and formal radical political organisations, including SSSs, created places of retreat and political affirmation. For example, the ex-SSS student Connie Lewcock recounts: We used to go over to Chockwell on May Day and the SSS, and we’d catch the train and walk so far and then catch the train back. We used to go there regularly because I was fed up with the boss of the school that I was at. He tormented me all the time. When I left to become a trade union organiser at my leaving do he said, ‘You are a heathen born teacher and a blooming little idiot’ … So we used to get away … to the SSS … We liked that.163

Moreover, parents and students had complex orientations towards religion and socialism. Jessie Stephens recalls that she went to the local religious Sunday school ‘because my mother wouldn’t have liked us to do any different’, and to the SSS because ‘Dad wanted us to go’. She explains that ‘He wasn’t against us going to the religious Sunday School but he wanted us to have something to set off against it’.164 Indeed, the SSS movement was by no means exclusively populated by those of the ‘religion of socialism’ ilk. As Reid explores, internal divisions and debates over the tendency to rely upon religious culture were common.165 This particularly centred on the songs sung in SSS, many of which were borrowed directly from church music with only slight changes to the wording. In 1910, for example, Alfred Russell formally moved to alter any songs that contained the word ‘God’, but was defeated.166 Two years later, in his review of the new NCBSSS Tune Book, Edgar L. Bainton voiced similar dissent over the use of Christian church music for a socialist organisation.167 Criticisms also emerged at the 1913 National Conference over the use of the term ‘commandment’, and by 62 votes to 42 the commandments were amended to the ‘ten

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socialist precepts’.168 In addition, the 1914 NCBSSS Annual Conference amended the constitution from ‘Teaching shall be ethical and character forming emphasising the social sanction for morals’ to ‘Due attention being paid to the ethical and economic aspects’.169 Debates continued on into the 1920s, with SSS organiser Alyestone moving (unsuccessfully) what can only be interpreted as a deliberately provocative motion in the 1928 Annual Conference – ‘Resolve that the term “non-theological” be carefully defined; that the words “non-religious” be substituted if this is intended to be conveyed; that SSS teachers may give religious instruction of a non-theological character, if the present wording of the constitution be remained’.170 Conclusion Developing its practices within ardent turn-of-the-century socialist com­­­ munities, the SSS movement attempted to create an inclusive non-partisan socialist children’s education and culture. Emerging among other socialist children’s programmes, and a broader political interest in working-class childhood, SSSs managed to capture the support of a range of socialists to become the most predominant and long-lasting socialist children’s initiative. Slowly building over the turn of the century, the spread of SSSs across the UK eventually led to the establishment of a range of institutional and cultural apparatuses, such as a monthly magazine, the YS, in 1901, and a national organisation, the NCBSSS, in 1909. Resolutely non-partisan, and therefore constitutively diverse, the SSS movement incorporated a range of socialists from distinctive political persuasions. In addition, their ambiguous position on religion assisted to welcome men and women whose commitment to socialism remained tied to their Christianity. Borrowing from the dominant religious cultures, the schools reiterated a range of familiar church rituals while creating alternative spaces of socialist culture and politics. The schools’ practices, however, demonstrate a much wider educational concern. Challenging presumptions of working-class ignorance and incapability, schools introduced students to a diverse and politically imbued curriculum. Informed by many of the working-class SSS teachers’ personal experiences of childhood work, SSSs aimed to provide a genuine experience of childhood that respected children’s process of maturation. In the endeavour to protect childhood at the same time as expounding socialism, SSS counter-publics focused attention on developing children’s wider commitment to socialism as an ethical and political code. Attempting to express a socialism that bridged ethics and economics, SSSs encouraged children to practise the ideals of socialism

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within their personal relationships, and to imagine a future adult life characterised by socialist working-class activism. The following chapter explores the relationship between SSS educational practice and the wider political domain in more detail, and the ways in which gender, race and class informed this practice. Notes   1 LHASC, SSS/5, pamphlet of the Huddersfield SSS 14th Anniversary Services, ‘Forward, children, forward’, collection hymn, 24 April 1910. (Please note that the LHASC SSS collections are uncatalogued, and thus numbers quoted for this collection refer to the archive box number.)   2 M. Chase, Chartism: A New History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 358–60; J. F. C. Harrison (ed.), Society and Politics in England, 1780–1960: A Selection of Readings and Comments (New York: Harper and Row, 1965).  3 Marx himself was unhappy with England for All, writing to Hyndman to convey his displeasure about the chapters on labour and capital, and soon after cutting ties with him. See C. Tsuzuki, ‘Introduction’, in H. M. Hyndman, England for All: The Text Book of Democracy (Sussex: Harvester Press. 1973), pp. vii–xxxii.   4 M. Crick, The History of the Social-Democratic Federation (Keele: Ryburn Publishing/Keele University Press, 1994); S. Yeo, ‘A new life: the religion of socialism in Britain 1883–1896’, History Workshop Journal, 4 (1977), 5–56.   5 K. Laybourne and J. Reynolds, Liberalism and the Rise of Labour 1890– 1918 (London: Croom Helm, 1984); J. R. Moore, ‘Progressive Pioneers: Manchester liberalism, the Independent Labour Party, and Local Politics in the 1890s’, The Historical Journal, 44:4 (2001), 989–1013.  6 Manton, Socialism and Education.  7 Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, p. 24.   8 E.g. Crick, The History of the Social-Democratic Federation.  9 Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, p. 39. 10 S. Pierson, Marxism and the Origins of British Socialism: The Struggle for a New Consciousness (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1973). 11 S. Pierson, British Socialists: The Journey from Fantasy to Politics (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979). 12 Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain, p. 62. 13 R. Samuel, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain, Theatres of Memory, Volume II (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 302–4. 14 K. Manton, ‘“Filling bellies and brains”: the educational and political thought of Frederick James Gould’, History of Education, 30:3 (2001), 273–90; A. Davin, ‘Imperialism and Motherhood’, History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978), 9–65; M. McMillan, What the Open-Air Nursery School Is (London: Joint Labour Publications Department, 1923).

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15 LHASC, CP/IND/MISC/1/1, unpublished autobiography, M. Jenkins, A Prelude to Better Days, n.d., p. 15. 16 LHASC, CP/YOUTH/05/06, Young Communist International (YCI) pamphlet distributed in Britain, The Child of the Worker: A Collection of Facts and the Remedy (YCI, 1923). 17 J. Foster, ‘Strike action and working-class politics on Clydeside 1914–19’, International Review of Social History, 35:1 (1990), 33–70, p. 64. 18 W. W. Young, Robert Weare of Bristol, Liverpool & Wallasey 1858–1920: An Appreciation, and Four of His Essays (Manchester: C.W.S. Publishing Works, 1921), p. 42. 19 Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain; J. Martin, Making Socialists: Mary Bridges Adams and the Fight for Knowledge and Power, 1855–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010); Manton, Socialism and Education in Britain. 20 See also Moore, ‘Progressive pioneers’; C. Sumpter, ‘Joining the “crusade against the giants”: Keir Hardie’s fairy tales and the socialist child reader’, Literature and History, 15:2 (2006), 34–49; G. Fidler, ‘The work of Joseph and Eleanor Edwards’, International Review of Social History, 24:3 (1979), 293–319. 21 E. Royle, Radicals, Secularists and Republicans: Popular Freethought in Britain, 1866–1915 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), pp. 320–2. 22 Royle, Radicals, Secularists and Republicans, pp. 320–28; see G. Spiller, The Ethical Movement in Great Britain: A Documentary History (London: Author, 1934), p. 14. 23 Spiller, The Ethical Movement in Great Britain; S. Wright, ‘‘‘There is something universal in our movement which appears not only to one country but to all’: international communication and moral education, 1892–1914’, History of Education, 37:6 (2008), 807–24. 24 Wright, ‘‘‘There is something universal in our movement”’. 25 Wright, ‘‘‘There is something universal in our movement”’. 26 A. J. Waldegrave, A Teacher’s Hand-Book of Moral Lessons (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1905), p. ii. 27 Waldegrave, A Teacher’s Hand-Book, p. ii. See also F. J. Gould, ‘Children’s Ethical Classes’, International Journal of Ethics, 11:2 (1901), 214–26. 28 R. Berard, ‘Frederick James Gould and the transformation of moral education’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 35:3 (1987), 233–47. 29 Berard, ‘Frederick James Gould’. 30 Manton, ‘Filling bellies and brains’; see Gould, ‘Children’s ethical classes’; LHASC, SSS/4, F. J. Gould, Sunday Schools: How to Form and Conduct Them in Connection with Socialist Churches, Ethical Societies etc. (Brad­­­ ford: Socialist Church Union, 1910). 31 ‘Portrait Gallery: F. J. Gould’, YS (April 1912), p. 86. 32 The JML holds photographs of young people’s camps and Sunday schools in the late 1920s connected to the Jewish-led working-class organisation, Workers’ Circle: JML, 1241.10; 33.12; 1241.11.

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33 M. Thomas, ‘“No-one telling us what to do”: anarchist schools in Britain, 1890–1916’, Historical Research, 77:197 (2004), 405–36; Shotton, No Master High or Low. 34 Y. Kapp, Eleanor Marx, Vol. 2: The Crowded Years 1884–1898 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976), p. 517. 35 J. Gorman, Images of Labour (London: Scorpion Publishing, 1985), p. 67; Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday schools in Britain’. 36 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (February 1906), p. 17. 37 See M. Bevir, ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891–1902’, Journal of British Studies, 38:2 (1999), 217–45; Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, p. 51. 38 Sumpter, ‘Joining the “crusade against the giants”; Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain’. 39 Clarion (19 January 1901). 40 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (April 1903), pp. 1–2 41 LHASC, SSS/4, handwritten note, Alf Blackburn, ‘How I found Mary Gray’, 1952. 42 SPGB, Mary Gray, handwritten note, ‘Battersea Socialist Sunday School’, n.d.; see also ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (April 1903), pp. 1–2. 43 SPGB, Mary Gray, ‘Battersea Socialist Sunday School’, n.d. 44 Young, Robert Weare of Bristol, Liverpool & Wallasey. The Clarion regu­­ larly reported joint activities of SSS and Cinderella Clubs, e.g. 12 January 1901. 45 Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class, pp. 174–7. 46 Fidler, ‘The work of Joseph and Eleanor Edwards’. 47 Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain’. 48 S. Harrison, Alex Gossip (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1962). 49 YS (February 1906), p. 19. 50 L. Glasier, Socialist Sunday Schools: A Reply to the Sabbath School Teachers’ Magazine (Glasgow: Glasgow and District Socialist Sunday School Union, 1907), pp. 19–20. 51 YS (March 1916), p. 48. Later in 1921 Ireland is included as one of the regional unions which suggests a sustained presence: LHASC, SSS/17, National Council of British Socialist Sunday School (NCBSSS) 1921 Annual Conference minutes. 52 YS (January 1901), p. 1. 53 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1909 Annual Conference minutes. 54 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools: A Manual (Gateshead: NCBSSS, 1924); LHASC, SSS/7, Jim Simmons, ‘Brief Notes on the History of the Socialist Sunday School Movement’, n.d. 55 LHASC, SSS/7, see Jim Simmons, ‘Brief Notes on the History of the Socialist Sunday School Movement’, n.d. 56 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools. 57 LHASC, SSS/5, NCBSSS membership cards. 58 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1909 Annual Conference minutes. 59 E.g. Greetings were sent from the NCBSS to the ILP at their Easter Conferences: The Times (9 April 1908), p. 6; The Times (30 March 1910), p. 10; The SDF

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passed a motion in support of SSSs: The Times (12 April 1909), p. 8. 61 LHASC, SSS/7, correspondence to NCBSSS Secretary, Mrs Scarlett, 7 Sept­­ ember 1954. 62 YS (September 1911), p. 1015. 63 YS (February 1910), ‘Editorial’, pp. 636–7. 64 E.g. LHASC, SSS/2, Yorkshire Socialist Sunday School Union minute-book, 18 May, 1912; LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1923 Annual Conference minutes. 65 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS National Executive meeting minute-book, 4 July 1926. 66 LHASC, SSS/7, no author, ‘Notes in connection with the Bradford Socialist Sunday School movement’, n.d.; LHASC, SSS/7, correspondence to NCBSS Secretary, Mrs Scarlett, 7 September 1954. 67 G. Bridgeland, ‘The story of a Socialist Sunday School banner’, North West Labour History, 32 (2007–8), 64–7. 68 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS Unions Minutes of Proceedings book, 23–24 March 1913. 69 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS Unions Minutes of Proceedings book, 15–16 May 1921. 70 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1930 National Log Book. 71 The number of 153 known schools is also cited in NCBSSS material. See Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday School in Britain’. 72 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1922 Annual Conference minutes; SSS/7, NCBSSS 1923 Annual Conference, Secretary’s Report. 73 E.g. LHASC, SSS/7, Report of the Executive Committee to the 1930, 1935, 1960 and 1961 Annual Conferences; Jim Simmons, ‘Brief notes on the history of the Socialist Sunday School Movement’. 74 LHASC, SSS/7, Press statement regarding name change, ‘Socialist Fellowship’, 1961 Executive Report. 75 LHASC, SSS/10, Christmas bookmark. 76 See J. Martin, ‘Gender, the city and the politics of schooling: towards a collective biography of women “doing good” as public moralists in Victorian London’, Gender and Education, 17:2 (2005), 143–63; C. Steedman, ‘“The mother made conscious”: the historical development of a primary school pedagogy’, History Workshop Journal, 20 (1985), 149–63; Cowman, Mrs Brown; Martin and Goodman, Women and Education, 1880–1980; J.  Martin, Women and the Politics of Schooling in Victorian and Edwardian England (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 1999). 77 YS (May 1903), p. 1. 78 Young, Robert Weare of Bristol, Liverpool & Wallasey. 79 YS (November 1903), p. 1. 80 B. Simon, ‘Why no pedagogy in England?’, in B. Moon and A. Shelton Mayes (eds), Teaching and Learning in the Secondary School (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 10–22; see also Steedman, ‘“The mother made conscious”’. 81 A. Greenwood, All Children Are Mine: Inaugural Margaret McMillan Lect­­ ure (London: University of London Press, 1952); Steedman, ‘“The mother made conscious”’; M. McMillan, ‘A Calendar of Socialist Saints: I Mazzini’,

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YS (June 1909), pp. 484–5. 82 Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class, p. 189. 83 YS (April 1901), p 4. 84 LHASC, SSS/13, NCBSSS, Notes for Teachers, n.d., p. 19. 85 LHASC, SSS/4, pamphlet, ‘Education in Socialist Sunday Schools’, issued by the Hyde Socialist Sunday School, n.d. 86 LHASC, SSS/13, NCBSSS, Notes for Teachers, n.d. 87 LHASC, SSS/2, Huddersfield SSS minute-book, 1 February 1906. 88 LHASC, SSS/13, NCBSSS Education Bureau, ‘Hints to Sunbeam Teachers’, n.d., p. 1. 89 LHASC, SSS/13, NCBSSS Education Bureau, ‘Hints to Sunbeam Teachers’, n.d., p. 1. 90 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS Annual Conference minute-book, 1913. The YSCC Constitution was passed at the NCBSSS 1913 Annual Conference, but a regular YSCC page appears before this in the YS in 1912 under the name Young Socialist Citizen Corps. 91 LHASC, SSS/7, NCBSSS, The Young Socialist Crusaders: Aims, Objects and Method of Organisation (Glasgow: NCBSSS, 1920); SSS/16, NCBSSS 1913 Annual Conference minute-book, YSCC Constitution. 92 LHASC, SSS/7, NCBSSS, The Young Socialist Crusaders. 93 LHASC, SSS/16, 1925 Annual Conference minutes. 94 LHASC, SSS/2, ‘MS’, Anonymous teachers notebook, n.d. 95 LHASC, JSM/SU/I, NCBSSS (compiled by Mrs C. M. Smillie), Notes for Teachers (Gateshead: NCBSSS, 1925), pp. 4–5. 96 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools: A Manual, pp. 53–9. Anna Vaninskaya’s recent examination of SSS literature in ‘It was a silly system: writers and schools, 1870–1939’ offers a valuable contribution to the understanding of the literature devices used and developed in SSSs: Modern Language Review, 105 (2010), 952–75, as well as Sumpter’s ‘Joining the “crusade against the giants”; see Tager, ‘A radical culture for children of the working class’, for an account of the US SSS literature. 97 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools: A Manual. 98 ‘Editorial’, YS (January 1910), p. 616. 99 Vaninskaya makes the point that the schools ‘picked from the oeuvre of well-known poets – from Shelley to Swinburne and Morris’ as well as an impressive range of existing fictional authorship, ‘It was a silly system’, pp. 967–72. 100 YS (January 1923), pp. 6–7. 101 YS (October 1910), pp. 800–1. 102 E. Hobsbawm, ‘Man and woman: images on the left’ in Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz (London: Abacus, 1998), pp. 125–49. More recently Ruth Livesey’s examination of socialist aesthetics provides compelling insight into the influence of aestheticism on socialist cultures, in Socialism, Sex, and the Culture of Aestheticism in Britain, 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 103 See, e.g., W. Crane, Cartoons for the Cause: Designs and Verses for the

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Socialist and Labour Movement, 1886–1896 (London: Twentieth Century Press/Journeyman Press & Marx Memorial Library, 1896/1976); H. Stalker, From Toy Books to Bloody Sunday: Tales from the Walter Crane Archive (Manchester: Whitworth Art Gallery, 2009). 104 Gorman, Images of Labour, pp. 23–4. 105 ‘‘The Lost Paradise’ – Labour Day’, The Times (2 May 1902), p. 9; ‘Labour demonstration in Hyde Park’, The Times (2 May 1906), p. 8; ‘May Day in London’, The Times (3 May 1909), p. 8; ‘What May Day Saw in London’, The Times (2 May 1910), p. 6; ‘Celebrations in London’, The Time (2 May 1912); ‘Labour and State of Bulgaria: May Day Demonstration at Legation’, The Times (2 May, 1925), p. 7; ‘May Day Scenes’, The Daily Graphic (2 May 1924), p. 2; ‘To the Children of the Socialist Sunday Schools: May Day Message’, YS (May 1909), p. 458; A. Arkell, ‘What London Saw on May Day’, YS (June 1910), p. 721. 106 In Harrison, Alex Gossip, p. 16. 107 ‘Editorial’, YS (January 1912), p. 11. 108 Harry Snell, ‘The Huddersfield Anniversary’, YS (June 1914), p. 125. 109 LHASC, SSS/1, Halifax SSS minute-book, Sunday, 5 September 1920. 110 LHASC, SSS/2, transcription of Arthur Booth’s lecture to the Yorkshire SSS Union’s Annual Conference, Yorkshire SSS Union minute-book, 24 January 1931. 111 Tyneside and District SSS Union, ‘The Socialist Sunday School Makes its Appeal to All Socialists’ (pamphlet, February 1912): LHA/SSS/5. 112 LHASC, SSS/5, John Bruce Glasier, ‘Here we gather in a ring’, in Great Horton Socialist Sunday School Song Sheet. Jenny Lee remembers this particular song in recollecting her SSS experience in My Life with Nye (London: Penguin Books, 1980), p. 29. 113 LHASC, SSS/13, pamphlet, ‘Some suggestions for Socialist Sunday School teaching’, reprinted from The Worker by The Workers Press, Huddersfield, 18 October 1919. 114 Fred Coates, ‘The Teaching of Socialism of Children’, YS (December 1911), pp. 1076–7. 115 LHASC, JSM/SU/1, NCBSSS, Notes for Teachers (1925), p. 28. 116 LHASC, SSS/13, pamphlet, Dora Walford, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools. Their aims, value and future’, reprinted from the Worker, Huddersfield (29 February 1908). 117 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools, pp. 13–15. 118 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools, pp. 13–15. 119 YS (December 1917), p. 134. 120 LHASC, SSS/13, NCBSSS, Notes for Teachers; A. Russell, ‘The social teaching of children’, in J. Edwards (ed.), The Labour Annual 1900 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1971), p. 141. 121 LHASC, SSS/13, ‘Preparing a lesson’, n.d. 122 YS (March 1916), p. 48. 123 ML, GC/335/COL, College SSS Secretary’s Annual Report, 1918–19. 124 LHASC, JSM/SU/1, NCBSSS, Notes for Teachers (1925).

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125 LHASC, SSS/19, Plaistow SSS minute-book 126 LHASC, SSS/2, anonymous teacher’s notebook, n.d. 127 LHASC, SSS/2, G. Abbey’s notebook, n.d. 128 YS (April 1911), p. 929. 129 LHASC, JSM/SU/1, NCBSSS, Notes for Teachers (1925). 130 Frances Knighton, ‘What Is Taught’, New Leader (8 July 1932), p. 11. 131 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools, p. 115. 132 A. P. Herbert, The Man about Town (London: William Heinemann, 1923), p. 106. 133 In a letter to The Times A. P. Herbert suggested that the best way to defeat the ‘propaganda of the fanatical Socialist’ was to publish it as ‘humorous matter’: ‘More Rhymes of the ‘Revolution’: From the Clydeside’, The Times (17 January 1927), p. 9. 134 See C. Calhoun, ‘‘New social movements’ of the early nineteenth century’, Social Science History, 17:3 (1993), 385–427. 135 E.g. J. Purvis, ‘Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960), suffragette, political activist and writer’, Gender and Education, 20:1 (2008), 81–7; Hunt, Equi­vocal Feminists; Cowman, Mrs Brown; S. Rowbotham, Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love (London: Verso, 2008); M. Cook, ‘“A new city of friends”’: London and homosexuality in the 1890s’, History Workshop Journal, 56 (2003), 34–58. 136 See P. Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London and Sydney: Pluto Press, 1984); H. Adi, ‘Forgotten comrade? Desmond Buckle: an African communist in Britain’, Science and Society, 70:1 (2006), 22–45. 137 D. M. Young, ‘Socialism and suburbia: a topography of activism in London before the First World War’, paper presented at the ‘New Socialist Approaches to History’ seminar, Institute of Historical Research (12 March 2005). 138 WL, 8SUF/B/157, Brian Harrison oral history recordings with suffragettes. 139 J. B. Glasier, William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1921), p. 145. 140 E. Carpenter, My Days and Dreams: Being Autobiographical Notes (London: Allen & Unwin, 1916), p. 225. 141 Lanchester was released after persistent campaigning of her partner, friends and comrades: see Justice (2 November 1895), p. 1; Hunt, Equi­vocal Feminists; SPGB/Mary Gray, SDF resolution of support; see also G. Frost, ‘“Love is always free”: anarchism, free unions and utopianism in Edwardian England’, Anarchist Studies, 17:1 (2009), 73–94. 142 J. Lee, My Life with Nye (London: Penguin Books, 1980), p. 29. The Labour MP Ben Turner recollected in 1930 that ‘Many years ago there were Socialist Sunday Schools in Yorkshire, more than there are to-day, and oft-times they have invited me to address them at the anniversary services’: B. Turner, About Myself 1868–1930 (London: Humphry, Toulmin, 1930), p. 239. 143 LHASC, SSS/7, NCBSSS correspondence, author unknown, 1952. 144 Uncle Archie, ‘Programme for Young Socialists’, YS (February 1901), p. 1

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145 LHASC, SSS/5, pamphlet, ‘The Socialist Sunday School Makes its Appeal to All Socialists’, The Tyneside and District SSS Union, 1912 (original emphasis). 146 D. D. Hopkinson, ‘A Reverie’, YS (September 1910), p. 786. 147 LHASC, SSS/5, Halifax SSS Whitsuntide Hymns, 1914. 148 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools. 149 M. Bondfield, A Life’s Work (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1948); letter to the ‘Children’s Page’ from Jenny Gray, aged twelve, of the Huddersfield SSS mentions Margaret Bondfield coming to give a guest lesson, YS (April 1909), p. 449. 150 YS (February 1911), p. 879. 151 Crick, The History of the Social-Democratic Federation, p. 229. 152 Samuel, Island Stories, p. 308. 153 Glasier, Socialist Sunday Schools, p. 7; LHASC, SSS/5, A. Hood of the Patrick Branch of the ILP makes a similar case in his defence of SSSs in the pamphlet, ‘Are Socialist Sunday Schools anti-Christian? A challenge and an invitation to the Rev. Dr. McMillan and a reply to his travesty of truth’. 154 LHASC, SSS/16, Fred Coats’ secretary’s diary, 16 July 1911. 155 Yeo, ‘The religion of socialism’; Samuel, Island Stories; A. Vaninskaya, ‘The bugle of justice: the romantic socialism of William Morris and George Orwell, Contemporary Justice Review, 8:1 (2005), 7–23. 156 Yeo, ‘A new life’. 157 E.g. Alice Eccles, secretary of Blackburn SSS, YS (December 1911), pp. 1078–9. 158 Alfred Russell, Glasgow College SSS, YS (August 1903), p. 1. 159 W. Knox (ed.), Scottish Labour Leaders 1918–39: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1984), p. 89. 160 Yeo, ‘A new life’, p. 37. 161 R. Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (London: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 536–7. 162 Jessie Stephens, for example, recalled at the age of seventeen in 1910 being a member of a working women’s deputation to Parliament which was broken up forcefully and violently by ‘bully boys’ from the Daily Mail while the police stood by: WL, 8SUF/B/157, oral history interview with Brian Harrison. 163 WL, 8SUF/B/146, oral history interview with Brian Harrison. 164 WL, 8SUF/B/157(a), oral history interview with Brian Harrison; see also Fisher, Band of Little Comrades. 165 Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain’ 166 LHASC, SSS/16. 167 Edgar L. Bainton, ‘The Socialist Sunday School Tune Book: A Review’, YS (May 1912), p. 88. 168 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1930 National Log Book; see also Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain’. 169 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1913 Annual Conference minute-books, 1914. 170 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1928 Annual Conference minute-book.

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4

‘For the workers’ battles are our battles’: challenges and critiques, internationalism and women’s work

1

Over the period 1892–1930 the SSS movement claimed its presence within both the socialist and wider politic. Existing somewhat independently of the socialist movement, and in contestation to the state’s educational apparatuses, SSSs formed a counter-public through and in their claim that children’s education was politically important. This chapter examines the ways in which SSSs did this through defending their purpose against both comradely and conservative criticism alike. Outlining how SSSs negotiated the wider political field, and articulated their own political purpose, I explore the ways in which diverse SSS teachers attempted to express a universal humanity for their students, imbued with understandings of class, gender and race. First, I examine the contested position of the SSS movement within the broader radical political milieu, including the challenges wrought by the emergence of the CP. Following on from this, second, I explore the wider political contestations that surrounded the SSS movement as conservative and religious pundits intervened into their practice. Third, closely examining the SSS movement’s articulated purpose, I consider the SSS movement’s expression of a universal working-class humanity, looking in particular at the complex universalising discourses of nature and internationalism in class politics, and the ways in which this both references, and obscures, fragmentation and difference in working-class experience. Fourth, through examining SSS curricula and literature as well as the personal experiences of teachers and students, the final section focuses attention on the gendered nature of SSS work. Critics and ambivalences from the ranks: SSSs and the left Maintaining and asserting autonomy from the adult socialist movement was a primary organisational feature of the SSS movement. Unsurprisingly, this was a complicated undertaking. The localised nature of the movement, and its dependence on the interest and commitment of local

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socialists, meant that SSSs were often informally linked to particular political organisations. Throughout the early twentieth century the NCBSSS encouraged schools to ensure that no formal associations were made with particular socialist parties. As early as September 1901, Archie McArthur reprimanded the Edinburgh SSS, which had described itself in a YS school report as being ‘under the control of ILP’ owing to ‘Grieve being Superintendent’.2 In response, McArthur wrote in September, ‘I hope my comrades will not be displeased if I take leave to say that I think the phrase “ILP” is not wise. We ought to guard against any tendency to sectarianism in the children’s movement.’3 Undoubtedly, McArthur’s sentiment won out. Though occasional reference was made to SDF, BSP and ILP SSSs in the first years of the twentieth century, these thinned out considerably by the second decade as schools increasingly embraced a non-partisan independent stance. Huddersfield SSS, for example, officially ‘severed’ ties with the Huddersfield ILP in early 1912 in an effort to assert itself as the primary non-partisan children’s socialist initiative in the area.4 The Memorandum of Agreement between the two organisations set out the provisions for the SSSs weekly use of ILP rooms, excepting May Day or when an election or strike was pending, and ‘complete autonomy’ for the school.5 Laid out officially in the Aims, Objects and Organisation of Socialist Sunday Schools, the NCBSSS makes clear the SSS movement’s independence and non-partisanship, declaring ‘we are connected with no section of the Adult movement because we have, and wish to have … the children of parents who are themselves members of various sections of the movement’.6 Emphasising that the movement did not ‘show any partisanship towards any section’, the NCBSSS went on to boast having ‘children whose parents are in the Labour Party, the Communist Party, the Co-operative Movement or the I.L.P’. Dedicated to their non-partisan position, SSSs endeavoured to be free of the bitter disputes that often characterised adult party politics by expressing a general commitment to socialism to which – it was hoped – all could subscribe. Despite this, the SSS movement struggled to convince socialist comrades of the need to participate in, and organise, its schools. While the movement was proud of its associations with diverse sections of the socialist politic, commitment to SSSs was by no means widespread. The exchanging of conference greetings between the NCBSSS, ILP and SDF, for example, did not necessarily translate into on-the-ground support and participation by ILP and SDF members. Even Mary Gray struggled to convince her SDF comrades to support the opening of the very first SSS in 1892.7 Such indifference and lack of interest came as a genuine surprise to

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SSS teachers, and was a constant source of frustration, particularly as support began to wane in the mid-1920s.8 As early as 1917, in a clear effort to rally socialist comrades to take up the cause of children’s socialism, every YS cover carried the statement: It is for the Socialist Democracy to safeguard the ideas and secure the future allegiance of its young people. Thousands of children of Socialist and Labour parents are being taught in ordinary schools and Sunday schools to ‘think imperially’. A great number of earnest Socialist who themselves devote all their leisure time to spreading the Socialist light among adults, thoughtlessly allow their children to imbibe doctrines that will some day have to undergo the painful task of readjustment.

Writing to the National Secretary on 13 May 1931, B. Buddell of the Larkall SSS references the common frustration: ‘We now have nearly 100 children, but you know our drawback – very few adults are interested.’9 In response, the NCBSSS and regional unions issued regular mailouts and pamphlets in an effort to encourage adult participation in the schools. The Tyneside and District SSS Union, for example, issued a pamphlet entitled ‘The Socialist Sunday School Makes Its Appeal to All Socialists’ in February 1912 in an effort to relate the importance of SSSs to adult politics.10 Despite such efforts, SSSs found themselves to be one of the causalities of an increasingly divided socialist political field into the 1920s and 1930s. SSS members identified the ILP and Labour Party (LP) split of 1931 as particularly devastating, and as representative of a growing tendency to place greater emphasis on party-based and parliamentary politics to the detriment of a non-partisan expression of children’s socialism.11 Indeed, just one year after Huddersfield SSS made clear its independence in relation to the local ILP branch, the emergence of a BSP Young Socialist League in 1913 left the SSS exasperated. The school wrote to say that it was ‘sympathetic’ with the League’s goals, but was quick to point out that the SSS already ‘covers most of the ideas expressed’.12 The following year, caught between the institutional divisions that led to separate ILP and BSP May Day demonstrations, the Huddersfield SSS decided not to participate in any rally. Ironically, for those socialists who decided not to participate in the SSS movement, it was often the generalised expression of socialism that prevented their involvement. For the most part, these ­criticisms were most strongly articulated around the religious traditions evident in SSS culture, and the emphasis placed on the development of a socialist morality or ethic by SSS teachers. As noted in chapter 3, the SSS movement by no means represented a unified understanding of socialism, let alone a united approach to the relationship between socialist ethics and socialist

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economics, would gloss over the diverse character of the movement. Particularly in the decades before the arrival of the CP in British politics, the SSS movement represented a diverse array of socialist positions. Take, for example, the diversity evident in these messages of encouragement sent in by individual schools in 1901 to the YS: from Huddersfield’s ‘Love conquers all’, to Glasgow South Side’s ‘Deeds, not words are what the world requires’, and London Battersea’s ‘From each according to his strength: to each according to his need’, each SSS’s articulation of socialism was highly dependent on the local political cultures and positions of teachers.13 Nonetheless, the charge that the movement focused too heavily on socialist morality to the obfuscation of political reality and concrete engagement with socialist activism remained. The small amendments made by the SSS movement (such as changing commandments to precepts and hymns to songs) did little to alter the fundamental character of SSSs, and for its critics represented tokenistic, rather than substantial, changes in direction. This criticism particularly gathered strength following the Russian Revolution, as sections of the British socialist (and burgeoning communist) movement became influenced by the spread of the international communist politic. Again, this sentiment was not absent from the SSS movement itself. In the immediate months that followed the revolution, many in the SSS movement revelled in the possibilities for socialism. For example, in the May 1917 issue, under the title ‘The Young Socialist May Day – Greetings to Free Russia’, the YS editorial wote, ‘the Russian revolution will ring through the whole world, heartening and inspiriting its workers for Freedom wherever they are, are foretelling the doom of oppressors of people under whatever name or government they exist’.14 And indeed, the SSS continued to incorpor­ate a range of members from diverse political positions, including, for example, the prominent non-aligned communist Alex Gossip.15 Nevertheless, the insistence on non-partisan politics, and the propaga­ tion of a broad socialism, left many desiring more ardent political commitments than those offered by the SSS movement. Some considered the NCBSSS to be too reserved and representative of an insipid socialism. For those in the radical Glaswegian sections of the movement, eventually this judgement made allegiance with the movement untenable. By 1914, the former ILP member and key figure in the SSS movement Tom Anderson16 distributed a pamphlet among Glaswegian SSS teachers and intended for use in SSSs. In the provocative introduction of this pamphlet, Anderson makes plain his annoyance: Comrades, Girls and Boys – The story I am going to tell you to-day is a story illuminating the class war. Now, there are many Socialists who do

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not believe in the class war, and they think that to believe in it is doing something that is not right. But they are just in the same position as the people who said that the world was flat; they are ignorant; they are simple, well-meaning men and women, but they are ignorant of the essential basis of Socialism. If there were not a class war there would be no need for Socialism.17

Perhaps unsurprisingly it was not long before Tom Anderson and other sympathetic comrades split from SSSs to form an alternative radical children’s initiative. Deviating slightly from the SSS nomenclature, Anderson’s Proletarian Sunday School (PSS) movement aimed to incorporate more explicitly Marxist materialism and economics in children’s education.18 Frustrated with ‘the dreamers’ of the SSS movement, PSSs sought to engage more fully with the realities of working-class life and class struggle.19 Previously, historians have placed this split as early as 1911.20 At this time, and into the 1910s, Anderson along with other Glaswegian comrades, began producing and distributing a range of explicitly revolutionary materials, such as Albert Young’s 1915 The Red Dawn: A Book of Verse for Revolutionaries and Others.21 However, the publication of Anderson’s 1914 SSS lesson ‘John Davidson and Mary Davis’, which included a list of Glaswegian SSSs on the back cover, indicates that his school retained its SSS label and associations with other SSSs at least in the Glasgow region up until 1918, when the Proletarian School Series pamphlet series began to circulate.22 Working with other Glaswegian radicals such as John Clarke (who would go on to become a prominent CP member), Anderson set about creating the resources in which to support the educational and political culture of the PSS movement. This included the Proletarian School Series, which republished many of Anderson’s SSS lessons along with some new additions, including ‘The Class State’ with a forward by John McLean, and the lesson ‘The Fat Bourgeois’.23 At the same time, Anderson was also heavily involved in The Revolution: The Magazine for Young Workers, which described itself as the ‘official organ of the Socialist School in Glasgow’, and also began circulation around 1918.24 Later, in 1933, in a reminiscence of the SSS style, Anderson published the Proletarian Song Book, School Edition, declaring that proletarian ‘schools and colleges’ are ‘in no way connected with any political party’ and will ‘embrace every social activity in the life of the Working Class’.25 Notwithstanding the prolific publishing of Anderson and others over this period, PSSs never managed to garner mass support. The November 1918 edition of the Proletarian School Series advertised three schools in Glasgow along with ‘schools under formation’ in Leeds, Leicester, Gourock, Birmingham, Wales and Bristol.26

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Despite their lack of numbers the PSS movement gave expression to a wider frustration with SSSs. They also coalesced with a turn among some radical circles towards engaging with, and developing, workingclass culture that could directly contribute to class struggle: ‘proletarian culture’ or ‘proletcult’.27 Anderson, who was reported to have started the monthly publication Proletcult,28 was clear in this intent, stating: ‘All children and grown-ups [of PSSs] shall become members of Comrades of Proletcult.’29 Unsurprisingly Eden and Cedar Paul’s 1921 book Proletcult gave its support, declaring that the ‘Proletarian School for Children and Grown-Ups, founded in 1918, is an excellent counterblast to the hazy sentimentalism of the S.S.S.’30 It is interesting to note then, that religious tropes were still embedded within PSS culture. PSSs had a very similar school meeting agenda to SSSs, and, perhaps in critical reference to the popular description of Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists as the workers’ bible,31 Anderson refers to Marx’s Capital as the ‘workers’ bible’.32 Indeed, PSSs even had ‘Ten Proletarian Maxims’: 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

Ten Proletarian Maxims33 Thou shalt inscribe on your banner, ‘Workers of all lands unite, You have nothing to lose, but your chains, you have a world to win’. Thou shalt not be a patriot, for a patriot is an international blackleg. Your duty to yourself and your class demands that you be a citizen of the world. Thou shalt not usurp the right of any man or woman, nor shall you claim for yourself any natural advantage over your fellows, for every man and woman has an equal right to an equal share in the product of their collective labour. Thou shalt not take part in any bourgeois war, for all modern wars are the result of the clash of economic interests, and your duty as an internationalist is to wage class-war against all such wars. Thou shalt teach revolution, for revolution means the abolition of the present Political State, and the end of Capitalism, and the raising in their place an industrial Republic. Thou shalt demand on behalf of your class, the complete surrender of the capitalist class and all the means of production, distribution, and exchange, with the land and all that it contains, and by so doing you shall abolish class rule. Thou shalt wage the class war, by pointing out that the history of all recorded societies is a history of the Class Struggle, and that the emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery must be brought about by themselves. Thou shalt take part at all times in the political and economic struggles of the working class. Thou shalt renounce craft unionism; and work for the organisation of the working class into one vast industrial

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union, to take and hold the means of life. 9. Thou shalt perform a mission in society by achieving an ideal of a fuller and higher life for all, in the abolition of classes, and by the regulation of industry by the Industrial Republic, which shall end the Political State. 10. Thou shalt remember that the economic structure of Society determines the legal and political superstructure and the Social, Ethical, Religious, and intellectual life-process in general. It is not men’s consciousness which determines their life? On the contrary, it is the social life which determines their consciousness.

Nevertheless, the PSSs did mark a distinct move towards revolutionary politics within radical children’s education. And for some, they do appear to have more genuinely engaged with working-class culture. An ex-student in Rafeek’s oral history study of CP women described it thus: The PSS was more doon to the working-class you weren’t restrained in any way when you were there and werenae kept from saying what you wanted to say when you were wanting to say it ... I liked the PSS because everybody was friendly with one another whereas sometimes at the SSS, while we were there every Sunday some of them didnae talk to you.34

This is supported also by Mary Docherty’s recollection of PSSs being ‘less formal’ and ‘more working class and down to earth’ than her local SSS.35 Divisions among the ventures into children’s socialism was further complicated by the emergence of the CP’s children’s sections in the 1920s, which purported to have brought the PSS movement under their banner.36 Inspired by the youth movements in Russia and in Europe, the CP urged unity within the British children’s and young people’s initiatives – unity under the communist banner. After extensive formal lobbying, the CP put forward a motion that the NCBSSS affiliate to the Young Communist International (YCI), which was defeated thirty-six to five at the NCBSSS 1922 Annual Conference.37 Following this, the CP moved formally to disassociate itself from the SSS movement and focused energy on building its own independent youth apparatuses – its children’s sections and the YCL.38 In doing so they also developed an avid critique of the SSS movement.39 The CP concluded that the SSS favoured abstract morality over class politics. In a submission to the 1923 NCBSSS Annual Conference, the YCI put it this way: Your motto is ‘Education of the children to love and justice’; so is ours. But all education is class education; and therefore we say that there can be neither love nor justice so long as the capitalist class remains the ruling class. We must teach the children of the working class to love their class but hate the capitalists who leave them to die in misery and privation.40

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In a very different tenor to the SSS movement’s non-partisanship, the CP urged ‘Our communist Children’s Organisation must, under the direction of the Communist Party and the Young Communist or Comrades’ League, carry on the propaganda work in support of any action of the adult workers’.41 It concluded, that ‘mass action by children is necessary’, and ‘Proletarian children must conduct a determined revolutionary struggle with the adult proletarians against the whole bourgeois order.’ Consequently, the CP understood the school as a fertile site for communist organising, and accordingly organised children into school groups rather than local community groups as with the SSSs and PSSs. Its publications, such as the Young Comrade, urged children to participate directly in political activity and ‘fight harder for better schools, free school meals, [and] against bosses teaching’ amid communist-imbued cartoons, political features, and children’s letter pages.42 Similarly, meetings encouraged children to engage in ‘the serious question of the school struggle’, ‘drills and dancing’, ‘singing’, and ‘then, maybe later when the children are ready for a sit down, the [CP youth magazine] YOUNG COMRADE, or Recruiting, or the school paper, or any special campaign can then receive attention’.43 In further distinction from the SSS movement, the CP accentuated informality over formality and recommended not taking roll call or minutes so as to avoid replicating day school experiences.44 This was, however, a small movement. In 1925 the CP reported a total of eighteen children’s groups, with an approximate membership of 500.45 Though sporadic attempts were made by the NCBSSS and the CP to work together, in the main these organisations approached each other with disdain, ambivalence or suspicion. Reflecting the strained relations, in 1922 the YS decried the lack of mention of the SSS movement in a YCL article about radical children’s and youth activities, and emphasises the importance of SSSs to ‘encourage the children to assert and express themselves, electing their own office’.46 SSS correspondence records an ongoing mutual frustration between the two organisations as both laid claim to represent the socialist/communist children’s movement.47 This is found also in the CP’s own account, ‘A Short History of the Working Class Children’s/Youth Movement of Britain’.48 Ultimately the CP’s frustration with the perceived moral focus of the SSS, and the NCBSSS’s exasperation with the apparent party focus of the CP meant that the two movements never successfully communicated, let alone coordinated.

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The state and the religious conservative challenge Not only fielding criticism from their comrades, SSS teachers and organisers also had to respond to a range of antagonistic interventions and campaigns initiated by the state and religious conservative advocates. In 1907, a vote to evict all SSSs from London County Council (LCC) rooms was successful, and saw many London-based SSSs without accommodation.49 In response, reportedly the SSS movement successfully organised some 10,000 students, teachers and supporters to demonstrate in opposition. Addressed in Trafalgar Square by a range of prominent socialists, including Margaret McMillan, Mrs Despard, Mrs Bridges Adams, Jim O’Grady MP, and Alex Gossip, the protestors failed to put a stop to the eviction.50 Indeed, it was upheld again in 1920 when SSS advocate A. A. Watts attempted to challenge the LCC policy.51 The eviction had far-reaching repercussions for London SSSs. Many schools faced closure, and were forced back into the fold of local socialist party branches. The ‘single-handed’ efforts of Comrade Finnimore, for instance, saved the South Islington SSS after the local SDF offered the use of their rooms.52 Facing similar consequences, Fulham SSS established a Socialist Hall Building Fund in order to raise the money for its own hall – an aspiration that was never fulfilled.53 The LCC’s actions reveal the challenge that SSSs wrought. In particular, the subversion and transformation of religious cultures within the SSS movement caused significant outcry. In 1907, criticism published in the Sabbath School Teachers’ Magazine prompted Lizzie Glasier to write a defence of SSSs, along with an outline of the schools’ methods and functions by Alfred Russell.54 Characteristically for her own commitment to a spiritual and ethical socialism, Glasier’s defence relies heavily on outlining the tenets of ‘ethical socialism’. However, such assurances did little to soothe the disquiet. In August 1910, the YS reported that the ‘Children’s Social Sunday Union’, explicitly formed as a counter-­ organisation to the NCBSSS, had began forming ‘rival’ schools in an endeavour to lure students away from the poison of socialism.55 In response, the YS editorial ‘begs leave to inform them’ that the NCBSSS ‘shall do all in its power to preserve the children of our schools from what, to us, is their pernicious doctrines’, perpetuating a social system which, while it ‘preserves for them their rank, titles, and social privileges, dooms millions of their fellow creatures to poverty, misery and degradation’. In the same year, Fulham SSS teachers wrote into the YS to note the attendance of members of such rival groups at SSS sessions. Teachers claimed to have witnessed attendees collecting names and addresses of students in order to directly pressure parents to withdraw their children from the SSS.56

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The conservative response was also outlined in a range of pamphlets. For instance, Mrs St Clare Norris’s 1911 anti-SSS pamphlet entitled Watchman Awake! Save the Children, outlined the ‘insidious action’ of the SSS movement, which, ‘like a thief in the night, has taken the Sunday afternoon school work and used it for such widely different ends’.57 She asks, ‘Shall we not unite to avert this awful end?’ With similar fervour, the Children’s Faith Crusade urged Co-operative members to prevent SSS from using their halls, asking its readers ‘Shall your money and influence be used to DESTROY the CHRISTIAN FAITH in the hearts of the children?’58 Conservative attendance at SSSs – and, it must also be noted, PSS and CP children’s sections – led to considerable press interest, including the publishing of personal ‘witness’ reports of the schools. In one such report of a visit to a PSS, Beatrice Kent lamented that ‘many thousands of children are being deliberately prepared to overthrow our beloved country and bring – with a revolution – all the anarchy, misery and ruin that has befallen Russia’.59 By the early- and mid-1920s interest in radical children’s initiatives had spread to a range of organisations, many of which hosted meetings, and published pamphlets and articles to raise awareness. This included the British Empire Union,60 the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations,61 the British Women’s Patriotic League,62 and the Women’s Parliamentary Committee of the Unionist Association.63 In 1922, for example, the Patriot, dedicated to reporting on all things that could threaten the British Empire, emphasised that SSSs were indeed as ‘red’ as PSSs, despite their ‘crafty’ ‘words saying “the day of Freedom” in place of revolution and their so-called “Ethics” deluding the super­ ficial into taking them for religion’.64 As reported in this article, by 1922 the opposition to SSSs had successfully grown to a wider conservative assault, and had captured the attention of the conservative MP Sir John Butcher. Butcher, MP for York, introduced a private members bill in February 1922 on seditious teaching, only to have it ‘crowded out’ by the LP’s Right to Work Bill.65 Trying again the following year, Butcher took a more coordinated approach. Rallying eighty Conservative MPs together at a meeting at the House of Commons in February 1923, Butcher successfully garnered unanimous support for his motion calling for government action against ‘seditious teaching of children under sixteen’.66 The Seditious Teaching Bill was introduced again in March that year, and by July 1924 the House of Lords voted 102 votes to 20 in favour, but then it fell owing to Parliament disbanding.67 After a few more attempts at introducing the bill throughout the mid-1920s, in 1927 Captain Holt took up the cause and was successful in introducing the Seditious and Blasphemous

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Teaching Bill, passing in the House of Commons 213 to 85.68 The bill itself was eventually ‘talked out’, running into difficulty in the report stage, and subsequent attempts to reintroduce it were unsuccessful.69 Nonetheless, it did succeed in stoking the debate surrounding socialist and communist children’s activities. In response to the heightened interest in, and surveillance over, their activities, socialist activists mobilised to defend their right to provide an education independent of the aims of state-provided schooling for their children. A number of joint demonstrations were called over this period, with Labour MPs, the Trades Council, ILP, CP, YCL, NCBSSS, PSSs and the Co-operative Guild all united in their objection to the bill.70 On May Day 1924, for instance, the CP sent ‘large numbers of vehicles full of children waving red flags’, and ‘plastered’ the vehicles with ‘placards bearing such legends as “Damn the Seditious Teaching Bill” … and “Long Live Soviet Russia’’’.71 In 1922, the NCBSSS compiled lists of MPs that might be willing to speak on behalf of SSSs and urged its members to ‘indulge in an intensive propaganda campaign … particularly among the adult organisations of the movement’.72 The following year, the annual conference recommended that ‘all towns arrange a demonstration to protest against the Bill’, and many SSS teachers organised protest groups in addition to their SSS teaching work, including for example the ‘Manchester and District Free Speech Defence Committee’.73 It is important to note that much of the political intent underpinning the Seditious Teaching Bill was motivated by a heightened fear of communism throughout Britain in the 1920s. Kean, for instance, suggests that in many ways SSSs were caught up in the government surveillance of, intervention against and parliamentary interest in the CP.74 To be sure, the envelopment of SSSs into discourses of communist or revolutionary criminality often occurred when SSSs were seen to coordinate with communist sections. For example, northern SSSs were interpellated into the criminalisation of socialist and communist activities through their association with Glaswegian revolutionaries. In 1919 The Times reported that in Glasgow ‘many Russians, chiefly Jews, are constantly preaching revolution to considerable audiences … Much the same propaganda is preached at some of the so-called Socialist Sunday Schools in West Yorkshire.’75 In 1927 the Foreign Office refused to issue passports to a YCL children’s delegation to Moscow accompanied by Jean Gallacher, which had drawn children all under the age of fourteen from the YCL, SSSs and the Co-operative Comrades’ Circles.76 Indeed, although there was undoubted interest, controversy and dissent over SSS activity, in contrast to the government’s vehement views of the CP, it must be noted that the official opinion of SSSs was

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somewhat muted. For instance, in a 1922 confidential memorandum the Home Secretary Edward Shortt declared that, ‘Allegations have been made that the teaching in some of these schools is “blasphemous”. No doubt most of the teachers are “free thinkers” … but nothing has been brought to my notice on which a prosecution for “blasphemy” could properly be taken.’77 This was an interpretation that the SSS movement itself sought to reinforce. While the SSS movement attempted to project an image of non-partisan inclusive socialism, in actuality it actively sought to distinguish and separate itself from certain particular forms of socialism from the outset. As early as 1901 a suggestion to instigate an international Socialist Children’s League was contested on the basis that there was a lack of unity between the SSS ethical interpretation of socialism and the ‘largely secular’ socialists on the Continent.78 As conservative campaigners sought to make sweeping links between different radical initiatives,79 many SSS proponents failed to rise to the defence of their communist comrades, portraying themselves alone as being credible. For instance, in the Seditious Teaching Bill’s hearing, SSS advocate Labour MP Ben Turner reflected with annoyance the deliberate conflation of SSSs with the Communist Sunday Schools ‘which had precepts which no sane man could fully support’.80 Stanley Mayne, NCBSSS President in 1923, made similar remarks, writing to The Times to assure its readers that SSS ‘has no connexion whatsoever with either the Proletarian or the Communist school movements’.81 Highlighting the already fraught relationships between the SSSs and the CP in particular, the conservative assault, therefore, only helped to further weaken ties. It is a telling reflection of the antagonistic and factious radical milieu and the internal political priorities dominating within the SSS movement that, when looking to bolster support for the schools in 1926, the NCBSSS turned solely to the ILP.82 Empire, internationalism and nature Despite the clear differences in approach between the CP, PSS and SSS movements, all of these initiatives shared a mutual concern to develop children’s cultures of international socialism. Central to SSS practice was the endeavour to promote an international understanding of workingclass humanity. Responding to what they saw as the harsh and grim realities of city industrial life, SSS teachers took inspiration from nature and ‘the country’ in order to represent this common humanity.83 As Mary Gray declared, ‘I want boarding-schools in the country for the children, where they can learn to love the beauties of nature far away from the smoke and grime of city life, where they can hear the singing birds and

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see the flowers springing up at nature’s call …’84 Such positions raise questions surrounding the relationship of SSSs to working-class parents, and suggests an apparent tendency in the movement to fall back upon middle-class projections of the ‘good life’ even when attempting to form transgressive and radical ideals. In addition, YS poetry and stories conjured images of an idyllic nature: nature provided examples of cooperative communities, youthful vigour, a free and happy working class, and a natural productivity. Take this YS story ‘The Boy and the Bee’ by Tom Robinson: Why hums the bee? Why trills the bird his merry song all day? Because they both are free to work and free to play. And man, be sure, as happy o’er his labour we shall see, when he is just as free to toil, and live as bird or bee. Quick come the day when little folks shall carol like the birds! Their song shall be a sweeter one, because it shall have words! Sweet words of joy that speak of love, and happiness and peace. When men, like bees are free to work, and poverty shall cease!85

The attachment the SSS movement made to the natural world brought with it a clear nostalgia (and a projected future) for a humanity that was more fully realised through its connection to nature. Reflecting this, SSS teachers were active in regenerating the tradition of May Day, revelling in its portrayal by such socialist artists as Walter Crane, complete with a May Day Queen.86 Edith Wyatt, signing off as ‘Your little comrade’ in her letter to the YS Children’s Page, for instance, informed readers: ‘We are now beginning to practice dances for our May-Day. We are holding it at the Strawberry gardens. The boys and girls under twelve are learning the Maypole dance, the big girls old English dances, and some boys a Morris dance. We shall vote for the May Queen in Sunday.’87 Fusing the proclaimed regenerative powers of women and nature, the Glasgow and District SSS Union card offered a particularly emblematic vision of this trend. A woman standing surrounded by dense foliage was draped and encircled with banners declaring ‘no child toilers’, ‘the land for the people’, and the exceptionally romantic ‘the plough is better backbone than the factory’.88 Extending this, nature provided a powerful counterbalance to everyday working-class experience. As Lizzie Glasier proclaims in her YS article on the tradition of May Day: ‘our great Queen Mother Nature has followed her wayward children into the dark places of the earth, and … is wooing us back again’.89 Critically, this ‘awakening’ occurs as nature is embedded within the transformed festival of May, ‘Labour’s festival’ – a ‘festival to symbolise the freeing … of labour from its long bondage of servile degradation through past ages to the true dignity of happy, ennobling, life-giving service’. F. J. Gould echoed this s­ entiment

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in his YS article ‘King and Boy’, in which he presented a dichotomous projection between the ‘horrible dark corners of the city’ and the safe, happy and productive state of nature and ‘natural work’.90 Educationally and culturally SSSs incorporated this understanding of nature into their practices. Just as adult turn-of-the-century socialists became cycling and rambling enthusiasts in the broader socialist milieu,91 so too did SSS teachers and their students. Writing in to the YS in 1902, Austin Haigh, Bradford SSS teacher described a typical outing: ‘On Saturday, my scholars, ages from 14 to 18 and I had a ramble. We walked through the fields of rye and barley looking wistfully and longingly at the scarlet poppies. We had tea at a comrade’s house and afterwards continued our walk through the fields and woods. Oh! How we sang. It is a strange influence that comes over us all in the lovely places of the earth.’92 The use of nature was also reflected in SSS practices through the commitment to science. Heavily influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution and of the power of rational thought, nature provided an aesthetic and material counter to the dominant hegemonic faith in Queen and country. In this way, discourses of nature extended to a notion of an international working-class and humanity. Coalescing nature and internationalism, SSS curricula included lessons on evolution, ‘the human race: mother nature’s family’, the tenets of reason – ‘observe and think’, nature studies, healthy bodies, Karl Marx and Charles Darwin.93 Alongside and connected to this scientific enterprise, SSSs attempted to evoke internationalism in order to express a unified working class. For instance, in correspondence with Gustav Spiller to decline the invitation of their presence at the Universal Races Congress in 1911, the NCBSSS was keen to point out that ‘international unity already secures a large share of attention in our schools’.94 YS stories and minute-books suggest that this assertion was indeed true. For example, the YS story ‘The Red Ribbon’ makes explicit the notion of a universal humanity, in which a young girl explains that the red ribbon she is wearing is a ‘sign that everybody in the world has the same blood, including people from China and India’.95 Similarly, at a Plaistow SSS meeting in 1924, children were taught the principles of internationalism: Sunday, June 6th, 1924: There were present 76 children and 18 adult members of the school. 13 visitors also attended. Com. S. Drake led the school in the first five precepts and Com. J Hutt led the remainder. The President Com. Mr Norman, after a few marks about the school Party, reminded the school that it was National Sunday. He said that the same hymns were being sung in every SSS throughout England, Scotland and Wales; also the same subject was to be given. He then called upon Com. Chandler to talk to us on Internationalism. Com. Chandler impressed on

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us the fact that people were the same all over the world, and therefore a spirit of comradeship should prevail among all people.96

For the SSS movement the notion of a united humanity had a clear anti-imperialist basis that was couched firmly within a critique of class relations under capitalism. Voting to oppose the First World War in 1915, the NCBSSS expressly connected the notion of an international humanity with the struggle against capitalism. Passing with seventy-six votes to twenty-four, the NCBSSS asserted, ‘the only flag we recognise is the Red Flag and our only war is against capitalism’.97 Also writing against the war, Duncan Jackson, Chief Leader of the YSCC asked SSS scholars to question what the term ‘country’ really means, concluding that ‘Britain is not our country. We are only allowed to live in it on the condition that we pay rent.’98 Extending this sentiment to other international affairs under the pen name ‘Kalek’, Alex Gossip connected capitalism’s interests with the ‘smashing up’ of trade unionists in South Africa.99 Similarly linking British working-class experience with an international analysis of capitalism and imperialism, following a visit to South Africa, the SSS proponent Keir Hardie urged the British labour movement to lend their support to the ‘landless proletariat at the mercy of their exploiters for all time’.100 Such examples demonstrate a clear desire to construct an internationalist working-class base that was undoubtedly significant for many of the teachers and students of the movement.101 The politics of internationalism was not only expressed through YS articles. The SSS movement was explicit in attempting to make links with SSSs across the globe, and regularly exchanged correspondence with international SSSs reported in the YS under the regular columns ‘International Notes’. This included, for example, SSSs and comparable children’s initiatives in Zurich,102 Melbourne,103 France and California,104 and Finland, Prussia, Denmark and Norway.105 Occasional letters from international SSS were also published in the YS Children’s Page, such as this one from Victoriana Manutello from the Bronx in New York: ‘Dear Comrade, – I am ten years old. At the public school my teacher tells me that my country is American because I was born here; but my teacher at the Modern School tells me that the World is my country, and I think she is right. Which do you think is right?’106 In order to facilitate correspondence the NCBSSS established ‘International Bureaux’, which asserted ‘we greet the young socialist of every country regardless of his attitudes and our own, with the hand of socialist friendship and comradeship’.107 SSS teachers also worked through other organisations to promote an international children’s socialist movement. For instance, in 1910 Alex Gossip attended the Congress of the Inter-

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national Young People’s Organisation (IYPO) in Copenhagen.108 A year later, Lizzie Glasier wrote that under the IYPO secretaryship of Dr Robert Danneburg, ‘the Socialist youths of both sexes – and even the children – not only of the Continent, but also America, Australia and Britain are gradually being drawn into a united organisation’.109 Interestingly, it appears that the IYPO did not necessarily have widespread support, with the Yorkshire SSS District Union voting against affiliation to the IYPO in 1916.110 Later, the NCBSSS turned to the World Youth League to promote the international exchange of correspondence among young people.111 The experience of the First World War and the Russian Revolution provided particular impetus in which to develop and express an international humanity. As Reid explores, the movement was profoundly affected by both of these events, and experienced the hardships ensuing from splits and fractures of the socialist movement’s response.112 While many stood in support of the British war effort, the NCBSSS voted to oppose the First World War, and the YS was peppered with references to an international working class throughout the war. The February 1915 editorial, for example, argued that ‘the red flag is our sacred emblem of the unity and kinship of all peoples and tongues. It is the flag of life, love and liberty for the world – as against the black flag of capitalism, war, and death’.113 Uncharacteristically of the SSS movement, the war even prompted criticism of Labour MPs who supported the war, but did not send their own sons to fight.114 In addition YS pages were filled with support for many of the SSS members who, like Gladys’ brother had ‘been taken by the military’, ‘serving two years at Shrewsbury Prison’, having ‘already served 112 days in Wormwood Scrubs for his conscience sake’.115 Nonetheless, however eager SSSs were to foster international camaraderie, their expression of internationalism never rid itself of contem­ porary understandings of western progress and civilisation. SSSs often took a popular Marxist teleological view of socialism and development, which placed ‘western’ culture and economics as the progress necessary before socialism. The North-East Lancashire District Teachers’ Union, meeting for the first time in 1911 to discuss curriculum and pedagogy, for instance, emphasised the importance of teaching ‘all about the Primitive Man … how man lived and progressed under savagedom, slavedom and serfdom … the origin and nature of the wage-system; and its present day tendencies pointing to the inevitably of Socialism’.116 Implicit notions of civilisation are also evident in the stories offered to SSS students in order to teach them about the diversity of human society and culture. Linking the politics of internationalism with science, Arthur Booth, editor of the

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YS towards the end of the 1920s and Yorkshire SSS organiser, wrote a number of children’s picture books to make these ideas accessible for children.117 Gould wrote that Booth documents the ‘unrolling’ ‘of the human destiny and genius from inexpressibly difficult conditions to the People’s Hope and Progress of the twentieth Century’.118 In addition, the underlying racism of the British Empire did not escape the SSS movement. In 1911 the SSS movement was rocked by reports of a ‘young English lad, who for several years was a member of and actively connected with one of our SSSs’ who exhibited ‘cruel and barbarous treatment of a poor black’ in Australia.119 Responding with two articles over two months, the YS urged SSS students ‘to remember their socialist training when they meet men of this sort’, and to ‘follow the gospel of love, especially among those whom we call “the heathen”’.120 In addition, stories published in the YS could not rid themselves of a colonial p ­ aternalism. A serialised story in the 1922 YS, for instance, follows John, a ‘white pioneer’ boy living in Ohio, who together with a ‘red Indian’ friend, Red Feather, frees a black boy slave, ‘Shields’.121 In this story, it is John who informs Shields that ‘all men – black or white – are equal’ in response to Shields’ attempt to kiss his feet, and it is John and Red Feather who instigate Shields’ freedom. Drawing on nature in which to understand the race relations that underpin this story, Red Feather is animalised, described as having ‘the feet of a panther and the eyes of a cat’, while Shields has ‘big feet’ and speaks only in broken English. Gender, class and women’s work The idea of ‘natural’ also featured in the ways in which gender was depicted in the SSS construction of a universal working class. Often guided by examples of supposed ‘natural’ forms of family life, SSSs reinforced gendered divisions of labour. For example, Jim Simmons suggests ‘Simple lessons on the fundamentals of Socialism can be taken from home life … Mutual aid inside the family, the co-operation of sharing work FROM EACH ACCORDING TO ABILITY, Tommy runs errands, chops sticks etc., Mary helps cleaning’.122 Certainly, many in the SSS movement (and elsewhere in the socialist movement) reasserted traditional women’s work and simply added a hue of socialist politics. In this way, women’s work for socialism could be understood as lying predominantly in the private sphere, raising socialist children and supporting men’s more public campaigns through their domestic labour.123 This poem, for instance, makes the position of women and girls abundantly clear:

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Maid and mother and wife! See your own work to be done! Be worthy a noble son! Help man in the upward way! Truly, a girl today Is the strongest thing in life!124

Importantly, while reiterating the supposedly ‘natural’ division of labour that placed women as primarily child-rearing agents, the SSS movement opened its doors to women and girls in a way that other socialist organisations at the time did not. As other feminist historians have already noted, children’s and educational activism and campaign work afforded women a public space in which to develop and dedicate their socialist beliefs.125 In her history of socialism and women in Liverpool, Krista Cowman suggests that socialist educational initiatives, ‘represented an area where socialist women were able to take a space that was allocated to them as “suitable” and to transform it into something far more public’.126 Indeed, both Karen Hunt and Krista Cowman conclude that, as a child-focused venture, SSSs appear in particular to reinforce traditional notions of women’s work. Throughout the brief biographies of SSS teachers and students in the YS ‘Portrait Gallery’ series and other descriptions of SSS activity it is certainly easy to find examples that support normative gender representations of women and girls. Councillor James Parker, for instance, talks about the Halifax SSS boys as ‘Just a little rough and mischievous, like the Glasgow boys, but kindly and good tempered withal. They will sing, answer questions, and sometimes puzzle their teachers and superintendent with their questions, but they like the SSS and a word of praise; they behave as a rule like gentlemen.’127 The girls, he continues ‘are pretty (of course, boys, all little girls are), and their smile on a Sunday morning is worth walking miles to see’. Similarly, Mrs Gibson of Kilmarnock Socialist Sunday School, ‘has a kindly motherly disposition, and her heart goes out with tender feelings for those who suffer from the evils of a bad social system’, and Bradford’s Miss Margaret Peacock has a ‘sweet manner and devotion to the cause’.128 Explicit reproductions of women’s identity and work are also found throughout SSS literature. In the influential pamphlet Education in Socialist Sunday Schools, George Whitehead makes plain his underlying assumptions about gender inequality. Explicating the course of study for girls aged between fifteen and eighteen years old, Whitehead suggests a course of reading and discussion exploring the question ‘What is the mission of woman?’ Declaring that he has his own view of the ‘Woman Question’, Whitehead goes in to surmise that ‘men and

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women having nothing to gain by feelings of sex antagonism’, ‘and that woman occupies her present position, not so much as some feminists assert, from the effect of conscious sex domination on the part of the men, but more in obedience to natural laws’.129 For some, the synchronicities between traditional women’s work and the children’s educational work undertaken in SSSs were to be welcomed and solidified. Margaret McDonald (née Gladstone), for instance, presented and distributed a report about the British SSS movement at the 1907 International Socialist Conference of Women in Stuttgart.130 Writing a tribute to McDonald after her death in 1911, Lizzie Glasier noted that it was also McDonald’s intention, as a member of the British Council of Women Socialists, to put a resolution at the next International Conference ‘urging the wisdom of starting socialist schools as an auxiliary to the women’s movement’.131 Such moves would have put the British SSS movement in step with its US counterparts, which had sections that more readily connected SSSs to socialist women’s work.132 A letter published in the YS in 1903 from the US to the British SSS movement, for instance, appeals directly to ‘socialist mothers’.133 Nevertheless, it appears that nothing transpired from McDonald’s intent following her death, and the NCBSSS, and the SSS movement more broadly, remained without any formal associations with the socialist women’s sections. Indeed, the SSS movement was by no means a women’s venture. The concern to develop socialism for children and young people brought a diversity of socialists into the SSS movement, including many men. Amid this diversity, undoubtedly women featured in SSSs in much greater numbers than in other contemporaneous socialist organisations. Arguably, while the non-partisan position of the SSS movement proved too stifling for many communist activists, for others, including women, this stance assisted to create an inclusive culture of participation. The form of the SSS counter-public, then, provided spaces in which women could easily participate and within which they could assert their own political and social authority. This can be seen evidenced in the YS ‘Portrait Gallery’ series. Introducing YS readers to local teachers, ­organisers and occasionally students through short biographical features, the gallery provides an important counter-balance to the autobiographical and biographical sources of the celebrity-status socialists. And it is here that the local activist character of the SSS movement – male and female, and the multifarious expressions of socialism contained within it, is made clear. James Love, for example, identifies reading newspapers aloud to fellow workers as a young apprentice and involvement in the United

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Pattern-Makers’ Trade Union as the two defining impetuses that led to his association with the ILP and eventually to establishing Paisley SSS in 1899.134 Sharing a notably different story, fellow ILP member Sister Kerrison recounts spending her first seventeen years ‘tearing around’ the Welsh countryside on a pony, and being convinced by Archie McArthur to found the Canning Town SSS in 1897 after becoming too ill to pursue a nursing career.135 In 1905 we learn of Miss Edith Gutteridge, LC pianist, qualified teacher and daughter of one of the ‘founders of the Labour movement in Nottingham’ of whom it is written, ‘Miss Gutteridge has chosen one of the poorest schools of our city in which to teach. She hopes that by so doing she may be able to bring the children a little happiness.’136 In 1906 we are introduced to Mrs Lamb, a trade unionist from the age of fourteen, self-taught historian and vegetarian,137 and William Fisher whose ‘childhood was of short duration’ having commenced work at the age of seven, and who joined his trade union at twenty-one, subsequently becoming involved in the ILP and the SSS movement.138 Immediately apparent among these, and the many other featured socialists, is the powerful influence of gender and diverse class backgrounds in the introduction to, and subsequent involvement in, socialist politics and SSSs. In addition to bringing attention to the many working-class and women teachers who dedicated their Sundays to SSS work, they also point to diverse biographical pathways, marked by different class and gender locations, that led working-class and middle-class men and women to the SSS movement. Crucially, the SSS movement recruited both men and women socialists, and never tailored its propaganda particularly to women socialists. This approach was reflected in the significant number of men involved in SSS work. Of course, the presence of both men and women in the movement did not automatically create an equality of gender relations. There were clear and distinct gender divisions of labour in SSS work that reinforced dominant gendered norms: ‘lady comrades’ conducted large amounts of hidden work, taking on traditional tasks, such as tea-making and baking.139 Supporting this placement, many wives of SSS teachers and organisers, active in the SSS movement themselves, were (anonymously) visible through their husband’s work as documented in the YS ‘Portrait Gallery’. For instance, James Barron had a ‘cheery wife’, ‘who willingly lends the service of her sweet voice for the Glasgow movement, [and] ably supports her husband in his varied activities, especially in connection with Bridgeton School’.140 And yet, despite the persistent alignment of SSS culture with masculine and feminine cultural norms, SSSs appear to have simultaneously created supportive spaces that enabled women to challenge the sorts

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of roles and identities ascribed to them by both the socialist and wider public and private spheres. Even women’s representation and contributions to the YS trouble a historical reading of SSSs as simply reinforcing and reiterating traditional gender roles. For instance, although appearing with notably less frequency than their male peers, local women school organisers and key women leaders of radical movements (past and present) are consistently credited and celebrated in the Portrait Gallery, the Socialist Saint series, and in independent features.141 Sometimes even husbands appeared as ‘greatly serving’ partners, supporting their wives’ socialist endeavours in the SSS movement and beyond.142 In addition, schools often playfully reported on gender transgressions, such as the Kirkcaldry needlecraft class which in 1915 ‘have at present about twenty girls and five grown-ups who attend … Some of the girls have started making nice overalls for themselves and others are making nightdresses. We have two boys in the class who have made quite nice handkerchiefs for themselves; so you see the boys are anxious and very industrious as well as the girls.’143 In addition, the SSS movement gave genuine support for women’s rights campaigns, and was home to women who were active in the turnof-the-century women’s movement. Take, for example, the obituary for Mary Morrison of the Glasgow Central SSS, who ‘took an active part in the movement for the emancipation of women’, and who ‘has done her part towards the building of the New City’.144 Or, this entry in the Southend SSS minute-book dated 14 February, 1907, in which Mr Wilkinson makes plain the socialist-imbued approach to the women’s movement in his commentary on the aristocrat Lady Frances Balfour’s involvement in the suffrage movement: … After singing ‘True Freedom’ Mr Wilkinson gave an address on some of the events of the past week. He spoke about the opening of Parliament by the king; also about the unemployed procession organised by our comrade Jack Williams. He also mentioned the Women’s Suffrage movement. He asked why Mrs Balfour who takes an active part in the work was not arrested with her companions. One of the scholars replied that it was because Mr Balfour was a member of parliament and a very prominent one. The red flag was next sung and the superintendent asked the scholars to remain as Mr Hicks had a few songs for them to practise. The school closed by repeating usual declaration.145

At a personal level, Mary Ann Rawle received wholehearted support from her SSS students and male comrades when she was incarcerated in 1907 for her suffragette activism. Rawle, Ashton-under-Lyne SSS superintendent, was a working-class woman whose husband was in and out of work throughout the early 1900s, and who had two children

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during her time as a suffrage activist.146 Her incarceration prompted the Ashton SSS secretary W. G. Chapman to write to Rawle, on unanimous vote of the students, a ‘welcome to freedom’ note. Congratulating her for her work on the emancipation of women, Chapman writes of the children, ‘They see in your actions the carrying out of our commandments, which say “Stand up for your rights and resist oppression” and “Do not be cowardly”.’147 In similar style, young scholar of Nelson SSS, Mary Liddington, welcomed Keir Hardie to a school performance ‘first, because of his championship of the working classes in the House of Commons; second, because he was in favour of Adult Suffrage which included votes for women; and third, because of this life of unselfish devotion to the uplifting of the down-trodden humanity’.148 Such examples reveal the interconnected concern for women’s and worker’s rights for many within the SSS movement. Importantly, the interest and support for women’s rights and suffrage was firmly couched within a class analysis of social relations, and within a socialist vision for the future. Consequently, the concern to present pictures of dedicated trade unionists and socialists did not obscure women. Rather, their existing role as workers and involvement in industrial campaigns drew them into discourses of labour, work and class. Articles arguing against the unfair pay conditions of women and the double burden of labour in the workplace and home served to incorporate women into class narratives, at the same time as exploring the boundaries of exploitation.149 At its heart, then, the gendered dynamics of SSS work was underpinned by the idea of ‘work’, and most importantly of ‘work’ for the socialist future. Indeed ‘work’, working-class culture, and the identity of the ‘worker’ is a constant ideological referent. As the ‘Song of the World’ declares from the pages of the YS: There’s a song the world is singing A resonant, splendid song, Of its work, work, work, With never a shirk, Of its battle won, Of its labour done – And of Right that masters Wrong!150

In drawing on an idealised notion of work and working-class selfhood, SSSs projected an image of self-sacrifice that students were expected to adopt. Children were advised to make daily sacrifices and ‘take pains to do good work’ in the promise that ‘pleasure will attend you all your days, and your good deeds will live after you in the increased happiness of mankind’.151 SSSs therefore aimed to instil in children the principle characteristics of a (respectable) ‘good worker’ and a ‘produc-

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tive socialist’. In 1910 Keir Hardie urged young socialists to apply their efforts and talents, not to ‘pick pockets’ but to the ‘heroic endeavour to do good to others’.152 Exemplifying this ideal is Elsie Furlong’s letter to the YS in which she recounted: We gave an entertainment of ‘The White Garland’ to 500 poor children at Ancoats Settlement the other week, and, oh if you could only have seen their eager little faces! How their eyes shone! And when Gladys entered as Queen, five hundred little lips pursed up into a delightful ‘Oh!-’, and the bright flowers and fresh white dresses seemed like a glimpse of fairyland to those poor starved little ones at Ancoats.153

Devotion, however, did not simply involve charitable deeds. It also encapsulated working-class culture in a discourse of respectability that cannot go unnoticed. Take for example, the lesson of the middle-class Christian socialist Margaret Bondfield given to the children of Huddersfield SSS as recounted by twelve-year-old Jenny Bray: Miss Margaret Bondfield … told us about the little wild baby animals in the woods. The parents of these baby animals knew how to teach their children obedience, and keep them safe from harm. And this was the first lesson the baby animals had to learn. Human parents have to learn how to teach their children to obey. This lesson was taken from a beautiful book called ‘The School of the Woods’. I enjoyed myself very much.154

Such examples certainly appear to support the criticisms of the CP and the PSS movement that SSSs did not authentically reflect workingclass culture and the messy task of class struggle. The formality of SSSs, the ‘at-homes’ and the encouragement of ‘work’ in forms such as Elsie’s school’s performance (rather than as the CP’s school campaigns) undoubtedly presented an aspirational version of emancipatory practice and working-class selfhood. Bound by the articulation of childhood, the SSSs working-class emancipation rested on an ideological mobilisation of productivity and respectability. ‘Work’ for the cause was to be carried out in ways befitting the child scholars, and was central to their commitment to socialism.155 This central placement of devotion and sacrifice did little to counter prevailing discourses of laziness and indolence used to mark the working class, and in particular the unemployed and poor. While the critique of laziness attempted to capture the frustration of the ‘idle rich’, the importance of work as the natural state of humanity brought the unemployed within SSS discourse: ‘under socialism there will be neither idle rich nor unemployed poor’.156 Put more forcefully, in his winning essay, the thirteen-year-old Hackney Central SSS student Chris suggests that the

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‘lazy man’ – the ‘idle penniless tramp, or … idle peer with a bit of rent roll’ should be obliged to work or starve.157 Although questioned by the editor of the Children’s Page as to why ‘those who would work and cannot, are lazy’, Chris’s contribution clearly signals the central importance of productivity and work in SSS cultures, and of a consequent judgement on working-class lives. However, at the same time, self-sacrifice was not narrowly bound by a notion of charity, and nor did it obfuscate active working-class culture. For SSSs, self-sacrifice referenced the active struggle against capitalism, as well as the need for a socialist ethic – a generosity of self. As for other socialists at the time, ‘It was a question of looking after one’s own’ – other workers, their children, as well as potential members.158 For the SSS movement, work and devotion to the socialist cause was a ‘living socialism’ that involved the present and future cause for socialism. As put by the NCBSSS, ‘Sacrifice is not noble in itself, but only as a means to that great end – the end of the need for sacrifice.’159 Interestingly, it was this emphasis on local work that created the space for both men and women to be celebrated for their work in creating socialist children’s education. The importance that SSSs placed on local community efforts, and children’s education, meant that tasks typically considered women’s work became SSS work, for both men and women. Together, men and women were celebrated for their efforts to bring socialism to children and their ‘small’ acts for the cause of socialism: along with their students, each of them was ‘one of many builders’ of socialism. Traditional women’s work, such as child-rearing, soup kitchens, organising social activities, and so on, was celebrated as much – if not more – as the ‘public’ work that had traditionally been the sphere of men. Consequently, men and women were described in similar fashion throughout the YS: both were celebrated for the work undertaken within SSSs, and for the commitment to concurrent campaign work elsewhere in the socialist movement. While by no means free from dominant notions of masculinity and femininity, and of men and women’s work, descriptions of SSS teachers and students in the YS indicate a clear comparability and synergy in the work men and women undertook within the SSS movement. Take, for example this entry for the retired Glasgow Central SSS Superintendent, Tom Bridge and his wife Mrs Bridges: His forte is recreation work among the children, and his amiable and kindly disposition has won its way to all hearts. Keep your economics and dry-as-dust philosophies, and give Tom a Sunday School picnic or a Treat and he will be happy till the end of time. Mrs Bridge is not far behind Tom, and she holds the championship of our school for making

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tea (a valuable asset). They have three sons who are as eager to fill the father’s shoes as he is reluctant to part with the shoes. Tom is employed at the Glasgow Asylum for the Blind as a basket-maker, and if we judge from the number of blind socialists in the district, then Tom’s time is not wholly taken up with basket-weaving. Nothing gives Tom greater pleasure than to be present at the opening of a new Socialist Sunday School, and I believe he keeps his best smile for such occasions.160

Similarly Emily Haywood, ILPer and West Leeds SSS Superintendent, is ‘an earnest, willing worker’, who ‘speedily wins the affection and attention of her classes’,161 and Comrade W. Finnimore ‘guides rather than commands’, and he is a ‘cheerful optimist, with a large-minded tolerance and love of fair play.’ 162 Both men and women are also celebrated for the work elsewhere in the socialist movement, such as Maitland James Neil, Superintendent of Clyde SSS, who ‘is not afraid of work, and is at present secretary for the following local bodies: Trades Council, LRC, and ASE – being an engineer by trade’,163 and Clarice McNab, Secretary of the Edinburgh and District SSS Union and elected member of the Leith School Board, who intervened in a school’s Empire Day celebration, being appalled that ‘half-starved’ children were meant to be celebrating ‘empire’.164 And both are emphasised for their ‘ordinariness’, for their ‘quiet work’ as socialists, as was Alice Eccles, who is ‘not an arresting personality, but she is possessed of those qualities which are not ordinary. An energy which never flags, a zeal which fades not at any reverse, and an aptitude for organisation which compels success in all ventures she may undertake’.165 Then there was fifteen-year-old SSS student and factory worker Ernest Bates, who is ‘a hero, not of any sort of cleverness, but just a humble boy, full of kind thoughts and gracious little things for others’.166 These portraits remind us that the SSS movement was not simply a ‘little children’s movement’ disconnected from the wider politics of turn of the century and early-twentieth-century socialism. Although the CP criticised the SSS movement for its disconnectedness from the adult socialist movement, the organisers and teachers of SSSs were involved in a variety of campaigns. Some actively also encouraged participation of SSS scholars, such as Alex Gossip, whose opposition to the First World War inspired him to lead SSS students in singing songs of support to imprisoned pacifists.167 Other SSS teachers participated in and led struggles around the control, form and content of state education, including campaigns for free school meals, improved school buildings, secular education and against overcrowding, Empire Day and corporal punishment. The adult classes of Bradford Central SSS, for example, lobbied their local MP to increase the school-leaving age to sixteen,168

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while Margaret McMillan, Frederick Gould, Clarice McNab and Joseph Edwards ran for school boards in an attempt to intervene in school policies and practices.169 This culture of activism also had profound impact on SSS students. In Rafeek’s oral history of CP women in Scotland, he argues SSSs offered a socialist culture that provided a genuine experience of gender equality.170 The CP women in his study speak of the culture and curricula of SSSs as being exceptionally influential on their political development. Archived oral history recordings of suffragettes conducted by Brian Harrison also reveal the importance of SSSs as a formative experience of political culture. The suffragette Elsie Flint remembers her SSS experience as a ‘wonderful part of [her] life’ that introduced her to socialist ideas, poetry and books, and which made her ‘the rebel that [she] became’.171 In addition, a range of biographical and autobiographical sources further corroborate this experience for girl scholars, emphasising the profound impact that their early SSS experiences had on their later political life.172 For working-class boys too SSSs emerge as an important site of intellectual and political development. Autobiographical and biographical references to SSSs show close connections between involvement in the SSS and its inclusive political culture, and a lifelong commitment to class struggle.173 In his unpublished autobiography, M. Jenkins, for example writes I shall always be grateful to my mother for introducing me to those early idealists of our movement who had such a deep loving simple faith in the humanity of mankind … I find myself humming the tunes of those SSS afternoons … All through the years since then they have been with me. They left a deep impression on me. They were a mixture, in the main, meek and mild, pleading for right and justice, proclaiming the rights of man, the unfairness of one man living on the labour of another man, at the same time showing the great wealth nature has in store and which is ours for the taking if we will only band together in a great brotherhood of man.174

Conclusion Ostensibly existing on the margins of the public field, the ways in which SSSs were positioned by the broader public and the state reveal a complexity in the cultural and political significance of these schools. In this way, the schools were a kind of counter-public, as their pursuit of alternative political and educational cultures brought them into public contestation. Forced to defend themselves from conservative campaigners, while at the same time resolutely non-partisan, the SSS

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movement also attracted criticism from other contemporaneous radical youth initiatives. Throughout the 1920s, the antagonism between the different children’s socialist/communist initiatives reveals not only operational disputes, but also fundamental political differences across the wider British radical politic. For the SSS movement, the creation of a working-class socialist selfhood was rooted in the conceptualisation of ‘nature’ and of a natural humanity. The mobilisation of the discourse of ‘nature’ brought a confidence in socialism, and with this the tools by which to defend the notion of a universal humanity. It also brought with it a romanticism of country life. Nevertheless, in their passion for a unified working-class subject, SSS organisers glossed over difference and the interrelationships of class with race and empire. Extending the motif of ‘nature’ into the realm of work, SSSs also mobilised gendered discourses and practices, which both affirmed and challenged dominant practices. While women and girls remained encapsulated in normative gendered assumptions throughout SSS literature, propaganda and practices, at the same time, the SSS emphasis on equality and recognition of both women’s rights and women workers afforded the opportunity to create new gender practices. Focus on locality brought political significance to traditional women’s work, while celebration of women’s activism brought women’s campaigns to the fore. Notes   1 NCBSSS Song Book Service Committee, Foreword, in NCBSSS, The Socialist Sunday School Song Book (Glasgow: Socialist Labour Press, 2nd edn, 1917).  2 YS (May 1901), p. 4.  3 YS (September 1901), p. 2.   4 LHASC, SSS/2, Huddersfield SSS School Committee Meeting Book, 7 May 1912–21 April 1914.   5 LHASC, SSS/2, Huddersfield SSS School Committee Meeting Book, 10 June 1912.  6 LHASC, CP/CENT/YOUTH/04/09, NCBSSS, n.d., ‘Socialist Sunday Schools: Aims, Objects and Organisation’, pp. 1–2.   7 SPGB, Mary Gray, handwritten note, ‘Battersea Socialist Sunday School’, n.d.  8 E.g. LHASC, SSS/7, NCBSSS 1926 July National Executive Meeting Minutes.   9 LHASC, SSS/7, correspondence, 13 May 1931. 10 LHASC, SSS/5. 11 LHASC, SSS/7, Jack Allam, ‘The SSS and its future’, n.d.; J. Allam, ‘The Socialist Sunday Schools – Some Historical Notes’, n.d.

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12 LHASC, SSS/2, Huddersfield SSS School Committee Meeting Book, 23 September 1913. 13 YS (March 1901), p. 3. 14 YS (May 1917), p. 50. 15 Harrison, Alex Gossip; LHASC, SSS/7, Alex Gossip summary biography and photograph. 16 E.g. ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (May 1906), p. 41. 17 LHASC, CP/CENT/YOUTH/05/02, Tom Anderson, ‘John Davidson and Mary Davis: lessons given to the Glasgow Socialist Children’s School and to the Central, South Side, Bridgeton and Parkhead Socialist Sunday Schools’ (Glasgow: Reformers’ Bookstall, 1914). 18 See T. Anderson, Proletarian Song Book, School Edition: The Slaves Bade and Salute (Glasgow: Proletarian Press, 1933). 19 MML, PSS pamphlet, T. Anderson, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools: A Review, and How to Open and Conduct a Proletarian School’, September 1918. 20 E.g. Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain’; Linehan, Communism in Britain. 21 A. Young, The Red Dawn: A Book of Versus for Revolutionaries and Others (London: The Northern Division ‘Herald League’, 1915). 22 MML holds a number of these pamphlets including Anderson’s ‘Socialist Sunday Schools. Paul and Paul also place its inception in 1918, in E. Paul and C. Paul, Proletcult: Proletarian Culture (London: Leonard Parsons, 1921). 23 MML, Proletarian School Series, ‘The Class State’, September 1919; ‘The Fat Bourgeois’, February 1919. 24 LHASC, CP/CENT/YOUTH/02/14. 25 Anderson, Proletarian Song Book, p. 58. 26 MML (uncatalogued), Proletarian School Series, John Davidson, ‘Four proletarian dialogues’, November 1918. 27 W. Kenefick, Red Scotland! The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, 1872–1932 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007); Linehan, Communism in Britain, pp. 166–79; for a discussion on ‘proletcult’ or ‘proletarian culture’ see also pp. 251–2 in P. Wexler, ‘“Body and soul”: sources of social change and strategies of education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2:3 (1981), 247–63; A. Miles, ‘Workers’ education: the Communist Party and the Plebs League in the 1920s’, History Workshop Journal, 18 (1984), 102–14. 28 The Government Special Branch reported that Tom Anderson was about to start the monthly publication entitled Proletcult: NA, CAB/24/133, confidential memorandum, 2 March 1922. 29 Anderson, The Proletarian Song Book, p 58. 30 Paul and Paul, Proletcult, pp. 84–5. 31 M. Walls, ‘The whited sepulchre: Christianity and philosophy in Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, in J. Cairnie and M. Walls (eds), Revisiting Robert Tressell’s Mugsborough: New Perspectives on ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008), pp. 151–72. 32 Anderson, Proletarian Songbook, p. 59.

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33 Anderson, Proletarian Songbook, p. 1. 34 Rafeek, ‘Against All the Odds’, p. 41. 35 M. Docherty, A Miner’s Lass (Preston: Lancashire Community Press, 1992), p. 29. 36 YS (January 1922), p. 2. 37 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS Annual Conference Minutes. 38 See Kean, Challenging the State?. 39 Similar criticisms were levelled by the US CP against SSSs, who demonstrated greater ideological synchronisms with anarchists in the years that followed the Russian Revolution: P. Mishler, Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). The CP constantly lobbied radical comrades to join with them and, despite is earlier vehement criticisms of the ILP, the CP welcomed with enthusiasm the affiliation with the ILP Guild of Youth in 1934 (though disillusionment was quickly felt by ILP members): A. Marwick, ‘Youth in Britain 1920–1960: detachment and commitment’, Journal of Contemporary History, 5:1 (1970), 37–51. 40 LHASC, SSS/3, YCI, ‘Outline of Policy Submitted to Edinburgh NCBSSS Annual Conference’, YCI Executive Committee, Department for Children’s Services, Moscow, 19 March 1923 (original emphasis). 41 Excerpt from the Workers’ Child (26 September 1926), quoted by Captain Holt in House of Commons Debate on the Seditious and Blasphemous Teaching to Children Bill, 11 March 1927 (11 March 1927) Hansard, vol. 203, col. 1525–612. 42 Young Comrade 2:18 (May 1927); see also Linehan, Communism in Britain, p. 28. 43 LHASC, CP/CENT/YOUTH/2/14, in the leaflet ‘Form School Groups’, the suggested meeting format was: ‘1) song; 2) school reports; 3) drill – half an hour – or dancing; 4) collection of dues; 5) singing; 6) YOUNG COMRADE – sales reports – discussion on contests – letters etc; 7) Games’. 44 LHASC, CP/CENT/YOUTH/2/14, ‘Form School Groups’. 45 Linehan, Communism in Britain, p. 29. 46 ‘The “Communist” and the SSS Movement’, YS (January 1922), p. 12. 47 LHASC, SSS/3. 48 LHASC, CP/CENT/YOUTH/02/14–1. See also Linehan, Communism in Britain, p. 31. 49 The Times (29 July 1907), p. 18. 50 See Alex Gossip’s entry by Helen Corr and John Saville in W. Knox (ed.), Scottish Labour Leaders 1918–39: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1984), p. 123. 51 The Times (30 July 1920), p. 25. 52 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (November 1911), p. 1056. 53 LHASC, SSS/19, Fulham Socialist Hall Building Fund minute-book 1907– 63. 54 Worcester College, Oxford, XL.2.4(19), L. Glasier, Socialist Sunday Schools. 55 YS (August 1910), p. 755; see also Major H. C. C. Gibbons advertisements

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for ‘Social Sunday School Union’ ‘At Home’, The Times (7 February 1912), p. 11. 56 YS (August, 1910), p. 772; (September, 1910), p. 792; (October, 1910), p.  812. 57 Mrs St. Clare Norriss, Watchman Awake! Save the Children (Author: London, 1911), p. 2. 58 LHASC, SSS/7, pamphlet, ‘Children’s Faith Crusade’. 59 B. Kent, ‘A Memorable Sunday Afternoon’, British Journal of Nursing (20 January 1923), p. 46. 60 SPGB, Mary Gray, British Empire Union, ‘Danger Ahead: Socialist and Proletarian Sunday Schools’, 1923? 61 WCML, National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, ‘Socialist and Other Sunday schools’ (London: Author, 1925); see also Patriot (23 March 1922). 62 ‘Class War Sunday Schools’, The Times (2 December 1924), p. 11. 63 ‘Peace and Sound Finance: English-Speaking Peoples’ Task’, The Times (7 March 1923), p. 7. 64 ‘Proletarian Sunday Schools and Others’, Patriot (23 March 1922), pp. 8–9. 65 Kean, Challenging the State?, pp. 56–68. 66 ‘Red’ Sunday Schools: Action by Conservative MPs’, The Times (27 February 1923), p. 9. 67 ‘Communistic Teaching: Bill to Protect Youth’, The Times (4 July 1924), p.  14; Kean, Challenging the State?, p. 70. 68 ‘Teaching of Sedition: Bill to Protect Children’, The Times (12 March 1928), p. 12; see also K. D. Edwing and A. Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 119. 69 LHASC, SSS/7; Kean, Challenging the State?, p. 70. Later in 1940 it appears that newly introduced legislation ‘bearing on publication of seditious matter during the war’ led the NCBSS to destroy the June issue because of ‘controversial references to the war’: LHA, SSS/9, YS editorial correspondence. 70 Leaflet advertising mass demonstration against the ‘Muzzling Order for Children’: LHASC, CP/CENT/YOUTH/04/09; Kean points out that the bill served to heighten surveillance of socialist and communist groups, with the CP reporting having their publications seized from abroad by Scotland Yard, Challenging the State, p. 70, n. 14. 71 ‘Seditious Teaching of Children’, The Times (4 July 1924), p. 8. 72 Mrs C. M’Nab’, ‘Report from the President, YS (June 1922), p. 62. 73 ‘The 1923 Conference’ and ‘Editorial Notes’, YS (May 1923), p. 50. 74 Kean, Challenging the State?, pp. 58–60. 75 ‘More Bolshevik Literature: Proposed Glasgow Soviet’, The Times (12 August 1919), p. 10. 76 ‘Child Communists’ Trip to Russia: Passports Refused’, The Times (14 June 1927), p. 13. 77 NA, CAB/24/136, memorandum by the Home Secretary, ‘Socialist and revolutionary schools’ (25 April 1922).

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78 YS (October 1901), p. 2. 79 Kean, Challenging the State, pp 69–70, n. 13 and 14. 80 Turner, About Myself. 81 ‘Socialist Sunday Schools’, The Times (23 February 1923), p.8. 82 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS July National Executive meeting minutes, 1926. 83 See R. Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). 84 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (April 1903), pp. 1–2. 85 YS (August 1909), p. 515. 86 Hobsbawm, Uncommon People, p. 160. 87 Children’s Page, YS (September 1917), p. 81. 88 ML, GC Scrapbook, 25. 89 Lizzie Glasier, ‘Labour’s Festival – Our May Day’, YS (May 1905), pp. 34–5. 90 F. J. Gould, ‘King and Boy’, YS (February 1910), pp. 640–1. 91 Fidler, ‘The work of Joseph and Eleanor Edwards’, p. 305; D. Cox, ‘The Labour Party in Leicester: a study in branch development’, International Review of Social History, 6:2 (1961), 197–211. 92 ‘Our Schools’, YS (September 1902), p. 4. 93 LHASC, SSS/13, NCBSSS, ‘Observe and think; notes of lesson for International Sunday’, January 1927. 94 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS Annual Conference minutes, 1911. The Universal Races Congress, described as reflecting ‘humanistic and Christian values’, did manage to attract other prominent radicals of this period including Annie Besant and the Americans John Dewey and W.  E.  B. Du Bois: G. Mosse, ‘The Jews: myth and counter-myth’ in L. Back and J. Solomos (eds), Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 195–205, p. 200. It also received a mention in the chapter ‘Humanity in harmony’ in F. J. Gould’s Brave Citizens: Victors of the Peace (New York: London, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1915). Gould makes particular reference to the Ethical Movement’s Felix Adler, and other Jewish comrades, as spearheading the congress, pp. 107–8. 95 Josephine R. Cole, ‘The Red Ribbon’, YS (October 1902), p. 3. 96 LHASC, SSS/19, Plaistow SSS minute-book 1923–24. 97 LHASC, SSS/16, NCBSSS 1915 Annual Conference minutes. 98 ‘The children of all lands stand for peace, YS (December 1914) [original emphasis]. 99 ‘Editorial’, YS (April 1914), p. 74. 100 W. Stewart, J. Keir Hardie: A Biography (London: Cassell, 1921), p. 258. 101 E.g. Annie Davidson in J. McCrindle and S. Rowbotham (eds), Dutiful Daughters: Women Talk about Their Lives (London: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 56–84. 102 ‘The Zurich Socialist Sunday School’, YS (February 1911), pp. 875–76. 103 ‘Melbourne Socialist Sunday School’, YS (February 1912), p. 40, YS (March 1912), p. 42, ‘Children’s Page’ letter from Melbourne SSS, YS (February 1916), p. 30. 104 ‘For the International!’, YS (October 1902), p. 2.

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105 ‘International notes’, YS (April 1910), p. 675. 106 ‘Children’s Page’, YS (April 1911), p. 929. 107 LHASC, SSS/3, ‘International Bureaux’, Report of the International Bureaux to the London Conference, Easter 1925. 108 ‘Report on International Young People’s Congress, Copenhagen’, Kalek (Alex Gossip), YS (October 1910), pp. 796–97. 109 ‘Portrait’, YS (February 1911), p. 879. 110 LHASC, SSS/2, Yorkshire SSS District Union minute-book, Executive Committee Meeting, 22 January 1916. 111 ‘International Youth Exchange Letter Centres’, YS (December 1922), p.  134. 112 Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain’. 113 ‘War and Two Flags’, YS (February 1915), pp. 18–20. 114 Allen Clarke, ‘The Labour Member’s Lordly Smoke’, YS (February 1915), pp. 21–2. 115 ‘Children’s Page’, YS (September 1917), p. 106. 116 Milton R. Powell, ‘North-East Lancashire District Teachers’ Union’, YS (March 1911), p. 907. 117 A. Booth, From Whirling Worlds to Willing Workers: A World History for Children (Leeds: Author, 1931); A. Booth, Glimpses of Many Lands (Leeds: Author, 1929); A. Booth, Cradle Days of the Human Family (Leeds: Author, 1932). 118 F. J. Gould, Preface in Booth, From Whirling Worlds to Willing Workers, p. 5. 119 ‘Editorial’, YS (April 1911), p. 914. 120 Isabelle O. Ford, ‘Duty of Young Socialists towards Coloured Folk’, YS (March 1911), p. 898. 121 Uncle Allen Clarke, ‘Three Boys: Black, White, Brown’, YS (January 1922), pp. 18–19, YS (February), pp. 30–1, YS (April), pp. 44–5, YS (May), pp. 55–6, YS (June), pp. 66–7, YS (July), pp. 79–80. 122 LHASC, SSS/13, J. Simmons, ‘Some suggestions for lessons in Socialist Sunday Schools’, n.d., [original emphasis]. 123 See, for example, Annie Barnes’ description of maintaining housework and cooking responsibilities while active in socialist campaigns: A. Barnes, Tough Annie: From Suffragette to Stepney Councillor (London: Stepney Books Publications, 1980), p. 55; see also K. Hunt and M. Worley, ‘Rethinking British Communist Party women in the 1920s’, Twentieth Century British History, 15:1 (2004), 1–27. 124 Isabel F Darling, ‘Girls of Today’, YS (October, 1911), p. 1. 125 E.g. Hunt, Equivocal Feminists. 126 Cowman, Mrs Brown, p. 61. 127 YS (June 1902), p. 1. 128 YS (June 1906), pp. 25, 53. 129 LHASC, SSS/4, G. Whitehead, Education in Socialist Sunday Schools, Hyde Socialist Church Sunday School Committee, n.d, pp. 25–7. 130 YS (October 1911), p. 1042.

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131 YS (October 1911), p. 1042. 132 See Teitelbaum, Schooling for ‘Good Rebels’. 133 YS (July 1903), p. 1. 134 YS (October 1903), p. 1. 135 YS (November 1903), pp. 1–2. 136 YS (September 1905), p 67. 137 YS (March 1906), p. 25. 138 YS (September 1906), p. 77. 139 E.g. LHASC, SSS/19, Fulham Socialist Hall Building Fund minute-book 1908–63. 140 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (June 1910), p. 717. 141 E.g. ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (April 1911), p. 917; ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (June 1911), p. 957; Isabella O. Ford wrote a short biography of the French anarchist Louise Michel in the ‘Socialist Saint’ series, which had in the year previous featured no women, YS (June 1911), pp. 964–6; in 1912 Agnes Husband wrote a ‘Biography in Brief’ on Caroline Martyn in YS (January 1912), pp. 13–4; Zelda Kahan wrote the ‘Socialist Saint’ ­biographies of Russian militants Sophie Perovoskaya (YS (October 1909), pp. 540–1) and Zinaida Konopliannikova (YS (December 1909), pp. 604–5. 142 E.g. ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (February 1903), p. 1; ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (April 1911), p. 957. Jane McDermid’s recent exploration of women School Board members also suggests that socialist husbands actively supported their wives’ campaign work, understanding it as ‘integral to their political activities’: in ‘Blurring the boundaries: school board women in Scotland’, Women’s History Review, 19:3 (2010), 357–73, p. 358. 143 YS (January 1916), p. 10. 144 YS (January 1909), p. 386. 145 MML, SSS (uncatalogued). 146 WL, 7MAR/06, biographical notes on Rawle, written by her grandson, Francis Rawle Jnr. 147 WL, 7MAR/04/03. 148 Quoted from the Nelson Leader in J. Liddington, The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel: Selina Cooper, 1864–1946 (London: Virago, 1984), p. 136. 149 Marion Phillips DSc(Econ), discusses the minimum wage for women in(‘Minimum Wage’, YS (January 1912), p. 12; Alex Gossip, ‘A Story of Factory Life’, features the unfair conditions experienced by a girl in her factory workplace and at home in YS (April 1909), pp. 442–3. 150 ‘The Song of the World’, YS (February 1912), p. 29. 151 D. J. Rider of Bermondsey SSS, ‘Pleasures and Pains’, YS (August 1902), pp. 2–3. 152 Keir Hardie, ‘How to Use One’s Talents’, YS (January 1910), p. 618. 153 YS (January 1909), p. 388. 154 YS (April 1909), p. 449. 155 D. D. Hopkinson of the Yorkshire SSS Union, ‘On Being Lazy’, YS (October 1909), pp. 563–4.

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156 ‘Our Declaration’, YS (September 1911), p. 1015. 157 YS (January 1909), pp. 389–90. Chris was answering a question posted by his teacher Zelda Kahan, an SDF member who was also active in running women’s education circles, giving lessons in such topics as industrial history: Hunt, Equivocal Feminists, p. 210. 158 Yeo, ‘A new life’, p. 39. 159 NCBSSS, Socialist Sunday Schools, p. 18. 160 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (March 1912), p. 45. 161 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (September 1911) p. 1017. 162 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (November 1911) p. 1057. 163 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (June 1905) p. 41. 164 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (October 1910) p. 802. 165 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (December 1911) pp. 1078–79. 166 ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (July 1903) p.1. 167 Harrison, Alex Gossip. 168 LHASC, LA/PA/07/1/19, Correspondence on behalf of the Bradford Central SSS from Fred Clegg, 26 May 1907. 169 Margaret McMillan: Greenwood, All Children Are Mine; F. J. Gould: Manton, ‘Filling bellies and brains’; Joseph Edwards: Fidler, ‘The work of Joseph and Eleanor Edwards’; ‘Portrait Gallery’, YS (October 1910), p.  802. 170 Rafeek, Against all the Odds, p. 349. 171 WL, 8SUF/B/029. 172 See Selina Cooper’s daughter Mary’s recollections quoted in Liddington, The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel, p 136; Lee, My Life with Nye, pp 28–9; A. Davidson in McCrindle and Rowbotham, Dutiful Daughters, pp. 56–84. 173 E.g. Tom Murray and Bill Crowe in I. MacDougall, Voices from Work and Home: Personal Reflections of Working Life and Labour Struggles in the Twentieth Century by Scots Men and Women (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2000); J. Mahon, Harry Pollitt: A Biography (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976); LHASC, CP/IND/MISC/1/1, M. Jenkins, ‘A Prelude to Better Days’, Unpublished Autobiography Manuscript. 174 LHASC, CP/IND/MISC/1/1, Jenkins, ‘A Prelude to Better Days’.

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Part III

Black Saturday Schools, 1967–90

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Introduction

Parents have also taken independent action in … setting up Supplementary Schools. It was out of the work and struggles of the first such school, the George Padmore, the Black Community founded in 1969 in Finsbury Park, North London, out of meetings of parents, students and teachers that the Black Parents Movement and the Black Youth and Students Movement was born on April 20, 1975. Throughout the 1970s and the early 1980s, the black population in Britain, and in particular its working class and unemployed fought political battles, particularly on the questions of schooling and the police. Since the watershed of the 1981 mass uprisings in over 60 cities, especially by black youth together with white and Asian youth, the schooling and college systems have responded with an increasing tide of multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-cultural schemes. More books by and about black people are available in schools than before and more and more access courses have been created to produce an increased number of black teachers. However, these moves do not face up to the realities of the schooling system and so will not solve but only tinker with the problems of black parents and their children.1

In this extract from its 1985 position paper, ‘Education for Liberation’, the Black Parents Movement (BPM) writes with political urgency. Connecting Black Saturday Schools (BSSs) with wider struggles for social change, the BPM links its analyses of state schooling with experiences of inequality, prejudice and unrest in the broader black community. Whether it began, as is suggested here by the BPM, with the George Padmore School in 1969, or with Clinton Sealy’s Shepherd’s Bush Social and Welfare Association Supplementary School, established in 1968,2 or with the many other local educational initiatives started in black communities, by the late 1960s and into the early 1970s there emerged a BSS movement. This is a movement that is still on going: BSSs continue to meet after school hours and at the weekend across Britain. In what follows, I present a historical exploration of this important movement, from its emergence in the late 1960s through to 1990. In a very different articulation of ‘emancipation’ in education, BSSs

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follow in the genealogy of radical education that also encompasses SSSs. Reflecting the melange of disjuncture and continuity characterising any historical tracing, the advent of the BSS marks an important cultural, educational and political event in Britain that is unmistakably distinctive from, but which also shares similarities with, SSSs. The defence of their community’s right to, and control of, education, and the challenge these schools took to mainstream schooling policy and practice certainly show the historical (and continuing) significance of the BSS movement. BSSs not only reclaimed schooling opportunity, but also demonstrated black working-class agency within a potent dominant discourse of passivity and incapability.3 Of course, the endeavour of BSS teachers to enact educational action and change was itself characterised by tension and contestation. As organisers moved forward with their programme of proliferating BSSs, they were faced with compelling difficulties around the organisation and coordination of BSSs and finding collective commonality in their purpose. Commitment to, ambivalence towards and rejection of class politics, gendered narratives of blackness, and contested black alliances, all feature within the history of BSSs. In order to uncover the interpretations and articulations of emancipatory education particular to the BSS movement, the following two chapters examine the practices of the schools from their inception in the late 1960s through to 1990. Chapter 5 explores the emergence of the BSS movement in the late 1960s and the articulation of its emancipatory intent through the notion and practice of ‘blackness’. Here the relationship of the tradition of black social movements to BSSs is examined, along with the specific social, political, economic and cultural circumstances from which the schools emerged. Chapter 6 turns to a consideration of BSS practices and their relationship to the wider education field: in other words, the interrelationship between the BSS counter-public and the wider public sphere. In this discussion, the ways in which BSSs created their emancipatory intent as a response to mainstream educational practices and as an independent assertion of their culture and capability is examined. Exploring the way in which the schools variously drew on class, gender and discourses of blackness to assert their intent, three primary themes are considered: the attempt to unveil educational racism and make state schools accountable; the creation of black pedagogies and pedagogues within BSSs; and lastly, the negotiation of community control and governmental involvement in the BSS movement. Before commencing these discussions, I begin here by introducing the many men and women who told their stories for this research, and whose trust was placed in this representation offered hereafter. As discussed

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in chapter 1, in addition to archival sources this history draws on twenty-two interviews with past and present BSS teachers and students. Requests for anonymity by some of those interviewed mean that is not possible to provide detailed biographies or to name the BSSs with which they were involved. At the same time, however, I want to avoid presenting a history of BSSs that is decontextualised and which writes out the foundational importance of personal testimony and narrative in the making of the BSS movement. In what follows I therefore provide a brief introduction to the twenty-two BSS ex- and sometimes current teachers and students who generously gave up their time to share with me their experiences and thoughts on the BSS movement. Reflecting the diversity of the BSS movement the teachers interviewed for this book all had very different perspectives on and experiences of it. In part, some of this can be viewed in generational terms. Certainly, the experience of the migrants of the 1950s and 1960s who forged the initial community relations and resources in which to initiate the BSS movement is distinct from those who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s, and from second-generation black British men and women. In addition, as will be clear in the chapters that follow, BSS teachers had diverse political attachments and community associations. What follows here is a focus on their involvement in the BSS movement. However, it must be noted that for many this was one of many community and political campaign priorities that preoccupied them over the period explored here, 1967–90. This included, for example, establishing black churches, supporting struggles for independence in the Caribbean and Africa, campaigning for better work conditions in Britain and establishing black cultural and artistic festivals and so on. While these diverse interests are explored in chapter 5 in order to contextualise and position the BSS movement within the wider black political and cultural milieu, it is the participation in, and reflections of, the BSS movement that are explored in particular. The first wave: Sophie, Andrew, Alison, Edward, Martin,  Daniel  and  Nelson Active in campaigning around education and establishing BSSs, these seven men and women are part of what could be described as the ‘first wave’ of BSS activists. They started their involvement in the BSS movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s across different cities, from Manchester to Birmingham and London. Many of them were responsible for establishing some of the first BSSs in England and for working across their localities to build a BSS ‘movement’. All but one immigrated

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to England from either West Africa (Andrew and Daniel), or one of the Caribbean islands (Sophie, Edward, Martin and Nelson). Of these, most arrived as university students (Edward, Martin, Daniel and Andrew), but Sophie and Nelson arrived as workers. Alison, a white British woman, became involved in the BSS movement in the early 1970s through her involvement in anti-racist campaigns and her work in the charity and not-for-profit sector. Many of these first-wave activists are still involved in black activism, education and culture in varying capacities. Martin, Nelson, Edward and Daniel continue their work in black education. Martin and Nelson continue to have an active role in BSSs, and Edward and Daniel contribute to black educational campaigns at both local and national levels. Alison continues her work in the community sector. Sophie remains a prominent member of the black community, while Andrew is now more focused on black arts and culture. The second wave: Eve, Grace, Julie, Claudine, Olive, Rebecca, Anne, Alisha, Andrea, Bernice, Nicholas, Michael, Clinton and Wallace These ten women and four men constitute the ‘second wave’ of BSS activists. They became involved either as BSS teachers or students throughout the 1980s, predominantly in inner and outer London and Birmingham. Grace, Eve, Claudine, Olive, Rebecca, Anne and Bernice all became BSS teachers in the early 1980s. All of these women, excepting Claudine, were still working as BSS teachers at the time that the interviews were undertaken. Claudine continues to take a keen interest in the BSS movement, but now works in the education sector more generally. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Alisha attended a BSS as a student, and is now a BSS teacher. Towards the end of the 1980s Julie, Michael and Nicholas all joined existing BSSs as teachers, and are still teachers in these schools. At this time Clinton established his own BSS and is also still working at this school. Andrea, a student of the schools in the mid and late-1980s, is now involved in black youth arts and culture projects. Popular memories: Paul Much of the history of the BSS movement is told and retold in black communities, embedded in collective memories. Indeed, many of those interviewed drew on stories passed on to them in their own telling of the BSS movement. Drawing upon these narratives, I also include Paul, who became a BSS teacher in 1995. Paul worked closely with the

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now deceased founding member of his BSS, whose experiences Paul recounted in telling the history of his BSS, which has been in continuous existence since 1971. Notes   1 GPI, BPM/4/1/1/1, BPM position paper, ‘Education for Liberation: A New Purpose for Schooling and Education’, second draft, 2 December 1985, pp.  1–2.   2 C. Dacosta places the inception of Sealy’s school in 1967 in ‘Ideology and Practice within the Black Supplementary School Movement’ (PhD thesis, University of Surrey, 1987), p. 182, while Clinton Sealy reports its establishment date as 1968 in his own article, ‘Shepherd’s Bush Social and Welfare Association’, Race Today, 4:11 (1972), 355.   3 Reay and Mirza, ‘Uncovering genealogies of the margins’.

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5

‘Give them pride in their blackness’: the emergence of the Black Saturday School movement and real and imagined black educational communities 1

This chapter explores the emergence of the BSS movement. Firstly, in order to understand the intellectual and political influences on the late twentieth-century black politic, the historical and political genealogy of black resistance is examined. Secondly, contextualising the emergence of the BSS movement within the black politic, I explore the historical circumstances that led to the inception and consequent proliferation of BSSs across England, and which gave fuel to their emancipatory impetus. In particular, the influence of the traditions of self-help and black radicalism is considered. Finally, exploring the projection of a black community and selfhood, the placement of ‘blackness’ as a foundational conceptual tenet of BSSs, and the collective cultures they fostered, is considered. In this discussion the core basis of the BSS curriculum and experience is examined in reference to the articulated intentions of the schools. Here complexly interwoven narratives of class, gender and race can be seen moving in and through BSS practice and the ways that teachers and students created understandings of community and self within the educational space of the BSS. The ‘black presence’ in Britain: empire, resistance and the BSS movement In order to understand the social context within which BSSs emerged, and the intellectual and activist tradition from which they borrowed – and distinguished themselves – this following discussion explores the history of black resistance in Britain. An obvious starting point for the story of BSSs is the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush in 1948. Marking the initiation of the significant migration from Africa and Caribbean to Britain after the Second World War, it offers a useful historical ‘moment’ in which to signify the ensuing ‘black presence’ in Britain. Certainly, as will be explored below, it is in the life experiences of this first- and second-generation settlement that the BSS movement can be traced.

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However, this period does not constitute the inaugural ‘black presence’ in Britain,2 and neither was it the sole defining moment that shaped BSSs: the BSS movement actively drew on traditions of black resistance that can be traced to the heart of empire and its practices.3 In the words of the prominent black community campaigner and BSS organiser John La Rose, echoed by ex-BSS organiser Sophie in her interview – ‘We did not come alive in Britain.’4 British imperialism had already brought Africa and the Caribbean, and pervasive practices of racism, into the project of British nationhood and wealth.5 Within this historical context, for both the ‘British subjects’ of the colonies, and the relatively small black British populace of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperialist racism had already made its impact felt.6 Against experiences of subjugation and powerlessness that characterise much of this history, there is a genealogy of struggle and resistance that has served as a crucial foundation for subsequent black social movements in Britain, including – of course – BSSs.7 From the colonies, centuries of rebellious activity against European imperialism created a shared historical consciousness for the black diaspora.8 Both atypical triumphs, such as the Haitian revolution against the French, and more familiar repressions, such as the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica some thirty years after the British Slavery A ­ bolition Act, were reclaimed in the construction of black political identities and communities.9 Indeed, the London radical black bookshop Bogle L’Ouverture was jointly named after Paul Bogle, leader of the Morant Bay Rebellion, who was controversially captured and executed by British forces, and Toussaint L’Ouverture, leader of the Haitian revolution. Paul Bogle was also the name given to one of the first black youth clubs in London.10 In addition, enduring cultures of resistance, such as music and song, can also be found within slave life as men and women struggled against enforced illiteracy and the repression of their heritage, and traced into late-twentieth-century black politics and culture.11 Complementing these black diasporic popular memories of colonial challenges are the concurrent struggles for rights and recognition within Britain itself.12 Here a duality of experience, mediating the historical lineage of imperialism alongside a contemporary placement as a ‘dark stranger’ in Britain, created an intellectual tradition that was both influenced by, and critical of, progressive and radical currents within ‘indigenous’ Britain.13 Consequently, black Britons often joined in alliances with ‘indigenous’ leftist or liberal campaigners.14 From William Davidson and Robert Wedderburn, keen revolutionary socialists of the

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early nineteenth century, to early twentieth-century public office-holders and social campaigners such as Sylvester Williams (Fabian Society) and Richard Archer (LP), there has been a consistent black presence in radical working-class movements.15 Such associations – across temporalities – reflected political commonalities and shared criticism of imperialism and British racism.16 The CP, for example, was one of the first workingclass organisations to campaign against the trade union ‘colour bar’ in the early and mid-twentieth century.17 Such partnerships, however, were not trouble-free. The omnipresent racism and sexism within the working-class left meant black men and women were often left defending their rights within the ‘radical’ milieu before an ambivalent, and sometimes hostile, audience. Frustrated by this, by the late 1950s many Caribbean participants of the CP, for example, had left in order to develop more salient analyses of race, class and social power.18 In Britain, then, there also emerged a specifically black politic that was pivotal to the development of a common black political consciousness. Influenced strongly by early twentieth-century Pan-Africanism, this diverse political field supported a range of prominent black thinkers into the mid- and late twentieth century.19 Here, the analyses of black oppression of such activists as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, Marcus Garvey and George Padmore assisted to create a shared critique of Eurocentric Marxism and British communism while maintaining many core tenets of socialist ideology.20 Reaching across the Atlantic, and building upon previous political traditions, this intellectual current was central to the emergent black politic of the 1960s. By this time, black political and cultural networks began to establish new formations as the growing British populace of African, Caribbean and Asian migrants grappled with their collective experience of racism and inequality.21 Barred from trade unions, rejected from shops and rental accommodation, though many were able to secure employment, the lives of these black migrants were patterned by a constant struggle against ubiquitous racism.22 In response, the black community began creating networks of support and a range of community, welfare, cultural and church-based organisations through which to articulate their identity and assert their rights.23 This cultural and welfare activity was supported and complemented by a concurrent black politic, which connected analyses of their experiences in Britain with a critique of the ongoing repercussions of empire.24 Naming initiatives after key black political thinkers (for example, C. L. R. James, Marcus Garvey and George Padmore all had BSSs named after them), this black network explicitly positioned itself within the existing tradition of black radical thought and activism.

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In this way, the 1960s and 1970s were characterised by the creation of a distinct black counter-public within which scholars, activists, artists, writers and students came to share their analyses and prescriptions for black liberation.25 Incorporating men and women from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, black activist circles attempted to develop shared critiques of class and race inequality in Britain and to forge cross-cultural networks. For many, such alliances were principally about ‘social change and political agency’, and developing joint conceptions of their experience as an ‘under-class’, imbued with racism and imperialist politics.26 Indeed, the community organising at this time was also a response to violent attacks against the African, Caribbean and Asian communities – an experience that would also become important for BSSs. BSS teacher Nelson, who had arrived in Notting Hill in 1955, explains that following successive violent attacks ‘there was a lot of feeling brewing in the black community because things were happening … and it seemed we could get no redress’. The first-ever London Carnival, launched in 1959 by the communist activist and West Indian Gazette editor Claudia Jones, for example, aimed to engender strength and pride in the black community following the shock of recent Nottingham and Notting Hill violence.27 In August of that year, Nottingham ‘experienced a short outbreak of anti-black rioting’, followed by intense media focus on race relations in Britain.28 In Notting Hill, Kelso Cochrane, a thirty-two-year-old Antiguan, died from stab wounds after being attacked by a gang of six youths in the spring of 1959.29 The influential West Indian Standing Conference (WISC) was also established in the wake of communal violence in 1958, taking its purpose as giving a voice to, and making organisational space for, the West Indian community and acting ‘as “a bridge between the English and West Indian communities”’.30 In addition, black bookshops constructed themselves as ‘book services’ – bookshops-cum-social centres – which published and circulated black literature and political material, forming the basis for social and activist networks.31 Complementing this, following in the tradition of Claudia Jones’ West Indian Gazette (1958–64), a range of black press outlets provided a means to construct a common knowledge and shared community by bringing news of the diaspora, black arts and culture, anti-imperialist struggles, and a critical analysis of British social and economic life.32 At the same time, the Caribbean Artists’ Movement brought together political, intellectual and artistic interests to inform the articulation of black identities within Britain.33 Within this diverse black network, political and cultural interests were entwined and embedded together. Alongside community-based cultural

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and social initiatives, campaigns in the workplace (often operating outside, or with little assistance from, trade unions) contributed to the development of a black political field.34 Indeed, it is important to acknowledge the hostile political climate within which the black activist and cultural circles operated, and which they attempted to challenge. The Caribbean Artists’ Movement, Carnival, black bookshops and com­­munity centres all faced serious difficulties in asserting their right to public space and recognition, including fascist attacks and police surveillance and repression.35 The move towards a distinctly ‘black’ understanding in the 1970s engendered new alliances and new points of difference in the various networks. Differences in political priorities created a highly contested field of practice, within which black identities and political projects were diversely understood and pursued. It was within this complex milieu that BSSs forged their own space. Like SSSs, they were localised initiatives, appearing wherever interested men and women had the resources and inclination. Utilising – and developing – the networks of the burgeoning black politic, the parents who established the first BSSs found their impetus in two interrelated experiences of Britain. First, BSSs were a direct response to a profoundly disappointing experience of the English education system, and with this, an ardent desire to struggle for a different world for their children. Second, BSSs were linked to an emergent understanding (and experience) of the social inequalities and class hierarchies within Britain. This second impetus should not be understated. Before embarking on their journey to England, few post-war migrants ‘had seen Europeans in the location of the working class, and certainly not in positions of subordination and conditions of poverty’.36 Experiences of colonisation had fostered the perception that ‘white’ England was emblematic of wealth and power, what Caribbean novelist George Lamming has described as ‘the idea of England’.37 Nelson, for example, remembers the surprise in discovering that ‘even in England a lot of people were unable to read and write’. These experiences of the first-generation post-war migrants had powerful effects. Facing the interlinking experiences of class and racism, it became ever more important for migrants to form collective spaces of resistance, spaces that transcended national differences in the creation of a politically defined ‘black’ – a process that is explored in more detail below. In addition, these experiences prompted widespread critique and criticism of English class structures and its embedded pseudo-scientific racism. Reflecting on this, Nelson goes on to speak of the shock in uncovering the structural systems of inequality that underlay the English education system. As put by Sophie, ‘coming to Britain we expected

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education to have been better than what we had in the Caribbean. And we learnt sadly that it was not really the case for the working-class people, and perhaps too for the white working-class people.’ Given the ‘idea of England’ that pervaded the practices of colonisation, it is unsurprising that these post-war journeys were often characterised by high expectations. Importantly, however, such aspirations were not only connected to understandings and experiences of European colonial power. The unpreparedness for English class relations was perpetuated by complex experiences of social mobility in the colonies and community traditions of self-help.38 ‘Expectations were rooted’, as Alleyne argues, ‘in these parents’ experiences of the colonial West Indies where the main route to social mobility for lower-class Black people was education.’39 In addition, a tradition of resistance to colonialism had long attached community-based education to the reclamation of knowledge, and culture.40 Indeed, it was the burgeoning independence campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s that gave many migrants at this time their ‘zeal’ and ‘fight’, as Sophie describes it. Personal connections with, and ardent support for, the ‘people’s education’ movement associated with the struggles for independence,41 assisted to link a broad black diaspora dedicated to education. Thus, the (past and present) tradition of community-based education was powerfully important for the ‘first wave’ BSS teachers. Andrew, Martin, Edward, Nelson and Sophie all referenced the long history of community-led educational initiatives in constructing their own histories of the BSS movement. Connecting the particular experiences of black migrants in Britain in the 1960s and the 1970s with histories of resistance against colonialism and imperialism provided a way for these teachers to challenge the idea that black students are fundamentally incapable or uninterested in education, while also drawing important links between colonial power and class and race in Britain. Responding to a British society that perpetually positioned them as problematic ‘strangers’ in the midst,42 black migrants began to develop collective understandings of their experiences of class and racism. Like so many migrant communities, placing their hopes for a better life on the next generation, it did not take long for parents to turn their attention to their children’s schooling. The creation of a BSS movement As with the SSS movement, BSSs emerged within existing political cultures that had already started to create a range of children’s and young people’s initiatives. Established by parents, university students

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and community members in local communities, BSSs were extensions of informal and formal gatherings that decided to turn their frustrations into action. These actions also represented a collective response to the working conditions of many black parents, who could not individually provide the sort of educational, or community, experience that they wanted for their children. As early as 1966, for instance, a black community nursery was established in Reading to assist working mothers.43 This collective impetus was central to the development of the BSS movement. Nelson explains, ‘We were very firm in our view that we needed to help our children … but then we realised that the thing was bigger than just parents helping their own children [so] … people then came up with the idea, which sprung up from individual help with parents and close friends to decided that we want what we call a kind of supplementary education.’ Paul’s school, for instance, began in 1971 when its founder member became concerned that schoolteachers could not understand the children’s Patois language. In response, he used a large car available to him through his job as a chauffer to ‘drive around collecting the children to bring them to the centre where they would learn English’. Similarly Clinton Sealy established the Shepherd’s Bush BSS ‘when he saw many black children in the streets after normal school because their parents were still out at work’.44 In addition, broader community organisations also began to take increasing interest in youth- and education-based projects. For instance, the North London West Indian Association (NLWIA), the local chapter of the highly influential WISC, established its Youth Committee and youth club in 1965,45 and Sophie recollected a number of youth summer camps in and around London in the early 1960s. However, without an ongoing national organisational structure that might have actively sought to document these various education initiatives, such as the NCBSSS did for the SSS movement, it is difficult to identity the very first BSS. Nonetheless, it is clear that by 1968 and 1969 there were a number of BSSs operating across Britain, and that there was a growing collective response to black students’ schooling experiences. One of the most pertinent issues that underpinned the growing BSS movement was the practice of setting and streaming in English schools, and related to this, the practice of sending ‘underachieving’ students to schools for the ‘Educationally Sub-Normal’ (ESN). Bolstered by the first-hand witness of a small and growing cohort of black teachers and teachers’ aids, parents grew deeply suspicious of the perception of their children as incapable within state schools, and their subsequent placement in the lowest streams, or removal from mainstream schools into ESN schools. Sophie explains:

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So we had several gatherings and talking about what’s going on with education and how our children were sent into the dustbin schools, special schools was what it was called. And a lot of my generation when they heard the word special they thought it was great. You know? Because in the Caribbean you send your child to a special school, they’re really expected to come out with top marks. But special meant a teacher’s never understand us, they never tried to understand our language … And so our children were sent into these special schools … and I can think about two persons who were teaching at these special schools, and then they realised that what was happening … it was like a dustbin.

In 1965 the Department of Education and Science (DES) lent its institutional approval to the perception of black students as academically inferior. The DES Circular 7/65 entitled The Education of Immigrants makes explicit the ‘problem’ of migrant children.46 Concerned primarily with the ‘difficulty’ of (and necessity for) assimilation, the circular cited acquisition of English as a primary concern, along with the high proportion of immigrant children in some schools and classes.47 Recommending that immigrant children should not make up more than one third of the class, under the heading ‘Spreading the children’ the circular – and the ensuing 1965 White Paper – recommends ‘dispersing’ migrant children across schools via buses.48 In the years that followed, though the policy of dispersal was not adopted wholesale, a number of Local Education Authorities (LEAs) did take up the option of dispersing students among different schools. In Ealing, for example, immigrant pupils were bussed to other borough schools if their neighbourhood school had more than 40 per cent immigrant children.49 Continuing the support of such local uptakes of the policy, the DES again defended ‘bussing’ in 1971 ‘as being solely based on “educational needs”’.50 It is this particular policy event that spurred on the BSS movement, and which politicised many black parents in the process. Specifically, it was the local campaign spearheaded by the NLWIA against Haringey Council’s move in 1969 to introduce a ‘bussing’ policy for its schools, which galvanised black parents’ growing dissent. The Council proposed to ‘band’ schools on the basis of ability testing so that each of the borough’s eleven comprehensive schools would have even numbers of students of differing ability. In the official report to the Education Committee of the Council in March 1969, the dispersal proposal was outlined as being primarily a response to over-stretched educational support services in schools with high numbers of immigrant children. In a section entitled ‘Impact of intake of immigrant children’, the official report stated: ‘These immigrant children come from various countries and have varied backgrounds. Some are highly intelligent and can take

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full advantage of the education offered, others have language difficulties which involve special instruction … Some half of the immigrant children are West Indians.’51 While reflecting a clear struggle to ‘deal’ with the ‘problem’ of an increase in immigrant students, the report couches its discussion about West Indian students in terms of language difficulties and a lack of staffing support and resources. Revealing more strident opinions about the incapability of black students, it was a leaked Council document that prompted parents to rally together in their opposition to the proposal. In a ‘Guardian Special’ on 14 April 1969, the journalist Malcolm Dean publicised the leak just one month after the official report in the article ‘IQ Stigma on Immigrants’.52 The document, Dean states, clearly points to the underpinning assumption within Haringey Council that ‘immigrant children in general, and West Indians in particular had lower IQ than English children’.53 To be sure, the difference in temper between the leaked and official documents makes plain an embedded racism. The leaked document, signed by the Vice-Chairman of the Education Committee, A. J. F. Doulton, contains a section headed ‘Immigrants as a social problem’ within which reference is made to the ‘fundamental problem’ of migrant children.54 Doulton states that, ‘On a rough calculation about half the immigrants will be West Indians at 7 of the 11 schools, the significance of this being the general recognition that their I.Q.’s work out below their English contemporaries. Thus academic standards will be lower in schools where they form a large group.’ For Doulton, this is a state of affairs that must be addressed – he asserts: ‘It is hard not to conclude that events should not be allowed to take their course’. Demonstrating awareness that the targeted dispersal of migrant children would cause a public furore, he suggests ability banding as a means to get around the ‘problem’. He predicts: ‘A head-on assault on the problem, whereby a limit is set on the percentage of immigrants in any one school, will fairly certainly produce an outcry – immigrants not permitted to the school of their choice will shout about racial discrimination, non-immigrants will object that their children are being unfairly handicapped.’ In the end, Doulton concludes that ‘a less direct solution must be sought’, namely, ability-based banding of schools. Rallying against Haringey Council, the local campaigns that ensued from the leaking of this document gave a public voice to the concerns and frustrations of black communities across England. Joining together with the Greek Parents Association to form the ‘Haringey Advisory Centre for Education’, the NLWIA led a fervent campaign to end the banding policy.55 The challenge wrought by Haringey parents rested on two primary criticisms: first, that the Council’s actions undermined

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parents’ control and choice over their children’s schooling; and second, that the ‘problem’ lay in the class inequalities of England, racist presumptions and poorly resourced schools, not with migrant children or their families. As put by the NLWIA, ‘the class stratification of the society ensures the conception of good educational facilities and opportunities for the elites and largely neglects the needs, potentials, and capabilities of the rest. … West Indians cannot accept the responsibility for a situation, which they have neither fashioned nor controlled.’56 Supported by many teachers and head-teachers in the area, Haringey parents protested vehemently against the plans. The analysis developed within this campaign context was given further currency in 1971 when Bernard Coard published his seminal text How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System.57 In this book Coard documented the oversubscription of West Indian children in ESN schools, and, as the NLWIA did, challenged the notion that this resulted from innate differences in IQ. In contrast, Coard outlined the explicit and implicit ways in which the English education system actively supported the continued academic failure of black children. He targeted in particular the placement of black students in ESN schools, low teacher expectations and the denial of black culture, identity and history within the schools. Coard argued that by ‘belittling, ignoring’ and ‘denying’ of black culture, mainstream schools ‘destroyed’ black children’s identities.58 Crucially, Coard connected his analyses of the British education system to a wider critique of British capitalism. He argued that an education system that preoccupied itself with preparing ‘our children for the society’s future unskilled and ill-paid jobs’ was clearly related to the active recruitment, and consequent settlement, of workers for ‘unskilled’ and ‘dirty jobs’ from the colonies following the Second World War.59 The influence of this book cannot be overstated. It was, as Martin described it ‘a bombshell’.60 Supported by other sources that also sought to document the systematic processes of educational disadvantage,61 Coard’s book reflected existing, and increasing, discontent within the black community.62 Alongside his recommendations for the immediate reversal of school policies regarding black children and ESN schools, Coard urged the black community across Britain to open their own nurseries and supplementary schools. He suggested that ‘[t]hrough these schools we hope to make up for the inadequacies of the British school system, and for its refusal to teach our children our history and culture. We must never sit idly while they make ignoramuses of our children, but must see to it that by hook or crook our children get the best education they are capable of!’63

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It was around this time that what had previously been small localised educational initiatives started to become a BSS ‘movement’. Providing particular encouragement for this growth was the concurrent establishment of the Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association (CECWA), which started to meet at least by 1970. In 1971 writing in its newsletter CECWA argued ‘all black teachers, youth officers and others (professional or otherwise) to throw their lot to help any Supplementary Black School which might be functioning in their area’.64 CECWA’s call to action did not go unheeded. In the years that followed Andrew recalls ‘the proliferation of geographical schools all over London: each little area had their school and community organisations’. Undoubtedly, CECWA was central to the growth of the BSS movement. It hosted talks, conferences and seminars on the topic of education, including discussions of Coard’s book, and drew many BSS organisers and teachers into its activities.65 Its first chair, John La Rose, had particular impact on the BSS movement. Having arrived in Britain in 1961, by 1966 John La Rose had established the radical black store and publishing house New Beacon Books through which to support black writing from across the world in Britain.66 Indeed, it was New Beacon Books that published Coard’s book in 1971, and La Rose who was active in the campaign against Haringey Council. In addition, a diverse range of black activists and intellectuals were drawn to the BSS movement. This included, for example, Jessica and Eric Huntley of Bogle L’Ouverture Books, London’s Winston Best, Ansel Wong, Waveney Harris, Lemuel Findlay and many more.67 Also, the work of Gus John and others assisted to connect BSSs in Birmingham and Manchester with the burgeoning national BSS movement.68 In addition to these more well-known names, BSS meeting minutes and school pamphlets are filled with messages of gratitude to the many local activists who sustained the BSS movement: Peter Moses BSS, for example, notes the work of Sandra Edwards and Tony Monroe along with Jessica Huntley,69 while Winston Best in Foundations of a Movement mentions Richard Riley, ‘very much an unsung hero’, and Tim Phillips.70 And of course, in addition to these names available in the public domain, were the many teachers I spoke with and the men and women they talked about in reflecting upon their BSS experience. This local character of the movement was reflected in its spread across England. The BSS movement was certainly not limited to inner and greater London. As black communities resolved to create the educational opportunities and experiences they wanted for their children themselves, BSSs appeared across England. Oxford, Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham and Manchester, for example, were all host to BSSs. And yet,

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while arising in – and responding to – diverse local contexts, BSSs found common purpose in their desire to promote black culture and identities and to challenge systems of educational failure in state schooling: in the words of a Manchester BSS, an undertaking to ‘make sure that all black children of Manchester are kept out of the schools for the Educationally Sub-Normal’.71 Thus, the spread of BSSs throughout the 1970s clearly indicated a common concern for educational opportunity. However, these schools were by no means unified in their approach. Emerging informally, like SSSs BSSs were assuredly local in character. Given their fragmented nature, and in the absence of an ongoing national organisation that may have retained comprehensive records (like the NCBSSS), it is difficult to assess the exact scope and scale of BSSs. Nevertheless, it is clear that these localised individual projects did expand to what could be described as a movement. Regular conferences, talks, and seminars provided opportunities for BSSs to share experiences and to coordinate activities. To be sure, BSSs made various attempts to create regional and national alliances and associations. As early as 1970 a meeting of BSS teachers, with John La Rose as its chair, met to discuss collaboration of BSSs in London, listing eight schools known to be operating: Paul Bogle Youth Club, Shepherd’s Bush Welfare Association School, South East Blackpeople’s Association, Notting Hill University for Black Studies, Islington Card School, Marcus Garvey School, C. L. R. James School for Black Studies and West Indian Youth League.72 Two years later, London BSSs launched a Coordinating Council of Black Supplementary Schools (CCBSS), which aimed to provide support to existing BSSs. Circulating a letter to BSSs in London, the CCBSS suggested that it could assist by ‘devising a common education policy’ and curriculum for BSSs, as well as distributing resources and information, and even ‘perhaps a journal’.73 And while the Council continued to meet at least until 1974, at which time fifteen schools were officially aligned, there is no further evidence of its operation into the late 1970s.74 Throughout the 1980s similar attempts were made again to institute cross-school coordination, this time at a national level. Nelson and Martin both spoke of these initiatives and their importance in providing points of connection with fellow BSS teachers and organisers. In 1982, and again in 1987 following a lacuna in its activities, BSS teachers created a National Association of Supplementary Schools (NASS).75 By this time, BSSs in London had proliferated to at least sixty.76 As Clinton Sealy put in a discussion paper proposing the establishment of an ‘Association of Supplementary Schools in London’, ‘the time is ripe for setting up an umbrella organisation’.77 Undoubtedly, these organi-

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sations did remain somewhat London-centred. Edward suggested that these organisations were ‘made up [by people] principally from the London area’, with ‘others coming in from provincial cities’. Nevertheless, these transient ventures did assist in establishing personal connections across BSSs, and in supporting the cultural resources for a national movement, however London-centred. Indeed, while in operation, NASS did, in Edward’s words, ‘a lot of things: we had a research and archives committee, and an education and public events committee’. For Claudine, working in Birmingham, collective events such as conferences and seminars provided an opportunity to stay connected with BSS across England. Though such opportunities did not solely occur through national forums such as NASS. Within cities and regions, BSSs joined together in a range of capacities – to celebrate students’ work, to discuss campaigns and to share ideas.78 Claudine explains, ‘I remember lots of conferences up in Manchester … all without a formal structure as such, but all knowing that we were part and parcel of the same movement. So, we’re up in Birmingham, but we know the London lot, the Manchester lot, the Leicester lot.’ Despite a lack of documentation concerning the exact number of BSSs across England throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it is clear that the schools constituted a ‘movement’ and were avenues for, and spaces of, black dissent and activism. Of course, while numbers are always a useful referent for historical understanding, the significance and meaning of BSSs is found in their cultural and social import for those who participated in the schools. This was a movement that gave expression to a discontent with the English education system, to a deep commitment in educational opportunity, and to a pride in black history, culture and knowledge. Constructing blackness: real and imagined educational communities ‘Black was a political colour’ It is essential for the children to establish confidence in themselves and realise that they have inadequacies because they are black. This confidence is undermined when the image they constantly confront is that of the white person always at the top, always taking the lead. Lack of black people at the head of organisations would reinforce the myth that black people are incapable of doing anything on their own without the help of the white associated groups. Therefore we have opted for an all black organisation.79

Taken from the aims and objects of the Marcus Garvey BSS, this excerpt captures much of the political (and educational) intent in developing black educational spaces. In an attempt to counter the privileging

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of European culture, knowledge and authority that pervaded state schooling, employment and social institutions, BSS activists work to reclaim, and assert, black identity and history. This objective is clearly seen in the political trajectory of the BSS teacher Peter Moses, whose life was cut short by leukaemia in December 1972, just months after assisting to establish the Marcus Garvey BSS. Indeed, the Marcus Garvey BSS ‘Aims and Objects’ quoted above were published as part of a leaflet commemorating and celebrating the life and activism of Moses. Later, in 1986, the announcement of the founding of the Peter Moses School describes Peter as ‘always active in black politics’ and central ‘to the movement which was emerging to provide supplementary education for our children’.80 As with many activists of the early 1970s, Peter’s commitment to the BSS movement arose out of the critical awareness provided by Coard’s book. Brother Clarence writes that when he and Peter attended a lecture by Coard on 1971, they resolved to become part of the BSS movement.81 Like many others, Peter Moses’ commitment to the BSS movement was born out of his political activism more generally. Moses was a foundation member of the Black Active Militants, which worked in collaboration with the Black Liberation Front (BLF). Central to the politics of these organisations was an assertion of black identity in the face of racism. Moses, and others, were concerned with bringing positive, and politically charged, black identities to black children and young people: ‘You are black not coloured, you do not have to accept what the white people dish out for you!’, 82 or, as put by the journal of South London BSS Ahfiwe, ‘the inseparable tie is our blackness’.83 One BSS organiser put it this way in a BSS newsletter: Can’t escape confrontation Living with frustration Man tell me ‘bout ‘education’ Say it a passport to liberation But find I’m losing out some way Not many roads to choose. Can’t run from REVOLUTION “Evolution” was never a solution Those who always take Find it hard to give Fabrications and lies – That’s no way to live … Don’t tell me we all the same now Don’t fill me with confusion 400 years you tell me I’m Evil

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Black Saturday Schools, 1967–90 Don’t give me more illusions Don’t tell me ‘bout you history – ‘bout Churchill and Lincoln And Kennedy and de Gaulle, Listen to me about Malcolm X, George Jackson, Patrice Lumumba, Fanon – Nelson Mandela LISTEN! Do we have to write it in blood? Do we have to refine it with wars? Are you taking it in? Or do we have to bang down your doors?84

Borrowing from and adapting the ideological apparatuses provided by the US Black Panthers, developing upon the existing traditions of Caribbean radicalism, and influenced by the British Black Power movement, there emerged a highly localised and ‘fluid’ black movement.85 Although diverse, this black cultural field gave political and linguistic clarity to the growing critique of – and challenge to – collective experiences of racism and social inequality. At its foundation, ‘blackness’ attempted to incorporate struggles against racism in the African, Caribbean and Asian communities. Common experiences of racism in schools, the workplace and community brought Asian and African Caribbean communities together in a number of campaigns throughout the 1970s and 1980s.86 The persistent and unifying experience of racism defined the cultural and political terrain within which black politics – and the BSS movement – made its mark. Black young people and parents were central to the campaign response to a number of key incidents over this period. This included the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar by a group of five white youths in 1976,87 the ‘New Cross massacre’ house fire that killed thirteen young people in 1981, and which the black community suspected was a racist arson attack,88 and the death of the solidarity activist Blair Peach at an anti-fascist rally in 1979.89 Moreover, in addition to fascist attacks on black bookshops, police surveillance and criminalisation of black young people (often while on their way home from their local state schools, as will be discussed below) literally brought home the necessity for campaigns for change.90 This wider social context was fundamental to the politics of blackness. As Alison explained, for many BSS organisers, ‘black was a political colour’, which explicitly aimed to include Asian, African and Caribbean interests within a united challenge to racism in education. Such intent gave rise to both adult and children’s education initiatives. In addition to the growth of BSSs across the 1970s, a diverse range

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of adult community-based black education projects also emerged. At the Holloway Institute, courses for adults on Swahili and Black Studies were offered, while a series of lectures entitled ‘Political economy of the black world’ in November 1974 focused on ‘the structural problems associated with the economy of Black countries their interrelation with the politics of power and exploitation’.91 Cultures of blackness In BSSs, teachers aimed to bring the politics, identity and culture of blackness to children and young people embedded with high expectations of academic achievement and potential. In doing so, they created the educational and cultural spaces in which both teachers and students could explore what it meant to be ‘black’. Alisha and Andrea, for instance, both credit BSSs with awakening an awareness of, and commitment, to black culture and identity. For them much of this emerged informally through the wider functions of the schools in providing opportunity to explore black culture, food, music and literature. In her recollections, Alisha emphasised the influence of the cultural activities provided by her BSS, summing up her schooling experience as being ‘taught to make Caribbean food, doing a bit of maths, and taking part in performances’. Such activities are also documented throughout the archived documentation of BSSs. Schools organised black drama performances, music, poetry readings, chess clubs, football clubs, film showings and ‘cultural evenings’. George Padmore BSS, for example, wrote to parents to advertise an upcoming cultural evening, in which: ‘The students of the junior and senior schools have arranged a programme of drama, songs, poetry readings, dramatised readings of texts used in our normal classes. There will also be guest artists.’92 Both Alisha and Andrea emphasised the importance of diversity and difference when reflecting upon the conception and practice of blackness within their BSSs. The practices of blackness within BSSs involved continuing personal and familial heritage, at the same time embracing multiple traditions. Reflecting on the racism experienced by people from ‘India, Jamaica, Barbados etc’, Southall’s People’s Unite Educational and Creative Arts Centre sums it up in their third objective, ‘To work for the fundamental aim of unity, trust and understanding’.93 For example, Alisha (now a BSS teacher herself) spoke of the importance of her BSS in carrying on Caribbean traditions from her parents, and as a space in which to meet black people from other backgrounds, which in the case of her neighbourhood was the local Pakistani community. Andrea also noted similar experiences, though in her case it involved creating spaces

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of black educational opportunity for both the Caribbean and African communities. She recollected: The other interesting thing about the school was it mixed Caribbean, African and mixed-race kids, because when I was in primary school there was a lot of racism from Caribbean kids towards African kids, as most Caribbean kids had been born here – of my generation anyway – and a lot of the African kids were first-generation … I think it was quite good that the school brought together information about these two different continents and areas … at least exposing you to a little bit of information of other parts of the diaspora.

Andrea’s school therefore attempted to practise an inclusive, but diverse, blackness: one that aimed to both transcend and recognise difference in its development of a collective blackness. Andrea talked of this as also occurring through the curriculum of the BSS. She spoke of the power of learning ‘basic knowledge’ of African and Caribbean geography, history and culture in her BSS in developing a sense of black self. In this way, the black alliances forged through and in BSSs aimed to avoid strict narrow cultural definitions of ‘black’.94 Rather they looked to what Brian Alleyne describes as a kind of ‘tactical essentialism’ – a broad inclusive and flexible common notion of black that attempted to incorporate a range of cultures and ethnicities. In many ways, the power of these alliances lay in the community-based organising that BSS teachers and students participated in outside, but related to, their ­participation in the BSS movement. For example, the BPM was founded in 1975 following the brutal beating and arrest of Cliff McDaniel, son of a friend of the BSS organiser John La Rose. Based in London and Manchester, the BPM had links with similar organisations in Nottingham, Rugby, Northampton, Reading and Ipswich.95 Forging links across different communities, the BPM proudly included African, Caribbean and Asian parent groups and supplementary schools.96 Indeed, by the late 1970s, parents, community members and students from a range of backgrounds were brought together in a range of campaigns and inclusive organisations. This included the ‘scrap sus’ campaign, which actively monitored, exposed and publicly dissented to the targeted use by police of stop-and-search powers on African, Asian and Caribbean young people.97 Such campaigns and organisations created an intergenerational organising space for black men and women, across a range of cultures.98 This also included a range of similar alliances led by black young people. For example, having a close relationship with the BPM, in 1975 the Black Youth Movement (BYM) was formed.99 One year later, in response to the murder of an Asian teenager in Southall, the Southall Youth Movement was established. Connected to the rise in

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women’s organising, the 1973 the Brixton Black Women’s Cooperative was established,100 and later, in 1978, the Southall Black Sisters and the Organisation for Women from African and Asian Descent.101 Undoubtedly these organisations and campaign collectives at the very least affirmed the need for black unity. However, this was never an easy task. Most, if not all, of the groups above went through extensive periods of self-reflection as they attempted to create inclusive spaces of blackness.102 This was a concern that also reached the BSS movement. Though aiming for inclusive black cultures, invariably the expression of collective identity ran into difficulty and contestation. Indeed, it is important to note that while BSSs created educational spaces imbued predominantly with Caribbean and African culture, Asian communities also established their own independent initiatives, such as the Indian Workers’ Association Supplementary School, established in 1971, and the Bengali East End Community School, in 1977.103 As Andrew explained, ‘… it became the ideal this notion of blackness. And at the time it was a political term that incorporated all minority groups. So the distinction between Asians, Africans and other communities didn’t really dominate. So there was a kind of uncritical assumption of victimhood through race, and [then] that became challenged and became something for us really to look at.’ Blackness and social class In addition to tensions and differences concerning the articulation of blackness, the BSS movement also hosted a variety of perspectives surrounding class politics. Underpinning many of the alliances was the common experience of class inequality in Britain. Described, for example, by Gus John as a black working-class education movement,104 BSSs often combined critique of class and race relations in order to analyse their and their children’s experiences in Britain. Black children were understood to share in the inequality experienced by their white working-class peers, but to have this further compounded by racism.105 Edward, for instance, talked about the intensification of social class through the proliferation of racist practices throughout social relations. He asserted that the fundamental difference between white and black working-class experience came in the ways in which racism pervaded not just institutions (schools, workplaces, trade unions), but in and through community and public life. The coupling of race and class (albeit a reconstituted notion of class) presented as a recurrent theme across the interviews. Teachers understood their work as challenging racist practices and at the same time

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the historical processes of class constitution in Britain. Consequently, their work in BSSs was seen to reflect a fundamental challenge to class structures, as Edward explains: These people were mainly uneducated, working-class people, labourers and peasants from these islands out in the Caribbean sea. They don’t fit well into the stratified class-based education system, except in so far that they belong among the indigenous working class. So for them to have aspirations similar to what middle-class people in the system automatically expect was effrontery.

Along with Edward, Daniel, Sophie and Martin also perceived their work as necessarily connected to broader working-class campaigns for social change. Importantly, such connections often occurred at an organisational distance from traditional leftist groupings. Daniel, for example, was deeply sceptical of the apparent emphasis placed on party recruitment, rather than campaign aims, by many radical and socialist working-class organisations. Others in the BSS movement were less concerned with building alliances across the working class. These teachers argued not for black activism rooted in working-class politics, but a movement of black men and women into the middle class in order to effect change. Nelson, for example, embraced more fully the notion of social mobility: ‘we were aspiring middle classes … we became middle classes through the professions when we became doctors and lawyers and things like that’. Invariably, there were complex interconnections between these two positions. As mainstream British education, and the wider social world, contained virtually no examples of black success, BSS teachers commonly emphasised the possibility for black achievement within the existing social structures. Furthermore, the explicit and implicit processes of racism across British society left teachers in no doubt what their main task was. As put by Valentino Jones, teacher and founder of the Josina Machel BSS: ‘Black people know that the main factor behind there children’s miseducation is RACISM. Racism is divisive, obviously it relegates the Black Community to the most disadvantaged position in the social and economic spheres.’106 To this end, mediated by the political commitments of teachers, the celebration of black historical figures featured heavily in BSSs. For instance, Daniel explains that he ‘wasn’t interested in Mary Seacole … we would get [students] to read about famous black figures … that had a class perspective, like Malcolm X’. Even for those such as BSS teacher Julie, who shied from explicit involvement in left-wing and workingclass political loyalties, radical historical figures such as Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey were also central to the representation of black success.

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In other words, the portrayal of black accomplishment across the BSS movement correlated achievement with the struggle for recognition and against social class relations in the wider community. Subsequently, alongside uncovering black histories of strength, the BSS movement also lionised the efforts of local men and women in local pursuits. As often as schools were named after great black leaders, such as the Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Queen Mother Moore and George Padmore schools, they were named after men and women engaged in the everyday struggle for rights and recognition that patterned black community life: Claudia Jones was resolutely committed to the self-organisation of black communities;107 Albertina Sylvester was a black working-class mother involved in a number of community campaigns in North London whose children went to the school named after her;108 and both Lemuel Findlay and Robert Hart were key BSS and community organisers.109 Daniel, involved in the network of London BSSs throughout the 1980s, talked about the significance of naming schools after local activists. He spoke in particular of the importance of reclaiming the history of great black men and women alongside celebrating the everyday struggle of those involved in community activism in the present. The heralding of past and present local heroes reflected a general reliance on the independent creativity of black men and women to sustain their struggle for rights and recognition. Like the SSS movement, the celebration of local efforts fostered a tradition of class politics that granted importance to the everyday lives and struggles of the working class. In distinction, this new, particularly black, creation of localism understood itself as an independent and novel current. In the opening speech at the Caribbean Teachers’ Conference on 6 April 1974, Rev Wilfred Woods put it this way: Our task in the black community is essentially different from the task of the society around us. Theirs is the task of keeping the society from falling apart. Ours is a task of creating the right kind of community within this society. So I hope you will not undervalue your potential for creation, that is to say, that you see yourselves essentially as pioneers and because we are pioneers there is no good looking around to find blueprints of what other people did in this situation because it is a comparatively new one.110

Ensuing from their varied political backgrounds, the way in which schools carried out this task varied significantly. For some, like Peter Moses, there was an explicit coupling of BSSs with the political project of radical black organising. Similarly, in London the Black Unity and Freedom Party (BUFP) established the South East London Summer School, the BLF founded Headstart, and both the Black Panthers (BP) and the BLF were involved in the educational programmes in the Grass

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Roots Self Help Community Project.111 In addition, the Birmingham Afro Caribbean Self Help BSS counted among its teachers university students from the organisation Black Unity.112 As community worker Alison explains, for black political parties BSSs were ‘integral to their work … it wasn’t disguised in any way, it was part and parcel’. Reflecting similar political intents were also a number of independent BSSs free from formal political associations, such as the George Padmore Supplementary School (later named George Padmore Community School) established by John La Rose, and Ajoy Ghose’s Malcolm X Montessori Programme.113 Making explicit their desire to promote educational achievement alongside radical black activism, these schools constructed a dual curriculum incorporating black politics and culture, and academic success. For instance, a letter of introduction to the community from the Summer School’s Committee of the BUFP, signed by the radical Caribbean activist Roger Lofters, explained the impetus of the Summer School as lying in ‘children being wrongfully placed in ESN schools’ and in ‘unemployment’.114 The Summer School advertised evening classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for ‘academic and recreation’ held at Lewisham, Peckham, Brixton and New Cross, including lessons on English, maths, geography, black history, typing and current affairs.115 Examining the curriculum resources and student notebooks from BSSs it is clear that these schools created a politically imbued curriculum in which to foster black selfhood, critical analysis and educational achievement. Offering particular insight into this are the impressive archives left by the North London George Padmore and Albertina Sylvester schools. The curriculum materials of these schools include comprehension exercises on ‘How the slave trade started’, the history of Jamaican trade unionism, and the autodidactic traditions of key Caribbean social activists; dictation exercises on the natural environment; lecture notes on ‘Crusoe and the establishment of empire’; and O level sample papers.116 Similarly, the South East Black Peoples’ Organisation teachers’ meeting in 1969 recommended Harry Haller’s two texts (complete with teaching notes) on Martin Luther King and on the notion of Self-Help.117 Student workbooks reflect this curriculum focus. For instance, a student of George Padmore BSS was given an ‘A’ for an essay on the ‘Emancipation of the British slaves’ in which he concludes that it was not the humanitarian, but the economic factor, which led to the end of slavery.118 Alongside their academic studies, and often embedded within their numeracy and literacy work, student workbooks of the George Padmore and Paul Bogle BSSs reveal that students completed lessons on a range of black-centred topics, including African history and geography

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and black literature.119 In addition, as with the SSS attempt to develop literary cultures around their educational intent, BSSs consciously built their libraries around black culture and politics, a task in which, unsurprisingly, the George Padmore and Albertina Sylvester schools were particularly active, given their connection with the New Beacon bookstore.120 Of course, schools varied significantly in the ways in which they combined a focus on black politics and culture with a desire to ensure black children and young people experienced academic success. Offering a different emphasis to that of the George Padmore and Paul Bogle schools, for example, Clinton Sealy’s Shepherd’s Bush BSS took a more traditional approach to its educational remit. Alison recalls that this school focused ‘strictly on maths and English’, and was ‘run very much on an autocratic manner’. Importantly, however, a more conservative pedagogical approach did not mean that such schools were less concerned with challenging racist assumptions and practices in schools and in the community more generally. Sealy’s approach was rooted in a concern to undermine structural patterns of black failure, and in the celebration of black heritage and culture.121 As Sealy wrote, BSSs ‘provide a framework in which each child can reach his full potential. Pupils can identify with black adults who are in positions of authority and thus they can relate to their colleagues and to their teachers.’122 In part, the common focus on intergenerational spaces of educational achievement borrowed heavily from the traditions of self-help. As put by Ivan Johnson of the People’s Unite Educational and Creative Arts Centre, ‘There is an old saying “IF YOU KNOW TEACH, IF YOU DON’T LEARN”. Self help is the key to our future.’123 Undeniably, the practices of self-help education for BSS teachers were imbued with the reclamation of knowledge authority, and with this a critical response to social presumptions of black inferiority. In his 1969 position paper, Harry Haller, for example sets out the principles of ‘self-help education’, in which he emphasises the importance of individual love and respect for students, who have experienced years of ‘failure’ in state schools.124 For those who connected their BSS work with analyses of the structural class and race inequalities in British society, self-help education became part of a wider political project. Here, practices of self-help were incorporated within broader struggles for equality.125 In her West Indian World article ‘Self-help groups alone will not achieve change’, for example, Norma Gibbes argued ardently against the notion of selfhelp education as a panacea. In a critical response she asserted: ‘Good strong pressure groups, and I don’t mean mushrooming organisations which appear to exist for socialising only, can represent us and achieve for us at a National level those things which as individuals we cannot

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do.’126 Similar sentiment was found in the Malcolm X Montessori School programme, which, believed ‘that slum dwellers MUST learn to improve themselves and their conditions by a STAND-UP philosophy and a SELF HELP programme’,127 or in the Sundiata Liberation Centre for Children, which aimed ‘to do more than raise the consciousness of Black Children but to activate the Pan-Africanist concepts and develop them into modes of daily living’.128 Reflecting broader contestations in the black politic, these differences in orientation created a highly contested field of practice within which BSS organisers and teachers constructed their own individual purposes. For example, while ex-BSS teacher Andrew was involved in organisations such as the BLF, and understood his BSS work as unambiguously linked to a broader political agenda, he found himself needing constantly to defend his intent: So there was that kind of problematic where we had to justify what we were doing, and how and why and if we confronted racism as a result of what we were doing – structural racism … I remember us struggling with some of those things because we were on the receiving end of a lot of the criticisms. We had to find a place for ourselves. Yes we were seeking change, what sort of change did we want? What sort of society were we looking at?

In responding to such questioning BSS organisers and teachers remained resolute in their purpose: across their diverse political orientations all BSSs understood their work as central to the project of challenging racism and promoting black history, culture and identity. Or, as put in the motto adopted for Manchester’s 1978 Roots Festival, a celebration of black education and history: ‘A race without the knowledge of its history is like a tree without roots.’12 Community, gender and blackness This development of black identity and communality drew heavily on notions of community and family. The events hosted by the schools and the schools themselves attempted to incorporate all family members into their activities. Andrea, whose father taught in her BSS, explains that for her the BSS ‘felt as much about being a community group and networking those families together, as it was an educational establishment’. Likewise, the teachers interviewed for this research often spoke of their attempt to create open spaces within which parents, children and interested community members could be made to feel welcome. For some, perhaps unsurprisingly, the creation of a black community necessitated black autonomy. For example, a 1984 family event at Langham

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School celebrating black historical figures, called ‘Hero’s Day’, advertised itself explicitly as ‘strictly an Afrikan families occasion’.130 This was, as has been explored above, fundamentally linked to reclamation of authority and a need for students (and teachers) to participate in spaces of black achievement and success. Of course, such decisions were never made lightly. Having many supporters outside the black community, the organisations within the BSS and associated movements often had to make difficult decisions regarding the levels of black autonomy. The BPM, for example, debated the participation of white parents of black children and white partners of black parents.131 Marcus Garvey School explains its decision to ‘opt for an all black organisation’, on the basis that ‘it is necessary for black people to become more interested and concerned with helping themselves without taking the initiative, lead or stimulus from a white group’.132 Over a decade later, in 1986, the Paul Bogle BSS explained, ‘The school is organised primarily for black children, but is open to all children whose parents feel they can benefit from the service we provide.’133 To be sure, for many the inclusion of white children and parents indicated a political commitment to openness and broader community alliances. Both Nelson and Julie, for example, noted the attendance of white children at their BSSs as a marker of their inclusive politics.134 Whether enshrined in an organisational rule or not, the need for black spaces within which to recreate community and familial relationships was paramount for BSS organisers. BSSs attempted to engender black selfhood and history in a wider educational and social context that at best ignored, and at worst denied, this. Nelson explained: ‘We tried to give the West Indian child a flavour of their background, where their parents came from and why they came here. Because I think, and I feel that I am right, that their parents were afraid to tell their children about their background and why they came here and that sort of thing. And I suppose it was better coming from members of the community, which gave the parents then courage to talk about it themselves.’ In many ways, therefore, generating black collectivities was as much to do with asserting black selfhood as it was an attempt to counter an apparent discontinuity and fragility in communities. Many BSSs understood themselves as directly responding to, and intervening into, fractious urban neighbourhoods. Across the interviews, for instance, BSSs teachers talked about their work as a project of recovering black community and family. Grace, for example, spoke of the ‘concrete jungles’ that foster ‘fragmented’ social relations. Similarly, the East London Black Women’s Organisation (ELBWO), which had as its primary remit the education of women

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and children, spoke in 1984 of ‘alienation’ and a lack of ‘kinship links’ owing to housing estate environments.135 Against this backdrop, Grace’s involvement in a women’s education organisation was a way of ‘supporting each other’ and ‘meeting and sharing’. The concern to rejuvenate black community and family invariably contained a gendered dynamic. Across the black political field, women were often presented as the defiant survivors through whom the regeneration of black selfhood could occur.136 ELBWO, for example, asserted: ‘Women and the family constitute the backbone of a people and it is therefore a tribute to the black woman that under such a savage and brutal system of oppression she can still recognise the value of her identity, her honour and the fact that we can still speak of a black family.’137 Overlapping with BSS organising, many women’s organisations throughout the 1970s and 1980s devoted themselves to children’s education. In their influential book, The Heart of Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain, Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe note the significance of children’s and young people’s activism for black women. ‘For Black women’, they argue, ‘challenging the education system has been part of a wider struggle to defend the rights and interests of the Black community as a whole … since we bear and rear the children, overseeing the institutionalised care provided by the schools – an extension of child rearing – has also been seen as our responsibility.’138 Certainly, for the women interviewed for this project, and those as part of the Black Cultural Archives oral history project,139 connection to family and community were strong motivators to become involved in BSSs. It was often BSS teaching and campaigning that brought women together from different groups and localities. One activist at this time, for instance, reflects that it was the ‘sus’ campaigns that prompted joint action by the Haringey Black Sisters and Brixton Black Women groups.140 Speaking of the BSS movement, she reflected that ‘the why [of the BSSs] was a deep understanding of how our children were being under­­­ educated and miseducated’. ‘The BSSs’, she suggests, ‘­demonstrates the capacity to sustain a community structure.’ At the same time, however, as will be explored in the following chapter, the project of reclaiming black identity, culture and educational success through BSSs was by no means restricted to women’s work. Undoubtedly, the political and educational intent of BSSs was one that inspired both men and women. Across England, parents, university students and community members found purpose and commonality in the political and educational enterprise of fostering black success and black pride.

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Conclusion As frustration rose in response to racist employment, policing and schooling practices, the BSS movement emerged in the late 1960s within an existing network of community and political black activity. Drawing inspiration from the traditions of self-help education and resistances against slavery and subjugation, the BSS counter-public gave voice to an emergent collective consciousness of racism in children’s education in Britain. Organised locally, like SSSs, BSSs arose where interest and resources allowed, and were embedded within neighbourhood cultures. Importantly, the growth of the movement across the UK had a significant interrelationship with the campaign work of parents to intervene on behalf of their children to challenge racist school and police practices. These schools, therefore were not isolated cultural activities, but embedded within the broader political field. Although there was no national ongoing organisational structure, BSSs created what could be defined as a ‘movement’ through their informal national networks, sustained by regular correspondence, the black press, conferences and campaign alliances. Informally and formally associated with the broader black politic and political organisations, the BSS counter-public was characterised by diverse interpretations of its educational remit. For some the educational success of black students served as the primary guiding motivation, while for others, this was more tightly connected to a class analysis and campaign work in other arenas. Underpinning the work of all BSSs was an attempt to celebrate and inculcate identities and shared experiences of black selfhood. Informed by their campaign alliances, BSS teachers articulated a united and broad understanding of blackness, which extended from the Caribbean, into Africa, and for many into Asia as well. This political and cultural identification with blackness drew BSSs into creating genealogical links with black history and geography for the students. Unsurprisingly BSSs diversely interpreted the creation of common cultures of blackness, reflecting their multifarious political positions, localities and social aspirations. Notes   1 GPI, BEM/3/2/1/1, position paper by Robert Hart for consideration of the Steering Committee of the West Indian Education and Welfare Association, n.d.   2 C. Bressey, ‘Forgotten histories: three stories of black girls from Barnardo’s Victorian archive’, Womens History Review, 11:3 (2002), 351–74, p. 352.

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  3 P. Fryer, Aspects of British Black History (London: Index Books, 1993).   4 J. La Rose, ‘We did not come alive in Britain’, Race Today 8:3 (1976), 62–5.  5 Fryer, Staying Power; E. Scobie, Black Britannia: A History of Blacks in Britain (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company Inc., 1972).  6 Fryer, Staying Power   7 See C. J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).   8 T. R. Patterson and R. D. G. Kelley, ‘Unfinished migrations: reflections on the African diaspora and the making of the modern world’, African Studies Review, 43:1 (2000), 11–45; S. Hall, ‘Negotiating Caribbean identities’, New Left Review 209 (1995), 3–14; Robinson, Black Marxism.   9 M. Phillips, ‘Separatism or black control?’, in Ohri, Manning and Curno (eds), Community Work and Racism, pp. 103–20; D. Simon, ‘Education of the blacks: the supplementary school movement’, in B. Richardson (ed.), Tell It Like It Is: How Our Schools Fail Black Children (London: Trentham Books, 2005), pp. 64–71. 10 Roxy Harris and Sarah White (eds), Foundations of a Movement: A Tribute to John La Rose on the Occasion of the 10th International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books (London: John La Rose Tribute Committee, 1991), p. 16. 11 P. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Verso: London, 1993); Alleyne, ‘The making of an antiracist cultural politics in post-imperial Britain’; W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘How negroes have taken advantage of educational opportunities offered by friends’, Journal of Negro Education, 7:2 (1938), 124–31. 12 See B. Schwartz (ed.), West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). 13 B. Schwatz, ‘Stuart Hall’, Cultural Studies, 19:2 (2005), 176–202. The term ‘indigenous’ is used often throughout scholarship to describe the relationship between the white and black left in Britain. The term, of course, is problematic given the struggles of race and nationhood of the Irish, Welsh and Scottish peoples, and the constant transformation of what constitutes an ‘indigenous’ Britain. It does however have usefulness in signalling the particular experience of difference felt by black immigrants in coming to Britain, and it is in this spirit that the term is occasionally adopted herein. 14 Fryer, Staying Power. 15 Fryer, Staying Power; e.g. Adi discusses Desmond Buckle’s involvement in the CP in ‘Forgotten comrade’. 16 Patterson and Kelly, ‘Unfinished migrations’, p. 27. 17 E. Smith, ‘“Class before race”: British communism and the place of empire in postwar race relations’, Science and Society, 72:4 (2008), 455–81; see also J. Callaghan, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict: The Communist Party of Great Britain 1951–1968 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2003), pp. 105–36. 18 See K. Morgan, G. Cohen and A. Flinn, Communists and British Society 1920–1991 (London: Rivers Orman Press, 2007). 19 Fryer, Staying Power.

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20 C. Freedman, ‘Overdeterminations: on Black Marxism in Britain’, Social Text, 8 (Winter 1983–4), 142–50; H. Adi, ‘Pan-Africanism and West African nationalism in Britain’, African Studies Review, 43:1 (2000), 69–92; e.g. BCA, GARISSON/4/6, G. Padmore, ‘Communism and Black Nationalism’, Brooklyn, n.d. 21 C. Waters, ‘“Dark strangers” in our midst: discourses of race and nation in Britain, 1947–1963’, Journal of British Studies, 36:2 (1997), 207–38; B. Carter, C. Harris and S. Joshi, ‘The 1951–1955 Conservative government and the racialization of black immigration’, in K. Owusu (ed.), Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 21–36. 22 R. Winder, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain (London: Little Brown, 2004); Fryer, Staying Power; T. Sewell, Keep on Moving, The Windrush Legacy: The Black Experience in Britain from 1948 (London: Voice Enterprise, 1998); for personal reflections on this period see D. Henry, Thirty Blacks in British Education: Hopes, Frustrations, Achievements, ed. R. Ruddock (Sussex: Rabbit Press, 1991). 23 S. de Tufo, S. Randle and J. Ryan, ‘Inequality in a school system’, in Ohri, Manning and Curno (eds), Community Work and Racism, pp. 75–87. 24 J. Solomos, B. Findlay, S. Jones and P. Gilroy, ‘The organic crisis of British capitalism and race: the experience of the seventies’, in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.), The Empire Strikes Back, pp. 9–46. 25 D. C. Thomas, ‘Black radical tradition – theory and practice: black studies and the scholarship of Cedric Robinson’, Race & Class, 47:2 (2005), 1–22, p. 6; Smith, ‘“Class before race”’. 26 Thomas, ‘Black radical tradition’, p. 8. 27 D. Hinds, ‘The West Indian Gazette: Claudia Jones and the black press in Britain’, Race & Class, 50:1 (2008), 88–97; see also A. Dawson, ‘Linton Kwesi Johnson’s dub poetry and the political aesthetics of carnival in Britain’, Small Axe, 21 (2005), 54–69. 28 Fryer, Staying Power, pp. 376–7. 29 Winder, Bloody Foreigners, p. 281. 30 Scobie, Black Britannia, p. 237; S. Hall, ‘Black diaspora artists in Britain: three “moments” in post-war history’, History Workshop Journal, 61 (2006), 1–24. 31 Harris and White (eds), Foundations of a Movement; Alleyne, Radicals against Race. 32 C. Williams, ‘We are a natural part of many different struggles: black women organizing’, in W. James and C. Harris (eds), Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (London and New York: Verso, 1993), pp. 153–13; B. Schwartz, ‘Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette: reflections on the emergence of post-colonial Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 14:3 (2003), 264–85; Hinds, ‘The West Indian Gazette’. 33 Alleyne, Radicals against Race, pp. 33–40; L. James, ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement’, in Schwartz (ed.), West Indian Intellectuals in Britain, pp. 209–27.

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34 R. Ramdin, The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain (Aldershot: Gower, 1987). 35 Dawson, ‘Linton Kwesi Johnson’s dub poetry’; Alleyne, ‘The making of an antiracist cultural politics’. GPI, BPM 6/1/1/1, press clippings and descriptions of the Fascist attacks on radical black bookshops across the UK. 36 W. James, ‘Migration, racism and identity: the Caribbean experience in Britain’, New Left Review, 193 (1992), 15–55, p. 26. 37 James, ‘Migration, racism and identity’, p. 26. 38 James, ‘Migration, racism and identity’; Stone, The Education of the Black Child in Britain. 39 Alleyne, Radicals against Race, p. 53. 40 E.g. G. Livingstone, ‘Dilemmas of race-rememory buried alive: popular education, nation, and diaspora in critical education’, in M. W. Apple, S. J. Ball and L. A. Gandin (eds), The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 370–86; Alleyne, ‘The making of an antiracist cultural politics’. 41 See Livingstone, ‘Dilemmas of race-rememory buried alive’. 42 Waters, ‘“Dark strangers” in our midst’. 43 C. Tulloch, ‘The Reading Collective, 1967–68’, Race Today, 4:3 (1972), 95–7. 44 Dacosta, ‘Ideology and Practice’, p 182. 45 Winston Best in Harris and White (eds), Foundations of a Movement, pp. 12–19. 46 S. Tomlinson, Race and Education: Policy and Politics in Britain (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008), p. 30. 47 I. Grosvenor, ‘A different reality: education and the racialization of the black child’, History of Education, 16:4 (1987), 299–308. 48 Tomlinson, Race and Education, p. 30. 49 M. Grubb, ‘Ealing: Goodbye to busing?’, Race Today, 4:6 (1972), 206–7. 50 Grosvenor, ‘A different reality’, p. 303. 51 GPI, BEM/1/2/3, ‘Report to the Education Committee on Comprehensive Education’, London Borough of Haringey, March 1969. 52 GPI, BEM/1/2/3, press clippings. 53 GPI, BEM/1/2/3, press clippings. 54 GPI, BEM/1/2/3/16, Confidential: Haringey Comprehensive Schools, A. J. F Doulton, 13 January 1969. 55 GPI, BEM/1/2/5, pamphlet, ‘Protest grows against banding in Haringey: parent’s strike threatened for Autumn 1970’, statement issued by the Haringey Advisory Centre for Education, 25 January 1970. 56 GPI, BEM/1/2/3/10, ‘Proposals of the NLWIA concerning the education in Haringey schools’, December 1969. 57 B. Coard, How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System: The Scandal of the Black Child in Schools in Britain (London: New Beacon Books, 1971). 58 Coard, How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal, p.  31.

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59 Coard, How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal, p.  34–6. 60 The recent oral history testimony of Black women activists collected by the Black Cultural Archives also confirms the importance of Coard’s book: BCA, BWM12J. See also B. Bryan, S. Dadzie, and S. Scafe, The Heart of Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (London: Virago, 1985). 61 J. Stephen, ‘Statistics Back West Indian Complaint of Unfairness in Schooling’, The Times (9 June 1971), p. 2; Black Peoples’ Progressive Association and Redbridge Community Relations Council, Cause for Concern: West Indian Pupils in Redbridge (Ilford: Author, 1978). 62 GPI, BEM/1/2/3, NLWIA Press Statement, 22 December 1969; GPI, BEM/4/3/1/1 10, ‘Black children dumped in ESN schools’ in National and International News Bulletin, Black Peoples’ Information Centre: London, 1:4 (20 July 1971). 63 Coard, How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal, p.  38. 64 GPI, BEM/3/1/4/1, 42, Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association Newsletter, No 1, 1971. 65 GPI, BEM/3/1/4/1, 42, Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association Newsletter, No 1, 1971. 66 S. Beezmohun, ‘Bridging the gap: The international book fair of radical black and Third World books, 1982–1996’ Afroeuropa: Journal of Afroeuropean Studies (2007), 1–14; Alleyne, Radicals against Race. 67 T. Issa and C. Williams, Realizing Potential: Complementary Schools in the UK (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 2009); Harris and White (eds), Foundations of a Movement. 68 I. Grosvenor, ‘From the eye of history to a second gaze: the visual archive and the marginalized in the history of education’, History of Education, 36:4 (2007), 607–22. 69 LMA, 4463/D/11/02/001, pamphlet, ‘Peter Moses SS: about and aims’, p. 1. 70 Best in Harris and White (eds), Foundations of a Movement, pp. 15–16 71 GPI, BEM/3/1/1/4, press clipping, Coombes, ‘Manchester: Children Rescued from ESN Pit’, West Indian World (1974). 72 GPI, BEM/3/2/2/1, ‘Report of meeting held at WISW’, 30 December 1970. 73 LMA, 4463/D/10/01/001, Supplementary Schools’ Council proposal meeting minutes, 10 June 1972. 74 GPI, BEM/3/1/2/5/1–3, meeting minutes, Co-ordinating Council of Black Supplementary Schools. 75 ‘Saturday Schools Go National’, Voice (24 November 1987), p. 2; GPI, BPM/4/2/2/2, National Association of Supplementary Schools correspondence calling for 2nd Annual General Meeting to be held on 30 April 1989, from Mavis Milner-Brown, Secretary, to George Padmore Community School, 23 March 1989 76 LMA, 4463/D/11/02/003, Catalogue of Supplementary Schools in London, Black Education Unit, July 1987. 77 GPI, BPM/4/2/2/2, ‘Proposal for the establishment of an Association of Supplementary Schools in London: a discussion paper’, Clinton Sealy, n.d.

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78 E.g. Manchester Roots ’78 festival: R. Phillips, ‘Black education finds its roots’, Disadvantage in Education, 2:2 (1979), 12–13. 79 LMA, 4463/D/11/02/001/1, Peter Moses commemoration leaflet, p. 13. 80 LMA, 4463/D/11/02/001, pamphlet, ‘Peter Moses School: about and aims’, 1986. 81 LMA, 4463/D/11/02/001/1, Peter Moses commemoration leaflet, p. 14. 82 LMA, 4463/D/11/02/001/1, Peter Moses commemoration leaflet, p. 8. 83 BCA, WONG/2/1/1, Ahfiwe: Journal of the Ahfiwe School and Abeng, no, 1, n.d. 84 BCA, WONG/2/2, Ahfiwe: Journal of the Ahfiwe School and Abeng, no. 2, n.d. 85 A. Angelo, ‘The Black Panthers in London, 1967–1972: a diasporic struggle navigates the Black Atlantic’, Radical History Review, 103 (2009), 17–35, p. 20. 86 See Campaign against Racism and Fascism, Southall: The Birth of a Black Community (London: Institute of Race Relations, 1981); Campaign against Racism and Fascism   /   Newham Monitoring Project, Forging a Black Community: Asian and Afro-Caribbean Struggles in Newham (London: Author, 1991). 87 B. Troyna and B. Carrington, Education, Racism and Reform (Routledge: London, 1990). 88 LMA, 4463/B/08/01/001, press clippings and campaign material. 89 LMA, 4463/B/02/02/044A, press clippings and campaign material. 90 LMA, 4463/B/02/03/09. 91 GPI, BEM/4/2/2/2/1–8, education courses, various leaflets. 92 GPI, BEM/3/1/3/3/52, December 1974. 93 LMA, 4463.B/02/02/012, letter to parents and community, People’s Unite Educational and Creative Arts Centre, Southall, n.d. 94 B. W. Alleyne. ‘An idea of community and its discontents: towards a more reflexive sense of belonging in multicultural Britain’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25:4 (2002), 607–27. 95 G. John, The Black Working-Class Movement in Education and Schooling and the 1985–86 Teachers Dispute (London: BPM, 1986). 96 GPI, BPM/4/2/1/3, BPM Supplementary School contacts, n.d. 97 ‘Sus’ refers to the stop-and-search law that enabled police to harass and target black youth. See M. Clarke and D. Huggins, ‘The scrap sus campaign’, in Ohri, Manning and Curno (eds), Community Work and Racism, pp. 139–45. 98 E.g. LMA, 4463/B/02/03/001, Battle Front, paper of the BPM, May 1986. 99 Sometimes the BYM was also referred to as the Black Students’ Movement. 100 Williams, ‘We are a natural part of many different struggles’, p. 157. 101 LMA, 4463/B/08/01/001, New Cross Massacre Campaign minutes; IRR, 01/04/04/01/10/07/049, miscellaneous papers of the Southall Black Sisters Project; IRR, 01/04/04/01/12/056, miscellaneous papers of the Southall Youth movement; Bryan, Dadzie and Scafe, The Heart of Race; J. Sudbury, ‘Other Kinds of Dreams’: Black Women’s Organisations and the Politics

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of Transformation (London and New York: Routledge, 1998); Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, Southall. 102 E.g. Southall Black Sisters Project: IRR, 01/04/04/01/10/07/049. See also C. Connolly, ‘Splintered sisterhood: anti-racism in a young women’s project’, Feminist Review, 36 (1990), 52–64. 103 Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, Southall; MDXRT, 15/11, East End Community School. 104 John, The Black Working-Class Movement 105 GPI, 4/1/1/2, BPM, ‘Independent parent power, independent student power’, 1979. 106 V. A. Jones, We Are Our Own Educators! Josina Machel: From Supplementary to Black Complementary School (London: Karia Press  /  Josina Machel Supplementary School, 1986), p. xii. 107 Williams, ‘We are a natural part of many different struggles’. 108 Roxy Harris in Harris and White (eds), Foundations of a Movement, p. 58. 109 Winston Best in Harris and White (eds), Foundations of a Movement, p 58; Lemuel Findlay Supplementary School, ‘About us’, http://lfss.org.uk/ htmldocs/lfssabout-us.html (accessed 25 May 2010); LMA, 4463/D/05/ 01/001, Robert Hart Memorial School; GPI, BEM/3/2/1/1, Robert Hart, Position Paper for the Steering Committee of the West Indian Education and Welfare Association, n.d. 110 LMA, 4463/D/05/01/001, Caribbean Teachers’ Conference notes, 16 April 1974. 111 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/04, 12; Ramdin, The Making of the Black Working Class, p. 449; Angelo, ‘The Black Panthers in London’. 112 GPI, BEM/3/1/3/2/20, Note on Birmingham Afro Caribbean Self Help BSS, 16 November 1970. 113 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/14; GPI, BEM/3/1/1–3. 114 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/12, Letter of introduction, Summer Schools’ Com­­­­mittee, Black Power/Panther Education. 115 See also H. Goulbourne, ‘Africa and the Caribbean in Caribbean conscious­­­­ ness and action in Britain’, David Nicholls Memorial Lectures, no. 2 (David Nicholls Memorial Trust, University of Oxford: Oxford, 2000). 116 GPI, BEM/3/1/5–6; BEM/3/1/5/5/10–23. 117 GPI, BEM/4/2/2/3/1–17. 118 GPI, BEM/3/1/6/12–13. 119 GPI, BEM/3/1/6; LMA/4463/D/11/03/001–004. 120 GPI, BEM/3/1/5/1/2, book lists for the George Padmore school. 121 Sealy, ‘Shepherd’s Bush Social and Welfare Association’. 122 LMA, 4463/D/05/01/001, Clinton Sealy, ‘Alternative education’, n.d. 123 LMA, 4463/B/02/02/012, letter to parents and community, People’s Unite Educational and Creative Arts Centre, Southall, n.d. 124 BEM 4/2/2/3/1–24, educational programmes, 1969; ‘Further notes on selfhelp education’, Harry Haller, 23 July 1969. 125 See Phillips, ‘Separatism or black control?’. 126 GPI, BEM/3/1/1/4, N. Gibbes, ‘Self-Help Groups Alone Will Not Achieve

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Change’, West Indian World (13 February 1974), p. 11. 127 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/14, ‘Fun with Learning’, Malcolm X Montesorri School Report 1972/3 (original emphasis). 128 GPI, BEM/3/2/1/1, position paper, Sundiata Liberation Centre for Children, October 1969. 129 Phillips, ‘Black education finds its roots’ 130 BCA, EPHEMERA/16. 131 See different drafts of the BPM ‘Principles of Organisation’ (LMA, 4463/B/02/01/001–2) and meeting minutes (LMA, 4463/B/02/01/009). 132 LMA, 4463/D/11/02/001/1, Peter Moses commemoration leaflet, p. 13. 133 LMA, 4463/D/11/02/001, Peter Moses SS, About and Aims. 134 The East London Black Women’s Organisation also notes participation of white women within its organisation: East London Black Women’s Organisation, ‘Black women’s organisation: the role of black women’, paper presented to the History of black People in London Conference (Institute of Education, London University, 27–8 November 1984). 135 East London Black Women’s Organisation, ‘Black women’s organisation’, p. 5. 136 See Mirza, Race, Gender and Educational Desire. 137 East London Black Women’s Organisation, ‘Black women’s organisation’, p. 3. 138 Bryan, Dadzie, and Scafe, The Heart of Race, p. 59. 139 BCA, BWM, oral history recordings. 140 BCA, BWM22A, oral history recording.

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6

‘We are our own educators!’: black educational authority, gender and community control The motto of the NASS in the late 1980s and title of Valentina Jones’ influential 1986 book on the Jasina Machel Supplementary School, ‘We are our own educators!’, is a powerful statement of educational authority.1 This chapter explores this instantiation of educational authority, and the ways in which it wrought significant challenge to state schooling practices. Navigating shifting priorities of successive governments throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, generations of BSS teachers sustained both their right to assert their own independent education authority and their fierce criticism of state education practices. Responding to, and campaigning for, changes in state schooling, over this time BSSs were faced with shifting dynamics in England’s broader social and political milieu, and that of their own black networks. Firstly, this chapter examines the reclamation of educational authority made by BSSs, and the interrelationship between this and the campaign demand for state schools to be accountable for their failure to educate black children. Following from this, secondly, the creation of black pedagogues and pedagogies, as community-based enactments of educational authority, are examined. Here in particular, gender narratives come to the fore through the ways in which men and women practised their educational authority. Lastly, this chapter turns to the changing dynamics between the BSS movement and the state, and ways in which BSS teachers traversed the complex dual principles of community control and government responsibility. As is explored below, the slow and piecemeal incorporation of BSSs into local governmental funding mechanisms into the 1980s brought significant change – and challenge – for the movement. Black educational authority Being witness to the failure of their own children’s schools to provide an experience of educational success, BSS teachers developed a personal

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and political awareness of the embedded institutionalised racism in state schools. In response, BSSs demanded that the locus of responsibility for black children’s educational failure be placed squarely in the staffrooms and classrooms of state schools. As put by the Haringey Black Pressure Group on Education in a letter to local heads of schools in the Haringey area: Dear Headmaster/Headmistress, The examination results in Haringey’s secondary schools especially those in the south of the borough have been appalling. We hold you directly responsible legally for this state of affairs … We are saying that [our children] are not getting efficient education from you and your staff.2

Fuelling their frustration, many BSS teachers and organisers interviewed for this book spoke of the dismissive attitude of state schools towards their concerns. At times, this frustration surfaced when black parents’ questioned seemingly laissez-faire approaches taken by teachers in educating their children. Sophie, for example, became aware of the failings of state schooling when looking at her children’s work: ‘the children’s work was poor! I’m looking at their work in the evenings and the spelling was atrocious, the construction was poor.’ When attempting to raise these issues with her children’s teachers she received a blank response – ‘the teacher says, and the teacher knows it all. So it was a real struggle in those days.’ For Sophie, her real frustration was with the teachers’ apparent unwillingness to instruct her children in basic literacy skills, preferring, in her words, to allow ‘the children [to] express themselves in whatever way’. Sophie’s criticism reveals wider debates concerning pedagogical and curricular approaches taken in state schooling. At the same time, Sophie’s experience highlights the impenetrable character of the authority of state schooling. Without the appropriate ‘cultural capital’ and faced with institutionalised racism and class-based discrimination, black parents often found that their criticisms and concerns went unheeded. Indeed, Martin experienced this first-hand. A teacher trainee in London in the mid-1970s, Martin witnessed many teachers and schools being dismissive and condescending towards black parents. ‘I saw black people being put down when they asked questions about their children’s education … they were humiliated and were seen as troublesome’, he recollected. ‘Black parents were concerned, but they had big barriers.’ It is not surprising, therefore, that BSSs’ claim to educational authority was born not only out of frustration and criticism of state education, but also out of a deep distrust of state schooling. Given similar e­ xperiences

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in dealings with the police and other state institutions, BSSs reflected a widely held sentiment that, as Martin put it, ‘the teachers and the police were not always right’. Contesting the proclaimed authority of state schools, BSSs proved the capability of black parents and students to claim educational authority for themselves. Additionally, BSSs explicitly challenged state schooling practices through a range of campaign and advocacy work. Bringing together black students and parents in the creation of intergenerational counter-publics, many of those involved in BSSs took active and leading roles in campaigning against state school practices and advocating for black students. Grace’s, Martin’s, Nelson’s, Sophie’s and Michael’s involvement in parent-based campaign work, for example, was all formally connected to their BSSs. As explored in chapter 5, the radical black networks connected to John La Rose in London led to the establishment of a range of campaign groupings, including the BPM and the BYM. Certainly, the BPM and BYM were active in challenging the pro­­­ claimed authority of schools and teachers. In 1977 they led a fierce public campaign calling for the removal of Hornsey Girls’ School head teacher, Miss Curtis, who they charged with unduly targeting and reprimanding black students.3 Some six years later, in Bradford, black parents also mounted a campaign against a head teacher – Ray Honeyford of Drummond Middle School. In this instance, Honeyford’s right-wing paper in the Salisbury Review did contribute to his eventual dismissal.4 In addition, throughout the 1970s and 1980s across London and England a range of parent groups met in loosely structured collectives in order to document, discuss, organise and take action against the practices of state schools and the police. For instance, Camberwell’s Black Parents Association’s monthly Black Parents newsletter called for black parents and children to unite against the ‘rotten deal’ black children were getting in Brent Council schools, within which they were ‘being tutored out of their parents’ languages and into the vocabulary which is controlled by and is a product of racists holding the power’.5 In Nottingham, the Black People’s Action Group, established in response to community violence against black people, reported in its newsletter on the ‘alarming rate’ of suspensions in their local schools, and ‘open’ racism in schools.6 In response, it encouraged parents to intervene into their children’s education: ‘ask your child what they do in school, find out what the teacher said and did, encourage your child to talk to you, take an interest in what they are learning – attend meetings and ask teachers about progress’. In Leeds, the Parents Action Group  /  United Caribbean Association wrote fervent criticism of police

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violence against black students and of the schools’ role in collecting information about students for the police in the Chapeltown News: ‘Black parents have complained time and time again about the racist attitudes of their children’s teachers and the racist teaching material often used in class: witness the Cowper Street Strike of 1973’.7 It is important not to understate the campaign work black parents undertook throughout the 1970s and 1980s in order to promote change. Over this time, black parents’ groups and BSSs inverted the ­surveillance that police placed on their own communities, by documenting, recording and publicising their many personal experiences of racism. Parents distributed community fact sheets, newsletters, advertised their BSSs, led ardent campaigns against racist curricula in school,8 and investigated their children’s descriptions of racist schooling practices.9 In addition, parents and BSS teachers took up advocacy roles, campaigning for the rights of individual students in contestation with both schools and the police. This ranged from defending the right of students to wear dreadlocks,10 to demanding the withdrawal of police presence in and around schools,11 and the campaign supported by the Women Workers’ League against the ‘arbitrary exclusion’ of ‘two black working-class girls who [were] deprived [of] their right to education’ by the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA).12 At the heart of all of these interventions, black parents and students challenged the embedded racism that underpinned any appeal to the authority of schools, teachers and police. As put by the parents who led a strike at Cowper Street School in 1973 to demand better facilities, more black teachers and better contact between school staff and parents, ‘they refer to EXPERTS! Experts on our lives? Can you dig? It is these experts who cause the percentage of Black children in Educationally Sub Normal schools to be higher than the percentage in normal schools.’13 BSSs were a crucial part of this challenge to state educational authority. BSSs provided a space to demonstrate and cultivate black educational authority. As explored in chapter 5, for the vast majority of BSS schools, despite varying political perspectives and approaches, educational success was a core aspect of validating and establishing their own claim to educational authority. Invariably, this claim to educational capability engaged with the knowledge structures of the state system. BSSs worked to both reject the educational authority of state schools, and to prove the ability of black students to mediate the knowledge hierarchies as established by state schools. For instance, while all having very different approaches to BSS teaching and varying political perspectives, all of the teachers I interviewed used examples of student academic and career success as markers of the success of the BSS project. BSSs actively

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supported students in their efforts to get out of ESN schools and gain entry into grammar schools and universities. However, in supporting black students’ success, BSS teachers did not unquestioningly support the competitive systems of educational success in state schools, or the sorts of curricular knowledge privileged within them. To be sure, it is important to note the context within which BSS teachers gave their support to the mastery of the competitive knowledge structures of state schooling. Pointing to the continuing relevance of BSSs in black communities across England, Heidi Mirza’s and Diane Reay’s research on contemporary BSS practices reveals the power of educational success against powerful presumptions of incapability and lack of interest.14 Writing some thirty years after BSSs first opened their doors, they sum it up thus: ‘Excluded from an equal place in the educational system by white fear and racism, the black community is quietly engaged in a range of collective educational strategies which fulfil the desire for educational success.’15 It is important, therefore, to contextualise the focus on academic success and schooling accountability found within the BSS movement. For instance, the BSS project of challenging the educational authority of schools is distinct from the contemporaneous conservative challenge to teachers’ authority, which did little to challenge the entrenched educational and social hierarchies and power. Moreover, the challenge wrought by BSSs to state schools must also be understood in light of the apprehension, ambivalence and at times hostility of the state to BSSs. Many BSS teachers, for instance, spoke of strained relations between themselves and local state schools. Just like the SSSs almost a century earlier, BSSs also found themselves subject to wider public scrutiny and contestation. Importantly, however, in the context of widespread perceptions of black incapability and educational failure, one of the most powerful means for state schools to challenge the educational authority of BSSs was to dismiss their potential role in black students’ education. Many BSS teachers reported a kind of disenfranchisement from state schooling, in which schools and teachers glossed over the work that BSSs were doing to ensure black children received educational opportunity. Nelson, for instance, talked about the lack of interest of state schools in BSSs as ‘a kind of confrontation’. Similarly, when Grace attempted to create links with her local state school, the head teacher asked her, ‘Why should you expect me to tell any of my children that they should attend your supplementary school? What would that be saying about me and my school?’ In response, some BSSs teachers retreated from engagement with state schools, opting rather quietly to support black students’ educational success outside the purview of state schools. Nelson, for example,

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r­ecollected that he and other BSS teachers ‘would say to the students don’t tell your schools that you come here because their bias might create another problem for you. Let us work on our own.’ Others sought out alliances with sympathetic teachers. For example, faced with the withdrawal of support in one state school, Andrew utilised his contacts with sympathetic teachers in another local state school in order to secure classroom space for the continued weekend operation of his BSS. Importantly, across these different experiences the contested relationships with state schools assisted to radicalise BSS teachers. As Andrew reflected, conflictual relations with local state schools meant that ‘we became more and more politicised’. Or, as put by Manchester parents, after having been denied access to local school buildings to hold children’s black cultural festivals, ‘[our] departure point, which was the existence of a valid Black culture, challenged the assumptions of the school at too fundamental a level’.16 Black pedagogies and pedagogues: gender, activism and enacting educational authority Repeating the popular maxim ‘everyone is a philosopher’, in his interview the BSS teacher Nelson highlighted one of the most important underpinning ideals of the BSS movement. For him, and the other BSS teachers, BSSs were a space for all parents and students to learn and create knowledge: by asserting the right to provide education for their community BSSs developed their own pedagogical authority. In doing so the schools incorporated a wide range of interested men and women: with BSSs including workers, university students, parents, school children and young people, the authority to teach – to master and to create knowledge – did not lie solely in the hands of trained black teachers and teacher trainees. Subverting traditional hierarchies of knowledge construction, and assumptions of black failure, BSSs created opportunity for friends, families and neighbours to create new relationships with one another. As a BSS student in the 1980s, Andrea, for example, reflected: ‘I think one of the things that was quite positive was seeing the parents and other people take that teaching role with you.’ Unsurprisingly, in the same way that BSSs multifariously defined their educational and political remit as explored in chapter 5, the ways in which BSS teachers developed this pedagogical relationship varied significantly. Andrew, for example, drew explicitly from the traditions of progressive education. Having freedom to recreate curriculum and pedagogy as he pleased, Andrew and his fellow BSS teachers were inspired by the idea of connecting with black students in new and

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different ways: ‘we weren’t restricted by a curriculum. It was really [about] engaging with the students’ needs and their interests and developing a much more positive attitude in terms of learning and cognitive development.’ He explained that ‘at the same time the White Lion Free School was dominant – all of that was helping to drive us. We wanted a black version of that, of White Lion, a black version of Summerhill.’ This borrowing from traditions of educational progressivism can also be found in the Malcolm X Montessori School, in both name and purpose. In a 1971/72 school pamphlet entitled ‘Fun with Learning Programme’, the school is described as an ‘independent, outdoor and indoor educational organisation’.17 The pamphlet recounts the school as originating from the ‘neighbourhood action of twelve parents of St Evans Road in response to a strong felt need for their children’, and explains, ‘the name chosen was based on the approach of the Montessori Method to educate and on the inspiration and ideas of the late Malcolm X. Montessori’s concept was that children can learn and self discover their potentials with direct manipulation of objects and stimulating ideas.’ Offering a politically explicit space in which to assert black educational authority, the co-founder of the Malcolm X Montessori School, Ajoy Ghose, was clear about the need for black educational authority in ways that subverted the competitive structures of state schooling. In his pamphlet ‘Towards a Black Tomorrow’, he asserts: Our Programme [fun with learning] is based on educating children of the Notting Hill Ghetto and not on inculcating our inherited so-called education. The so-called education that we get from the status quo is founded on the basis of competition, reward and punishment which subconsciously builds up a mirage of superiority complex in the children’s consciousness; and that attitude of competition by itself is self-destructive to education.18

Ghose, therefore, understood his school as ‘a form of political action, a positive action, ... whereby children, parents, worker can learn to work with each other ... towards constructive ends of individual improvement in a group context’.19 Indeed, it appears that Ghose’s approach did raise eyebrows, with the News of the World running an article in 1972 on him entitled ‘A Black Fanatic Who Stirs Up Trouble’.20 For Ghose and others, BSSs opened a space in which to put into practice black political pedagogies inspired by the reclamation and rearticulation of black culture and heritage. These sorts of schools, as Alison put it, wanted to give students ‘other horizons’, and ‘other possibilities from a world which was very closed in’. The work of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire featured among these BSS pedagogical identities. Freire’s recognition of education as fundamentally political

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certainly rang true for BSS teachers and organisers in their campaigns against racist schooling practices. In 1984, on the tenth anniversary of the Caribbean Teachers’ Association (CTA), an organisation with links to many BSS teachers and organisers, the CTA ‘Youth Conference’ agenda ends with this powerful Freire quotation: ‘Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral’.21 Freire’s critique of ‘banking education’ also reflected an intention among many BSSs to provide spaces of knowledge creation for both students and parents.22 As Clinton explained, ‘the teachers have spent thirty years using this industrial model which has done nothing for teachers ... Freire would call it banking – there’s no drawing out from the teachers themselves, or from the pupils or their families.’ Importantly, the interest and incorporation of such educational thinkers always occurred within a black context. The creation of Afrocentric pedagogies was viewed as moving beyond the emancipatory or liberatory pedagogies espoused by such educationalists as Freire, and towards an explicitly black project of ‘engaging [students] to identify with her and his history, heritage and culture’.23 By rendering both adults and students as active constructors of black knowledge, echoing the SSS movement’s concern to recognise children and childhood, BSSs fostered cultures of respect for young people. Supported by parental involvement in campaigns on behalf of, and alongside, young people, the BSS movement actively promoted the capacities, personal worth and integrity of the students they worked with. Ex-BSS teacher Claudine, for example, understood this intergenerational support and respect as organic to the political awakening that occurred in families across Britain. ‘It’s not that unusual within black settings for kids to be quite politicised from their own experiences’, she said, ‘they were in schools, they were seeing what was going on and they knew it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right.’ The student workbooks of the George Padmore BSS support Claudine’s recollections. Numerous entries offer critical appraisals of the mainstream schooling system, and state school teachers.24 One entry in a student workbook argues that state teachers were in active support of black educational failure ‘by being openly prejudiced, by being patronising, and having low expectations about the child’s ability’.25 The entry goes on: ‘All these attitudes can be found among teachers in Britain. Indeed these attitudes are widespread.’ BSS teachers were keen to develop positive pedagogical relationships with their students. For many this involved developing trust with students and becoming personally involved in their lives. For example, Andrew was regularly contacted to bail his students out from jail, having been

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falsely identified as their uncle by his students to the police. Martin also spoke of advocating on behalf of BSS students and other community members in police matters. Fostering the trust of his students, and being critical of the criminal justice system, Andrew attempted to use this relationship as a means for education. Not willing to further criminalise black young people’s petty crime, he turned a blind eye to students’ petty criminal activities, but at the same time attempted to direct their energies towards education and life skills. Just as Keir Hardie urged the SSS scholars ‘not to pick pockets’, BSS teachers may have been critical of policing but were not morally complicit. For instance, Andrew was quick to emphasise that, despite his open relationship with the students, the ‘moral underpinning’ of his BSS teaching was always made clear to students: ‘it is wrong to steal, it is wrong to be violent’. Responding to similar situations of students’ petty crime, Daniel’s approach endeavoured to develop critical political awareness in his students. He wanted BSS students to understand the wider educational, social and cultural processes that underpinned their social position, and which were at work in their own personal decisionmaking: I used to say that in the 70s, to the black working-class kids. I would say to them, these are your choices: You can get these O levels and … get into these sorts of jobs or you can go to university. That’s one route. You could do it a bit, but not get too serious about it and get a few qualifications and go into these sorts of jobs. Or you can say – ‘Oh I won’t bother about this’, and you can go into these sorts of jobs – factories and that sort of thing. Or you can do crime. So that’s one of the options. That’s how it works.

For all of these teachers, responding to crime involved first and foremost addressing the problematic criminalisation of black youth in the wider community, and engendering positive intergenerational pedagogical relationships. From this, Andrew, Martin and Daniel all hoped that students would develop critical awareness alongside knowledge and understanding. A large part of this pedagogical project involved extending education beyond the knowledge boundaries presented by state schools. In addition to the introduction of black culture, history and arts, as explored in chapter 5, many of the teachers interviewed for this book discussed the deliberate intent to widen students’ educational experience beyond classroom learning. On realising ‘that a lot of the students were boxed into flats with no green spaces where they had to keep quiet’, Daniel, for example, took students to parks where they could ‘run and shout’. He reflected, ‘that was a class perspective doing that,

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that was just as important as doing your school work’. In 1973, the Brixton-based Gresham Summer Project, established over the summer holidays, was explicit in its aim to ‘broaden the range of experience of the participating youngsters’, and hoped that from this ‘they might be stimulated into ordering/reordering their immediate relationships critically’. Reporting on the Project, A. X. Cambridge and Cecil Gutmore recount the day’s activity on 7 August 1973, revealing a mixture of ‘remedial’ learning and black culture and politics: The day proceeded as planned with minor changes in the morning sessions. About 15–20 youths attended the film and discussion session. Then workers divided them up into groups of 5 for The Early Bird programme and Story Telling Session. After lunch the Reggae Jam session was attended by about 40 young people, about 30 of whom stayed for the films: ‘White Man’s Country’ and ‘The Young Lords’.26

To be sure, although black pedagogies may have at times embraced experimental or ‘progressive’ approaches, they were not laissez-faire. Despite diversity in their practices, BSS teachers remained committed to their political and educational purpose of fostering educational success, and with this the mastery of knowledge. Andrea’s BSS, for example, which aimed to engender critical intellectual independence, incorpor­ ated a mixture of student-led discussion and teacher-led lessons, with a greater leaning towards teacher control: They didn’t really ask us what we wanted to learn. I felt like there was discussion … But I don’t remember any discussion about what you are going to do … I do remember in the older group there were ­discussion questions and things to talk about … it wasn’t all just drills and handwriting lessons and stuff, there was more of an edge to it than that.

Certainly, ‘traditional’ pedagogies did feature across the BSS movement. Clinton Sealy’s more ‘autocratic’ and ‘strict’ focus on ‘the basics’ in the Shepherd’s Bush BSS, as outlined in chapter 5, was not an anomaly. Nonetheless, it is important to contextualise this pedagogical approach. The use of traditional pedagogies must also be viewed in light of the traditions of tutoring and social mobility that many BSS teachers and organisers brought with them from the Caribbean. Andrew, for example, reflected that there was ‘very much a tradition of seeing education as a means of social mobility and economic success … and part of that back home was that you had extra lessons and tuitions to bring you up to the required standard’. For Andrew, BSSs represented an intersection of these traditions with his own commitment to radical politics. In addition, against the backdrop of black educational failure in state schools, for many BSS teachers adopting a pedagogical

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approach that took seriously the necessity to master knowledge represented their commitment to black success. Julie’s school, for example, proudly instituted ability grouping at its inception in 1982 before the local mainstream schools. Correspondingly, Nelson also emphasised the centrality of ability-based teaching in his thirty-five years as a BSS teacher. However, those who took more traditional pedagogical approaches did not simply re-operationalise the state school version of competitive meritocratic schooling success. BSSs provided a space to, in Martin’s words, ‘bring our people together so that we’re not operating as competitors, but as people suffering from the same inequalities, and so that we can discuss and work on those issues in a serious partnership with parents’. Their pedagogical and curricular practices were fundamentally linked to the reclamation of black knowledge and to critical engagement with existing social inequalities. Indeed, Clinton Sealy’s description of BSSs emphasised flexibility as central to the success of the schools: [BSSs] provide a framework in which each child can reach his full potential. Pupils can identify with black adults who are in positions of authority and thus they can relate to their colleagues and to their teachers. Supplementary schools also provide other services to the community. It keeps children off the streets while their parents are at work, gives advice to parents, takes children on outings and day trips. They are flexible with their curriculum and there is no rigid reading scheme.27

Similarly, in their interviews both Julie and Nelson underscored the necessity of black pedagogies to be under the flexible control of the community itself and outside of the rigidity of the state system. BSSs therefore created space for parents, university students, workers and teachers all to become pedagogues. Like the SSS movement, in many ways BSSs represented an extension of parenting into the community,28 and incorporated a large number of women. Also in similar style to SSSs, the BSS movement attracted significant involvement of men. In conducting the research for this book, it became clear that men played an important local and national role in the BSS movement, a point that Claudine was keen to emphasise. She recounted, ‘The original school that I was a part of … was mainly run by black men, which is interesting because you don’t hear about black men and their role in the movement, and actually setting up schools and teaching in them as well, there would be a good mix of black men and black women.’ The concern for black young people’s future, and the concurrent desire to contest dominant cultural hegemony, gripped both men and women across the black community. As intergenerational spaces, incorporating mothers, fathers, and men and women community members,

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BSSs were therefore also diverse gendered spaces of black activism. BSSs variously negotiated traditional gender roles and dominant gendered portrayals of black deviance, while also affording opportunity for the development of more equal gender relations. For many women, involvement in the BSS movement reflected a continuation of existing traditions of female mutual aid, collectivity and self-help.29 Here, supported by a black women’s politic that challenged male hegemony in the black and wider community,30 black women’s educational practice was informed by a strong aesthetic and culture of black ‘womanhood’.31 For some this involved defending their right to organise independently political, educational and cultural events as women, even in the face of a dismissive broader black politic. BSS teacher Grace, whose BSS experience occurred predominantly through a women’s educational organisation, explained her involvement as being about ‘women and mothers fighting for better communities, or having their voices heard about things that affect them’. She went on, ‘in the earlies when we … tried to engage some men, they used to say – “Oh you lot are a bunch of lesbians!” You know, that sort of thing! We spent years, trying to say to people – no, that is not what we are about. But by the time you got through trying to explain things to them, they [would] think, ‘Oh we can’t deal with these women, I think they have another agenda.’ Similar stories are also found in the Black Cultural Archives oral history interview recordings.32 For Grace, and indeed for many of the women I spoke with about their BSS work, their defence and discussion of women’s educational organising always asserted their solidarity with, and relevance to, the work of their male peers. At times, as with Grace, this led to a distancing from other forms of women’s autonomous organising and sexual politics, such as radical black feminism and black lesbianism. Indeed, it is important to note the diversity of black women’s organisations that proliferated across the black political field in the 1970s and 1980s. Resting on fervent critiques of the exclusions of the contemporaneous white feminist movements,33 a range of perspectives flourished, from black self-organising to black womynism and black feminism.34 As Julia Sudbury explored in her 1998 book Other Kinds of Dreams, this complex network of black women’s organising was by no means unified in approach or political agenda. Just like the creation of a general ‘black’ selfhood and culture, the creation of a ‘standpoint as “black women”’ engendered its own exclusions, and inclusions and contestations.35 Most probably, the diversity of standpoints would all have been found within the BSS movement; Williams, for example, who puts forward a Black womynist perspective is a – past and present – ardent advocate of the

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BSS movement.36 Of course, critiques of the white feminist movement meant that many black women positioned their activism and BSS work as being predominantly based on the politics of race. As Bryan, Dadzie and Scafe assert, ‘it is our consciousness as Black people, rather than as feminists, which has led us to take collective action against the education authorities.’37 Putting forward an explicit critique of gender relations in the black movement, Eve’s experience as a BSS teacher places black women’s autonomous spaces within a wider contentious gendered politic. In her interview, Eve recounted her first experiences teaching in a BSS as a university student in Birmingham in the 1970s as being characterised by ‘poor gender relations’. Pointing in particular to her male peers as ‘having their heads stuck in the 1960s’ and being overly officious in their teaching, Eve eventually left this BSS to seek out a school that better reflected her ethos – and better gender relations. And yet, like Claudine, both Eve and Grace stressed the importance of their BSS work as constitutive of the broader black struggle for economic and social justice, and as the responsibility of both men and women. Recognising the role of men in the movement, Grace views her participation in a women’s organisation as reflective of a general desire for the expression of selfhood. She stated, ‘I don’t think the supplementary school is itself a feminist movement, because the men were there before, lots of men in the movement … So I think it [having women’s organisations] is just a woman’s thing really. You just need your space, don’t you? – to be yourself, not to have men.’ Grace’s concern ‘to be herself’ signifies an important relationship between BSS pedagogical practice and the formation of black selfhood. BSSs provided a space for both teachers and students to assert, develop and articulate their own black identities. For some women, having the space to do this with other women was profoundly important, and powerful. Tension and contestation around gendered relations within BSSs, therefore, reflected broader gender dynamics in the black politic. At the same time, the gendered nature of children’s education did afford space to women to construct their own identities and exercise their own pedagogic and community-based authority in BSSs. As with SSSs, and as shown in the research on contemporary BSSs, the high level of women involved in the BSS movement provided space for women to become politically and culturally engaged in ways that mediated, challenged and at times reinforced traditional gender roles.38 Nevertheless, though women had principal importance in their con­­­struc­­tion, BSSs were by no means left solely in their hands. Both men and women understood the reclaiming of black knowledge and

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education as a foundational ‘cultural weapon’ in the struggle for black ‘political freedom’.39 Concurrently, the ‘political space’ of the schools, as Claudine describes them, offered opportunity for both men and women to develop politically. Reflecting this, the experience of gender inequality did not pattern across all of the interviews. In fact interviews reveal powerful stories of black women pedagogues working alongside their male peers to develop strong political and community alliances. BSS work and other community youth-based campaigns, such as those against the stop-and-search laws, brought women together in action while also strengthening political alliances between men and women within the wider black politic. It is worth noting, for example, that none of the BSS archives appear to appeal specifically to women or mothers as holding the primary responsibility for creating educational opportunities for black children. The interrelationship of BSSs and broader campaign work, however, was not straightforward. As Daniel explained, black cultural apparatuses provided an outlet for political organisation that was inherently connected (often informally through the people involved), but not contained within, BSSs: So we were all doing these things and they were interlocked and overlapping. And there weren’t the same people in every single thing. There was a core of people who were in everything, and then a wide periphery of people who would send their kids to Saturday School or come to us with a problem with their kids and their teachers, and we may or may not have got involved in a campaign with them. Or their kid had been put in jail for something they didn’t do. And we would do a campaign on that. So school was just one of these things.

BSSs therefore often sat within a cluster of activities occurring in black communities, including political activism and cultural activities. The localised nature of BSSs was central to the creation of black pedagogical authority for both men and women in BSSs. At the heart of BSS pedagogical practice were the day-to-day tasks of providing support, discussing injustices, lobbying on behalf of and advocating for students, and, most importantly, creating opportunities for knowledge engagement and creation. For some, these localised everyday tasks put their work at a distance from the heady contestations of public political campaigns. As Grace states, ‘We are not always the ones that you may see on the street with a banner. Individuals may go to some protests … but collectively we are parents in the organisation, and we understand some of the problems that are affecting our community in the broader sense.’ Such perspectives were reiterated across the men and

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women BSS teachers, many of whom positioned their work as informing and providing the enabling framework for the struggles for rights and justice in the black politic. In this way, similar to the SSS movement, BSS teachers variously bridged the seeming private realm of communitybased children’s education and cultural activities with the more public realm of political struggle. For some this involved an explicit connection between their BSS work and their participation in black and workingclass movements for change. For others, the connection came through the cultural and educational act of the BSS itself: in their endeavour to create cultures of black pride, success and community. As with SSSs, the focus on local concerns and campaigns, and on the everyday work required for creating locales of black culture and education, reinterpreted what was traditionally women’s work as politically and culturally significant for men and women alike. In doing so, BSSs fostered political identities for both men and women that celebrated local community-based activity. For example, Clinton, a London BSS organiser since the mid-1980s, explains, ‘Confrontation is the wrong word, because a lot of the time we are responding to an injustice. How we establish ourselves to support African Caribbean families … may not appear to be very political, but it is very political for us.’ Other male BSS teachers also underscored the importance of, and their commitment to, community and family concerns, and emphasised their work firmly as being located in their communities, as opposed to the more public political, and traditionally male, domain. Many spoke of not wanting to appear as a BSS movement ‘figure head’, and of their work as a ­principally localised enterprise. Thus, through the political and educational purposes of BSSs teachers created gendered subjectivities that were based upon a dual commitment to black political consciousness and the expression of this within local communities. For BSS teachers, it was the everyday struggle against the racism in schools, workplaces and in the communities that defined their work. Expressing this sentiment, and echoing similar sentiment found in the SSS movement’s celebration of students and teachers as ‘one of many builders’, Clinton Sealy borrowed a motto used by the Barbados Advocate to sum up his own work: For the cause that lacks assistance ‘Gainst the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that I can do.40

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Community control and government responsibility It is hard to overstate the importance of community control within the BSS movement. Having experienced dismissive attitudes of state schools, and the ineffectiveness of existing school–parent bodies such as Parent Teacher Associations, black parents were clear in their need for ‘independent organisations of parents which can amass the power they need to influence and change the schooling and education system’.41 Indeed, bolstered by the success of their BSS work at weekends and in the afternoons, across the 1970s and 1980s there were regular calls from BSS teachers for the movement ‘to give consideration to establishing fulltime supplementary schools’.42 And though this was a largely unfulfilled – and not universally shared – aspiration, the early 1980s were certainly a sanguine period of BSS organising. Martin talks particularly of the BSS conferences at this time as being full of people ‘longing’ to create alternative educational spaces through BSSs, and it was around this time that schools once again attempted to form a national network of BSSs in the form of NASS. At the same time, however, schools were routinely struggling to find enough financial resources and enough teaching staff. Working in the community sector, Alison observed many BSSs existing on shoestring budgets, managing sparse financial resources from week to week in order to provide equipment and books, and struggling at times to find enough teachers. To be sure, many BSSs teachers often worked in fulltime employment elsewhere, eking out time in the evenings and weekends for their BSSs. BSSs were primarily voluntary organisations, and, like other contemporaneous community initiatives, relied upon the dedication, time and energies of local men and women. Many of the campaigns with which BSSs teachers and students were involved (including many BSSs), started from the everyday local discussion between parents and community members that formed the bedrock of the schools function. The ‘scrap sus’ campaign, which ran an ardent public campaign against the stop and search policing tactics that targeted young black people, for instance, began in the front room of a black woman’s house in Deptford.43 New Beacon Books, the black publishing house established by John La Rose, was first run out of La Rose’s front room, as were the George Padmore and Albertina BSSs.44 In similar style, with seven students in attendance, the Kwame Nkrumah Supplementary School started operation in 1972 in the teacher’s front room,45 while Andrew’s first BSS was held in a fellow teacher’s front room, with the students all seated around ‘a great long table’. As BSSs grew, many sought out alternative accommodation, but were often constrained by a lack of funds. Kwame Nkrumah ­Supplementary

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School, for example, had to make two more rooms available in the teacher’s house in order to accommodate forty children, and was forced to turn potential students away before finding somewhere else to move to.46 Some, such as Andrew, and as documented above, were able to secure free use of local state schools thanks to having contacts with local teachers. Others, including both Daniel and Nelson, found local community rooms and halls for rent, and transported books, pencils and other resources to the school every Saturday. Andrea, who went to a BSS in the 1980s in which her father taught, recollected the routines around travelling to the BSS every Saturday morning with her father. She says, ‘Myself and my brother would go every week, and we had a suitcase, “the suitcase”, which had all the materials in there – the worksheets, pens, pencils, and paper, and all the reading book.’ Other BSS teachers endeavoured to find buildings where they could establish a presence on a full-time basis in order to provide both after-school and weekend provision. The founders of Julie’s school, for instance, met for months in a car in 1982 planning their school before finally being able to secure the use of an appropriate building. These struggles to obtain and maintain appropriate space point not only to the dedication teachers and organisers required to establish BSSs. In addition, the difficulty of acquiring space highlights the contested nature of BSSs and the struggle for both resources and for public recognition. The founders of Michael’s school, for example, were refused assistance by their LEA when they tried to establish a BSS in 1980. In response, he explains that parents and teachers took the ‘radical steps to occupy’ a disused council building, sleeping there in turns. Eventually, the LEA agreed to provide initial funding for the BSS and the allocation of the building. In relaying the story of the founding of his school, Michael reflection on the interconnections between the organic community work of BSSs and political radicalism. He said, ‘sometimes we talk about positive action, or just taking things in time, waiting for your time. But you know sometimes really your time don’t come in time, and you just have to take the steps it is to get what you want. It is not a matter of military action, or kind of militarianism, but if they didn’t occupy, maybe we wouldn’t be here.’ The difficulties that BSSs faced in obtaining appropriate spaces, resourcing their teaching and learning activities, and maintaining consistency in their staffing, bolstered a common call within the movement for the government to bear the financial brunt of the failures of state schooling, and thus provide funding for BSSs. For Eve, the gendered and voluntary nature of the work particularly warranted the need for government funding. In her interview she commented, ‘I think it’s the

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women who tend to lead on these things and women are hard pressed as it is – why should it still be voluntary?’ Importantly, the call for funding did not dampen the fervent commitment to BSS independence. Valentino Jones of Josina Machel Supplementary School, for example, asked at an ILEA-hosted ‘Supplementary Schools Conference’, ‘Is it too much to ask our communities to pay twice for their children’s education on top of all the other support they give? We look to ILEA for funding as a right and not as a privilege.’47 He ended his talk by reminding the 120 BSS teachers and organisers in attendance, ‘The parents and the community as a whole are our foundation; we must keep it so by retaining our autonomy.’ The final recommendations of the conference included more funding for BSS from the ILEA, the inclusion of black history as a ‘backbone’ to BSSs, and for BSSs to have active involvement in curriculum development in state schools. The somewhat co-operative approach taken by BSSs and local government, as exemplified in this conference, reflected changing dynamics in the broader political field into the 1980s. And, demonstrating this, the call for greater BSS funding did not go unheeded. Throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s LEAs became increasingly involved in BSS funding. Aided also by sympathetic workers in the government and community sectors, a number of funding bodies actively sought to support BSSs financially. Alison, for instance, used her contacts to assist BSS teachers to make successful grant applications. At the same time, black men and women found a number of opportunities to work within state structures.48 The radical black activist Trevor Carter, for instance, represented the ILEA at the ‘Supplementary Schools Conference’, and gave teachers information about various sources of funding they could apply for.49 Having arrived in England in 1954 from Trinidad, Carter joined the Community Race Council (CRC), which he eventually chaired in 1974, was chair of the CTA in 1977, served on the Rampton–Swann Committee (Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups), and eventually became a Senior Coordinating Officer with the ILEA.50 Rejecting the idea of full-time black schools, Carter ardently campaigned for a more inclusive common school and supported BSSs endeavour to ‘tell [students] what is going on in the country and how to deal with and change the s­ ituation’.51 Also present at this conference was Bernard Wiltshire, one of the founding members of the Kwame Nkrumah Supplementary School in 1971,52 acting as Deputy Leader of the ILEA, who expressed his own desire for BSSs to become a ‘permanent structured place in London’s

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educational system’. Similar collaborative events occurred across the BSS movement. The prominent BSS advocate Gus John, for example, was also a Senior Coordinator for the ILEA. In addition, the Hackney Black People’s Association hosted an open meeting to discuss ‘Why black children under-achieve in Inner London Schools’ with both speakers from the ILEA and its own Secretary.53 At the same time, the need, and political insistence, for government finance created interrelationships between BSSs in their search for funding. Conference and meeting minutes, inter-BSS correspondence, and BSS community pamphlets reveal that throughout the 1970s and 1980s BSS teachers shared information with one another about amenable funding organisations and advice about preparing grant applications.54 In 1989 the NASS was also able to secure ILEA funding for the purchase of equipment and materials and prospective approval for the funding of a part-time organiser role.55 However, the intervention of the state into BSS funding was not altogether welcome. Many BSS teachers favoured the maintenance of their self-sufficiency over financial assistance. The BSS teacher Edward, for instance, viewed the voluntary and independent nature of BSSs as fundamental to their connection to ‘political activism and political community’. Yet commitment to the politics of community control and volunteerism did mean that many BSSs had to live ‘on a shoe string’ as Maureen Stone observed in her study of BSSs in the late 1970s.56 Nonetheless, relying on community support for funds and resources did not come without its own reward. Identifying the differences between those schools with official funding and those committed to self-funding, Stone suggested that the self-help projects’ endeavours to raise community funds embedded them in the community social activities, and granted them greater community cohesion. At the same time, however, accepting state funds did not mean that BSSs flourished financially: financial support often came in the form of small grants, was piecemeal, and was not necessarily ongoing. Grace, for example, insisted that ‘there is a myth out there somewhere’ that BSSs were heavily government funded. Reflecting on the fact that her organisation did not receive extensive grants, she said, ‘maybe certain sections of the community got a lot of money, but for years the supplementary schools existed without any kind of finances from ILEA or whomever, and it was just reliant on volunteers’. As a result, BSSs found themselves making strategic decisions about how to fund their activities. In large part, these decisions were driven by the pragmatic concerns to keep BSSs in operation, and the need not to place too much of a burden on BSS parents and students. From Edward’s perspective, the potential for state funding ‘was very seductive’. ‘These voluntary organisations,

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always struggling for money to pay the rent for the premises they were using or to pay for staff or whatever’ he said, ‘suddenly had the opportunity to apply to this government-appointed body for grants.’ As Grace explained, ‘I think in terms of the independence, you can be a bit more creative in what you are trying to do. And how you deliver what you are trying to do. And yet it is stressful in the sense that you have to pay the light bill, you know, and people have mortgages to pay and rent.’ There was not, therefore, a strict dichotomy between those who received funding and those who did not. Many schools refused to seek ongoing funding, while still pursuing pockets of funds for aspects of their work. Given the frustrations that teachers, parents and students felt about the failures of the state schooling system, the decision to seek funding – or not – was never an easy one. Claudine, for example, recounted the decision-making in her Birmingham BSS strategically to seek funding for particular aspects of their work: We never ever really sought long term funding from Birmingham because there were too many strings attached for what was ridiculously small sums of money. And we just thought – ‘Why are we going to these people and asking them for anything?’ Now there was one part of the parent body that said – ‘Well, because we’re tax payers! The reason we’re sending our kids to this school is because they’re not being educated in the state education system that we’re paying for through our taxes, so we’re not begging for anything, we’re actually saying we want funding to fund these schools.’ But of course the kinds of strings that were attached – the level of scrutiny – for what was crumbs, we thought no. We got pockets of funding for particular things – so where we got just a little bit of money for volunteer expenses, we said we’ve got to do that, we’ve got to at least give petrol money and things like, and of course to buy materials and resources. But the long-term sustainable funding which might have meant us moving towards capital funding, buying a building, and all of that like that, which is what we needed – too many strings attached, we weren’t going to get that.

As Claudine points out, the actualisation of government financial sup­­­­port for a genuinely independent BSS sector did not eventuate. Although relatively progressive governmental bodies, such as the ILEA and the Greater London Council (GLC), responded to the requests for funding, they did so by incorporating BSSs into their existing accountability and bureaucracy processes. Consequently, schools found themselves burdened with increasing amounts of paperwork in their reports and applications, and with the task of defending their purposes within the specific remit of these bodies. Daniel explained this as a being a fundamental shift in local government’s approach to BSSs, where they ‘started embracing the organisations they

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had previously distanced’. The political insistence for official finance for BSSs therefore created new and complicated interrelationships between BSSs and the state. Daniel described schools as coming ‘under a kind of discipline: to get the funding you had to show that you did things properly’. Nelson also lamented the bureaucratic processes that BSSs became subject to with state funding. At first, he explained, there was a sense of entitlement and opportunity as funding opportunities widened: ‘A lot of us in those days applied to the GLC before it was abolished. … You could get money … as long as you put in the right kind of application and used the correct jargon.’ But then, Nelson said, ‘they were not automatic each year and you had to apply again and again. One of my contentions was that, why are you making us constantly reapply? They should find out what our needs are! … And the thing about it is that you’re sending the same rubbish each year!’ In this way, organisational insecurity and instability featured in both the experiences of BSSs that secured official funding and those that did not. Funding arrangements with local councils and government bodies were subject to changes in governance priorities and public expenditure cuts. Having far-reaching repercussions were the dissolutions of the GLC in 1986 and the ILEA in 1990 under the Conservative government. These acts left many London BSSs feeling abandoned after having established long-standing relationships with personnel. Edward, who described the ILEA’s support of the BSS movement as crucial throughout the 1980s, identified its disbandment as being key to the withering of the attempted revival of NASS in the late 1980s and a number of BSSs closing at this time. The increased opportunity for funding also altered the relationships between BSSs. By establishing competitive routes to funding, local governments established the institutional mechanisms whereby BSSs had to compete against each other to demonstrate their worthiness for financial support. As local governments made decisions to fund one BSS over another, or one black youth initiative over another, BSS teachers and organisers found themselves defending themselves not only to state institutions, but also to each other.57 In his interview, Edward described this as a distinct shift from cooperation to competition in inter-school cultures as each BSS was forced to represent itself as the ‘best’ provider to prospective funders. In applying for funding, BSSs had to adapt their aims and objectives in order to demonstrate their ability to fulfil the aims and objectives of official funding bodies. As Andrew put it, ‘The conditions of grant aid really determined what you were doing.’ Across the interviews, BSS teachers were commonly frustrated with the conditional ways in which state funding was offered for their work.

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Andrew, for example, suggested that BSSs had to defend their existence, and plead their case for financial assistance ‘in terms of social and welfare programmes’. He said, ‘The concept was, if you don’t give us the funding to intervene and take them off the main streets there will be riots like they had in Brixton … If you look at an analysis of all the funding applications, underpinning all of that is the notion of – “let us intervene as black people, we know the community, we know the people”’. Similarly, Edward argued that the increased interest of the state in financially supporting BSSs in the 1980s, and into the 1990s, was linked to the growing vested concern to ensure state school effectiveness and performance. He surmised that ‘the government saw this very much as raising achievement. It was part of their school effectiveness raising achievement agenda. And they wanted to make sure that if that money was going to be spent it was going to spent on the kinds of things that they approved of. So they [BSSs] were effectively applying a similar set of requirements as they were doing with mainstream schools.’ Reflecting on the repercussions of the pressure to conform to state-defined aims and objectives, Andrew suggested that it caused a fundamental shift in the political outlook of the BSS movement: ‘Everyone was chasing these social programmes, and it became less and less ideological in terms of independence or black liberation.’ Nevertheless, this was a complex discourse. Michael, who unlike Andrew became involved in BSS teaching well after the introduction of formalised funding mechanisms, reflected on the pragmatism of this appeal. He understood that for BSSs to have access and influence on mainstream schooling policies and practices, it was necessary for them to demonstrate their value as the ‘missing link’ between ‘troubled’ black children, parents, and schools. Michael’s position reflects an important shift in the way in which community activism related to mainstream political organisations.58 The ways in which BSSs articulated their purpose, therefore, were invariably mediated by the change of the field within which they operated. The need for funding, and the demand to make government accountable, led to a change in which the schools had to represent themselves as youth initiatives. And indeed perhaps their participation within the broader educational field that increasingly understood BSSs’ purpose as ‘turning around’ ‘troubled’ black youth at times served to enforce, rather than challenge, this discursive construction placed upon them. Moreover, embedded within the politics of black liberation and com­­­ munity control, from their inception BSSs had always been genuinely concerned with the welfare of black youth – their mental health, criminalisation, intellectual development and future prospects. The move

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towards representing their work as more focused on welfare, thus, may have been more performative than signification of a major shift. Comparison of the ways in which schools represented their purpose to their community, as opposed to funding bodies, does appear to suggest that BSSs were most definitely strategic in the ways in which they represented their work. For example, Ahfiwe’s journal, The Inseparable Tie Is Our Blackness, lists among its aims the delivery of educational and vocational services to black youth, supportive advisory services to ‘negate adverse social environments’, and the development of students’ ability to ‘think critically and politically so that they are able to analyse intelligently that which relates to their existence as an ethnic minority’.59 In a reformulation of these aims, Ahfiwe presents a slightly modified version when applying for funding from the GLC in 1986. Here the school objectives include providing educational facilities for Afro-Caribbean children, promoting understanding of African culture and history, and encouraging ‘children to aspire to academic achievement with an intention of enabling them to play an active and meaningful role in British Society’.60 The difference in representation is patent. Such mediations, however, must be approached carefully. Participation in this performative funding process did not necessarily lead to its tenets becoming incorporated into the BSS movement. It is likely that for many BSSs funding relationships created the need to perform varying images of their practices for different audiences. Of course, for many, while funding opportunities enforced particular modes of communication and representation, being a recipient of a grant often led to freedom of operation. It also perhaps assisted in the BSS pursuit of collaboration with local schools. Ahfiwe BSS, for instance, in reporting on its operation, noted working with five local state schools, from which ‘black kids are referred to us by teachers and in most instances they form the basis of a class which meets at least twice a week’.61 Nonetheless, it is clear that the increased involvement of government funding, and concurrent bureaucratic surveillance, did significantly alter the field within which BSSs operated. Moving from a purely communityled basis in the late 1960s and early 1970s to a constitutive part of the state’s system of education (broadly defined) in the 1980s, BSSs found themselves negotiating a very different form of politics. Conclusion Actively creating independent educational cultures, and challenging mainstream schooling practices, the diverse BSS movement developed a complex field of alternative knowledge and cultures. Asserting the

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authority of black parents and students to define their own educational opportunity, and the possibility for black success in wider society, BSSs created multifarious educational counter-publics. In doing so, BSS teachers developed and asserted their educational authority through expressing, and fostering in their students, a pride in black selfhood and a pedagogical identity. Across the movement, BSS teachers developed pedagogical practices that reflected their desire for students to succeed educationally and to develop a common black knowledge and culture. For many this involved the use of ‘traditional’ pedagogies alongside strong intergenerational student–teacher relationships, and a concern to develop critical independent intellectual capacities. Finding themselves defending their right within a sometimes hostile or ambivalent public field, BSS practice was projected into the public sphere. Reflecting the diverse political orientations of the broader black politic, teachers differed in their response to this. While some explicitly connected their BSS practice to wider campaign work, others focused primarily on student educational attainment as the marker of their work. Across these variations, the constitutive focus on local community embedded BSSs and their teachers in their immediate contexts. In similar vein to the SSS movement, this both challenged and enforced traditional gender norms. The emphasis on locality and family could be seen to support traditional women’s work, and yet the work BSS teachers did to take black young people’s issues to the fore brought both men and women into the public realm of campaign work. Complexity is also found in the ways in which the BSS movement related to the state in its attempt to make government responsible for black students’ educational failure through BSS funding. Though leading to an increase in grant allocation, this engagement caused fundamental changes in the ways in which BSSs negotiated with mainstream schooling and with each other. Most significant is the slow incorporation of BSSs into bureaucratic processes of accountability. Such shifts necessitated a change in at least the performative cultures of BSSs in the time period under investigation here, in that they were required to represent their activities through the aims and objectives of the institutions (predominantly the state) offering funds. The mediations between BSSs and the state point to the complex relationships between the wider public sphere and the BSS educational counter-publics in the attempt of BSS teachers to assert their educational authority, at the same time as their right to be included in the mainstream.

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Notes   1 GPI, BPM/4/2/2/2, motto of NASS; Jones, We Are Our Own Educators!   2 MDXRT, 15/02, Cause for Concern and Action by Haringey Black Pressure Group on Education, letter to Headmaster/Headmistress, 28 January 1983.   3 GPI, BPM/5/1/5/5, Headmistress Must go’, Race Today, July/August 1977, cutting; see also Gerrard, ‘Self help and protest’.   4 MDXRT/MDXRT/15/02/L; M. Farrar, ‘Racism, education and black selforganisation’, Critical Social Policy, 12 (1993), 53–72; J. Demaine, ‘Racism, ideology and education: the last word on the Honeyford affair?’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14: 4 (1993), 409–14; C. Searle, ‘From Forster to Baker: the new Victorianism and the struggle for education’, Race & Class, 30:4 (1989), 31–50.  5 Runnymede Trust, Black Parents: Bulletin of the Black Parents’ Association, 1:3 (Autumn/Winter 1985/86); & 2:1 (Spring 1986/Winter 1987).  6 IRR, 01/04/03/02/060, Black Peoples’ Action Group Newsletter, 1:26 (January 1982).  7 WYAS, WYL5041/5/31/01–16, Chapeltown News, 31 (February 1976), p. 3.  8 LMA, 4462/D/05/01/002, Caribbean Teachers’ Association 1984–5; GPI, BPM/4/3/7/3, Association for Curriculum Development, press release, ‘A gauntlet for Baker: British history – racist indoctrination’, 4 June 1987; R. Stones, ‘Racism in children’s and school textbooks’, National Association for Multicultural Education Bulletin, 7:2 (1979), 13–14.   9 Black Peoples Progressive Association et al., Cause for Concern. 10 See K. de la Motta, ‘“John is aggressive about his colour”: a probation officer looks at the influence of school reports’, National Association for Multicultural Education Bulletin, 8:2 (1980), 8–10. 11 GPI, BPM/4/3/7/4, press release, Advisory Committee on Police in Schools, ‘NUT guidelines on police/school liaison are irresponsible and naïve’, 10 May 1986; GPI, BPM/5/1/1/7, campaign leaflet, ‘Mr Home Secretary, call your police off our backs’, 21 June 1976. 12 GPI, BEM/4/7/1/25, campaign leaflet. 13 Farrar, ‘Racism, education and black self organisation’, p. 59. 14 Mirza and Reay, ‘Spaces and places of black educational desire’; Reay and Mirza, ‘Uncovering genealogies of the margins’. 15 Mirza and Reay, ‘Spaces and places of black educational desire’, p. 522. 16 Phillips, ‘Black education finds its roots’ (original emphasis). 17 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01–14, pamphlet, ‘Fun with Learning’, Malcolm X Montessori School, 1971/2. 18 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/14, A. J. Ghosh, ‘Towards a Black Tomorrow’, dedicated to Fun with Learning programme, Malcolm X Montessori School. 19 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/14, ‘Fun with Learning’, Malcolm X Montessori School. 20 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/14, press clipping, ‘A Black Fanatic Who Stirs Up Trouble’, News of the World (12 November 1972). 21 LMA, 4463/D/05/01/002, Youth Conference agenda, arranged by the CTA, Gerry V. Davies, 1984, p. 2.

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22 Philips, ‘Black education finds its roots’; more recently, David Simon (founder member of the BSS organisation Ebony) makes explicit reference to Paulo Freire along side ‘Afrocentric’ thinkers in his publication How to Unlock Your Family’s Genius: A Book on Family and Education (London: Ebony, 2009). 23 G. J. Sefa Dei, ‘Afrocentricity: a cornerstone of a pedagogy’, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 25:1 (1994), 3–28, p. 17. 24 GPI, BEM/3/1/6, student workbooks. 25 GPI, BEM/3/1/6/10, student workbook. 26 BCA, WONG/2/6, Report on the Gresham Summer Project, 1–30 August 1973. 27 LMA, 4463/D/05/01/001, ‘Alternative Education’, Clinton Sealy, n.d. 28 T. Reynolds, ‘Black to the community: an analysis of “black” community parenting in Britain’, Community, Work & Family, 6:1 (2003), 29–45. 29 See J. Gerrard, ‘Gender, community and education: cultures of resistance in Socialist Sunday Schools and Black Supplementary Schools’, Gender and Education, 23:6 (2011), 711–27; Reay and Mirza, ‘Uncovering genealogies of the margins’. 30 E.g. S. James, ‘Sex, race and working-class power’, Race Today 6:1 (1974, 12–15; IRR, 01/04/04/01/10/07/049, Southall Black Sisters, ‘Afro-Asian Unity: The Principle and Practice’, 1981. 31 See Sudbury, ‘Other Kinds of Dreams’; C. Tulloch, ‘That little magic touch: the headtie and issues around Black British women’s identity’, in K. Owusu (ed.), Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (London: New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 207–18. 32 BCA/BWM05A; BWM09A; BWM12J. 33 E.g. H. V. Carby, ‘White woman listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood’ in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.), The Empire Strikes Back, pp. 212–35. 34 E.g. Williams, ‘We are a natural part of many different struggles’. 35 Sudbury, ‘Other Kinds of Dreams’, pp. 10–17. 36 Williams, ‘We are a natural part of many different struggles’. 37 Bryan, Dadzie and Scafe, The Heart of Race, p. 59. 38 Reay and Mirza, ‘Uncovering genealogies of the margins’. 39 E.g. F. Dhondy, ‘The black explosion in schools’, Race Today, 6:2 (1974), 44–7. 40 LMA, 4463/D/05/01/001, ‘Alternative Education’, Clinton Sealy, n.d. 41 LMA, 4463/B/02/03/09, ‘Parent Power and Student Power: The Key to Change in Education and Schooling’, BPM. 42 LMA, 4463/D/05/01/001, ‘Alternative Education’, Clinton Sealy, n.d. 43 Bryan, Dadzie and Scafe, The Heart of Race. 44 Roxy Harris in Harris and White (eds), Foundations of a Movement, p. 45. 45 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/20, ‘Notes on Kwame Nkrumah Supplementary School’, 4 May 1972. 46 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/20, ‘Notes on Kwame Nkrumah Supplementary School’, 4 May 1972.

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47 GPI, BPM/4/2/1/3, Report on Supplementary Schools’ Conference. 48 See K. Shukra, L. Back, A. Khan, M. Keith and J. Solomos, ‘Black politics and the web of joined-up governance: compromise, ethnic minority mobilization and the transitional public sphere’, Social Movement Studies, 3:1 (2004), 31–49. 49 GPI, BPM/4/2/1/3, Report on Supplementary Schools’ Conference. 50 Henry, Thirty Blacks in British Education. 51 Henry, Thirty Blacks in British Education. 52 IRR, 01/04/04/01/04/01/20, ‘Notes on Kwame Nkrumah Supplementary School, 4 May 1972. 53 GPI, BPM/4/1/3/1, campaign leaflet, Hackney Black People’s Association, 22 October 54 E.g. Hackney Black Peoples’ Association leaflet includes information about how to obtain government funding: GPI/BPM/4/1/3/1; meeting of George Padmore and Albertina Sylvester schools, 27 April 1974 reports plans to obtain grants from the ILEA and the boroughs of Islington and Haringey: GPI, BEM/3/1/3/1/5. 55 GPI, BPM 4/2/2/2, correspondence from Geoff Tumath, ILEA Director of Education Post Schools, to Mavis Milner-Brown, NASS Secretary, 31 March 1989. 56 Stone, The Education of the Black Child in Britain, p. 182. 57 See Gerrard, ‘Self-help and protest’. 58 See Shukra et al., ‘Black politics and the web of joined-up governance’. 59 BCA, WONG/2/1, Ahfiwe: Journal of the Ahfiwe School and Abeng No. 1. 60 LMA, LRB/FN/C4/02/02, Ahfiwe correspondence to the GLC: Similar differentiations in representation can also be seen in the case of Peter Moses SS. In their community leaflet the school lists as its aim to ‘readjust the inequality of education as meted out to black children’, while any reference to racism, black culture or history is absent from their GLC funding proposal. See LMA, 4463/D/11/02/011, Peter Moses school files. 61 BCA, WONG/2/3, Ahfiwe School, ‘Supplementary education scheme advisory committee: co-ordinator’s report and financial support’, Lambeth CRC, 10 May 1974.

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Part IV

Conclusion

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7

Radical childhoods and the struggle over education

Within two very distinct communities, the SSS and BSS movements challenged cycles of schooling failure and lack of opportunity through their creation of independent educational cultures. Arising within their particular political milieux, and responding to specific social contexts, these schooling initiatives mark specific – and important – educational ‘events’ in British history. They also reference a genealogy of active educational resistance and creation in working-class communities. The tracing of the emergence of these two particular examples, however, should not imply a coherent historical narrative of working-class radical education across temporal and social space. Rather, the in-depth examination of ‘emancipatory’ concepts and practices within these two educational cultures of resistance has aimed to develop greater understanding of the cultural and political complexity that comes with an emancipatory intent in radical community-based education. Indeed, the preceding chapters have revealed the distinctiveness of these two histories. Most obviously, the emergence of the determined black politic by the end of the twentieth century marks a clear shift in – and challenge to – traditional British class relations and struggle. Furthermore, substantive transformations in state schooling institutions, and in British society and culture more generally, indicate considerable differences in the social, cultural and political experiences of BSS and SSS teachers and students. In this chapter, I take the opportunity to compare and contrast across these two distinct radical children’s educational initiatives. Returning to the theoretical concepts connected to the notion of counter-publics flagged in chapter 2, I pick up three primary themes that run across the two histories investigated herein. These three themes offer pathways for conceptualising and understanding these histories as counter-publics – as diverse spaces that challenged social power and inequality in ways that at first view appear to exist outside traditional conceptions of the public sphere ‘proper’. The themes therefore represent three excursions into understanding the conceptual and historical meaning of the BSS

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and SSS counter-publics. First, I explore the attempt of these movements to challenge wider social inequalities and injustices through children’s educational initiatives. In particular, I consider the place of childhood and youth politics in the struggles for social change. Second, the ways in which both of these movements reclaimed past heritage and asserted present and future capability is examined. Here, the principal importance of knowledge authority and common culture in the BSS and SSS movements is considered. Thirdly, and lastly, I examine the mobilisation of collective identification as a projected and experienced endeavour: in other words, the place of class and blackness as common projections of culture and selfhood. Children’s education and counter-publics It is easy to overlook large portions of cultural, economic and social life in the search for the turbines of social reproduction and change. For many decades narrow conceptions of public life and the relations of pro­duction obscured women’s work inside and outside formal paid employment, and the presence of slaves in the production of British wealth and nationhood. Correspondingly, social change is often attributed to institutional and policy shifts (driven by their predomin­­ antly male social actors), ‘leaving out of account deep-seated social movements that have profoundly influenced educational change’.1 And even in the accounts of such social and educational movements, focus on great (often male) icons of radical thought and action, or the pinnacle moments within mass mobilisations, neglects the daily and local efforts of those dedicated to social change.2 As localised children’s educational initiatives, the BSS and SSS move­­­ ments represent such day-to-day acts. Unlike their fervid public counterparts, the socialist and black ‘adult’ movements, BSSs and SSSs are perhaps less easily identifiable as a public contestation to hegemonic social power. These movements’ mutual concern to create alternative educational opportunity meant that much of their principal energy was directed towards creating independent spaces of knowledge mastery and creation. An unquestioned adoption of traditional gendered divisions between private and public spheres might suggest that this means that these schooling movements were predominantly private educational spaces, teetering on the outside of the heady domain of public social struggle. However, it is clear that BSSs and SSSs did indeed challenge the social norms surrounding educational provision for working-class and black students, and were an embedded part of the wider socialist and black movements for change. Explicitly having radical intent meant that these

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movements were never wholly absent from the public field. The campaign work of teachers, and sometimes students, brought SSSs and BSSs into the public sphere. In addition, the state and conservative surveillance of – and intervention into – the SSS and BSS practices brought the schools into political contestation, and thus into the broader public sphere.3 BSSs and SSSs therefore could be understood to sit on the margins of the public sphere, with one foot firmly placed in the public sphere in their demand for better education and greater social equality, and other firmly placed inside their schooling initiatives as they focused their energy on fostering independent educational and cultural collective spaces. Giving conceptual clarity to this complex hegemonic positioning, Reay and Mirza recently used Nancy Fraser’s notion of counter-publics to describe the BSS and SSS movements, as discussed in chapter 2.4 Fraser’s conceptual development of ‘counter-publics’ as diverse, and at times hidden, arenas of cultural creation and resistance certainly appears to provide a means in which to understand the complex relationships between these schooling movements, the state and the project of social change outlined in this book.5 Dually concerned with creating educational alternatives outside the mainstream and challenging educational and social inequalities, while also being pulled into political contestation through state interest in their activities, BSSs and SSSs slipped in and out of the public domain. Centring their purpose on education, these schools acted as ‘sleeping dragons’. They aimed to create protective, positive experiences of childhood and youth and to lay the foundations for critical participation in society, and at the same time awoke into action in defence of their educational and political activities and of their students and teachers when required. In so doing, in their different ways, the SSS and BSS movements bordered the public and private domains, demanding their independence and autonomy while calling for the state to be responsible for its own failings. The public and the private In practice, SSSs and BSSs preserved their autonomy (and distance) from the public sphere, and at the same time asserted their practice as politically salient. As a consequence, these school movements challenged traditional binaries between the private and public spheres. In part, this relationship of the BSS and SSS movements to the wider public domain was mediated by their interconnections with their radical political fields. Arising within, and drawing cultural and political resources from, their respective radical milieux, the schools were organic to the broader socialist and black movements. However, their dedicated intent as specifically children’s enterprises gave these movements a cultural and

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political autonomy set apart from their radical adult counterparts. The notions of childhood and youth were paramount in the function of these school movements as counter-publics. Interpretation of their practice, therefore, must consider the ways in which emancipatory ideals propagated in their associated political fields were reinterpreted for children and young people. For both BSSs and SSSs, hope for the next generation, and the need to develop supportive cultures for children’s development, formed the principal foundation of their emancipatory intent. This focus created complicated political cultures for the teachers and organisers of BSSs and SSSs. Crossing adult political cultures through their own involvement in campaigns with the creation of independent children’s cultures involved a constant negotiation between the private and the public, and created antagonisms and ambivalences in their relationships to the ‘adult’ movements. In particular, protecting and articulating childhood as a period of growth for the SSS movement, and as a period of potential capacity-building for the BSS movement, generated a focus on local cultures and personal conduct that drew criticism from their respective peers. Both movements, but in particular SSSs, had to contend with the disapproving judgement that they overemphasised the importance of the specificities of localised cultures and the development of individual capacities at the expense of broader political critique. And yet, as this book has explored, a distinction between wider political critique and struggle and the schools’ everyday work is by no means clear. As noted in the literature surrounding the US SSS movement,6 and in Alleyne’s examination of the North London black activist circle’s involvement in BSSs,7 youth-based initiatives are undoubtedly politically significant for those participating, and for the broader radical social movements that surround them. This is particularly apparent when considering the ways in which the private and public spheres, and their gendered bases, were redefined through the SSS and BSS movements. The focus on children, the relative informality of their political cultures compared with adult groupings, and their celebration of local activism attracted significant numbers of women to these movements. And yet the mediation between private and public, between being unseen and seen, was not an antagonism whereby children and women pulled towards the private, and active (male) political cultures pulled towards the public. Children and women were central to the project of making these initiatives public and politically salient: SSSs and BSSs created practices of radical social change that centred the family, children and localised (often traditional women’s) work. It was this in way, therefore, that SSSs and BSSs operated as counterpublics and challenged the constitutive bases of the public and private

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in both the mainstream and radical public spheres.8 The two movements developed a dual challenge that instated childhood as a protected stage of life, and which also insisted that childhood was a public and political concern. In doing so, they contested dominant practices of children’s education and the notion that child-rearing was a ‘private’ concern of women. Of course, as has been explored in the preceding chapters, this was by no means a coherent, uncontested or resolutely ‘radical’ challenge. The production of radical discourses and practices involved the negotiation, and at times incorporation, of dominant assumptions and practices, including gender relations and notions of ‘respectable’ and productive children. Independence and responsibility Galvanised by the proof of their capability, and sure in the value of their own knowledge creations, the BSS and SSS movements developed a strong ethos of community autonomy. In both cases, organisers and teachers defended the right to define and control their own ‘public’. It is important here to make (a tentative) distinction between the school movements and the broader socialist and black political cultures that surrounded them. Of course, absolute delineations between the two are neither necessary nor desirable: both the BSS and SSS movements were entangled in the activities of their wider cultural/political fields – the implications of which are discussed below. Nonetheless, it is also important to understand the SSS and BSS movements as counter-publics in and of themselves, with the notion of childhood and youth at their centre. Despite their diversity, and their connectivity to a wide range of cultural, social and political practices, SSSs and BSSs understood themselves as containing independent coherence, or at least as being part of a ‘movement’. Their claim to legitimacy and autonomy, however, did not arise from – or foster – a distancing from local communities and everyday cultural activities. With no great moment of inception, and drawing on community resources of self-help in order to accommodate and sustain their practices, BSSs and SSSs were a continuation, and perhaps augmentation, of existing traditions of education. The significance of this should not be overlooked. These humble beginnings not only signal the genealogical tracings of these school movements, but also point to important tenets in their claim to autonomy. At their inception, BSSs and SSSs existed outside the purview of the state and dominant culture. For the first years of their operation, BSSs and SSSs simply offered alternative educational spaces to those provided by the state. Indeed, for the BSS movement, the hidden character of the schools was profoundly important in their quest for proof of capability

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against dominant depictions of black ineptitude. As noted, many parents and students kept their attendance and involvement in BSSs concealed from the teachers and head teachers of their mainstream schools. For the SSS movement too, the assertion of autonomy came with a desire for a space apart from dominant culture and ideals. In some respects then, these school movements actively presented themselves as resolutely independent from the state’s institutional structures so that they could be simply understood, and act, as an alternative education. However, these alternatives were also explicitly counter-hegemonic, incorporating men and women who extended their educational practice to overtly challenging state practices. And while much of this occurred through the participation of parents, students and teachers in the wider socialist and black fields, the school movements themselves were also actively involved in promoting knowledge and understandings that undermined the state’s contemporaneous approach to schooling and social relations. For instance, outside the classroom, BSSs attempted to protect black young people from disproportionate police harassment and surveillance, and SSSs sponsored children in wider socialist festivities, such as May Day. In addition, the schools’ pedagogies and curricula also became contentious. SSSs attracted significant criticism from the mainstream press, and eventually gained the interest and intervention of the state (local and national). It would be disingenuous, however, to paint a picture of clear and definite antagonisms. Though there were clear assaults on SSS practices, such as the introduction of the Seditious Teaching Bill in the 1920s, the 1907 LCC lockout and the coordinated attacks on SSSs by religious and conservative critics, the official state investigation of the schools actually revealed a prevailing ambivalence towards SSSs. This can also be seen in the BSS movement. The personal and institutional connections between BSSs and many of the anti-racist education campaigns, and the encouragement given by some of the schools for their students to assert their rights in mainstream schools, brought the BSS movement into direct contestation with the state, neo-Nazis and conservative media. And yet this was also patterned by a constant mediation: school strikes, parent pickets and the development of radical black epistemology ran alongside ILEA funding of BSSs and aspirations for social mobility. Indeed, many BSS supporters were employed by the ILEA, GLC and CRCs, and used their positions to assist the funding and resourcing of BSSs. These diverse responses indicate the complex and multifarious nature of hegemonic social relations, and the contestation of these. Many state teachers too, it must be noted, lent their support to the BSS movement.

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Recognising such apparent concessions should not obfuscate the very real and public struggles for power, or the significance of genuine political grievances. Rather, it points to the need to understand the development of counter-hegemonic action as involving a constant negotiation with complex and messy state strategies of co-option, tolerance, as well as contest.9 For example, the BSS aspiration for social mobility ran against powerful discourses of black incapability and was based on a foundational critique of existing social and educational structures. At the same time, state funding of BSSs both legitimised their critique of state schooling and at the same time brought them into governmentcontrolled bureaucratic accountability measures. Such complex, and historically situated, contestations highlight the complex and messy intertwinements inherent to the mobilisation of counter-hegemonic struggle. In other words, ‘Radical education cannot be understood aside from inherited educational resources.’10 This includes the resources that might inspire radical education, such as the traditions of black and working-class education, and those that radical education critically responds to. Following from the BSS and SSS movements’ desire for a fundamental change in social relations, their asserted autonomy was coupled also with a call for state responsibility. Bringing these movements into direct confrontation with local and national schooling practices and policies, the teachers and organisers of these movements demanded that the state better fulfil its own educational obligations. This political objective brought the SSS and BSS movements into established discourses surrounding the notion of social responsibility. Here, BSS teachers contended with powerful representations – and aggressive processes of criminalisation – of black youth as deficient and deviant. In response, they argued for the state to take responsibility for educational failure, the lack of employment options and police practices that criminalised young black men and women. Comparably, SSS teachers challenged long-standing presumptions of working-class incapability, and argued for the state to protect working-class children from starting work at an early age, to increase welfare provision and to take responsibility for (and action over) the unmistakable class differentiation in educational opportunities. For BSS and SSS teachers, the moral and political imperative to produce the next generation of critical thinkers capable of continuing the challenge to social inequalities came with the need to create alternative practices of productivity and social responsibility. Both desired educational and social success for their students, and encouraged the development of community responsibility. Certainly, the BSS emphasis

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on the mastery of dominant knowledge created synchronisms between the aims of BSSs and mainstream schools, which for some BSS teachers was unproblematic. Similarly, in the SSS movement, representations of productivity and respectability within their construction of workingclass socialist selfhood were influenced by middle-class culture and analogous liberal philanthropic ideologies. Nevertheless, while both the BSS and SSS movements emphasised the need for productivity, and for a form of social responsibility, their versions of this – however diverse – were undeniably distinct from conservative ideologies of their respective historical contexts. Both movements were ardently critical of the dominant version of workingclass productivity, charging it with thwarting personal creativity and, as particularly emphasised in the SSS movement, supporting the idleness of the ruling class. At the core of this distinction was the commitment to social equality, and the right to reclaim knowledge authority where it had otherwise been denied by the institutional structures of state education. With these as their underpinning principles, the BSS and SSS movements challenged presumptions of working-class and black deficiency along with institutional inequalities in their struggles for state responsibility and articulation of personal (or community) responsibility. Past, present and future knowledge authority and collective identities Having education as their principal objective, both the SSS and BSS movements attempted to claim ownership over their own alternative knowledge structures. Asserting their right and capability to learn, teach, determine and challenge knowledge, these initiatives created educative spaces for adults and children alike. This occurred through the development of curricula and pedagogical practices, and through the cultural act of the schools. Challenging the narrow state school curriculum, SSSs introduced science, politics and history to students and gave them space to develop and assert their expertise. Alongside this, musical performance, arts and crafts, rambling, singing and trade-union-style meeting rituals all contributed to a general development of cultural knowledge. Responding to a different social and educational context, in BSSs children and young people were given the opportunity to develop their basic skills within a black cultural (and for some political) curriculum. Here, teachers and students mastered, critiqued and reinterpreted dominant knowledge within black terms of reference: BSS students learned literacy, numeracy, history, geography, politics and science with a particular emphasis on black contexts, and concurrent to a strident critique of the practices of imperial and post-imperial Britain.

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Concordantly, students and teachers also participated in and created black cultural practices, including Carnival, black festivals, film, music and food. Just like the mid-nineteenth-century British radicals’ call for ‘really useful knowledge’,11 the teachers of BSSs and SSSs criticised the forms of dominant knowledge available to them, and countered this by asserting their authority to create their own knowledge. It is important not to underestimate the importance of knowledge creation in both of these movements. This struggle to identify alternative knowledge and culture for their respective political, social and cultural intents was invariably a contested enterprise. Within the SSS and BSS movements there were a range of definitions of ‘really useful knowledge’ and practices of pedagogical authority. Identification of a determined ‘socialist’ and ‘black’ identity, culture and epistemology was actively sought, but also actively disputed. As with the wider socialist and black political fields, BSSs and SSSs were characterised by political contestation, and gendered, raced and classed differences. Thus, there was something profoundly powerful in the act of epistemological proclamation for both of these school movements, an act that valued and affirmed the identification of common knowledge and culture, despite its inevitable partialities, exclusions and ensuing contestations. This occurred in three ways: the attachment to knowledge traditions, the mastery and critique of dominant knowledge, and the assertion of pedagogical and knowledge authority, each of which will now be considered in turn. Creating knowledge: past, present and future In asserting the right to construct knowledge both BSSs and SSSs reclaimed and reconstructed a past heritage. For SSS teachers, the creation of their historical narrative involved the celebration of individuals understood (or claimed) as predecessors in a lineage of socialist-sympathetic intellectual and activist tendencies. For instance, by identifying a genealogy of radical biography and thought, such as in the YS Socialist Saint series, the SSS movement actively constructed its own historical lineage. The SSS movement also attached itself to traditions (and visions) of working-class culture (work and leisure) that had become threatened through the dynamic processes of industrialisation. The development of this working-class culture rested heavily on the celebration of productive and meaningful work and the trope of nature. Drawing on Marx’s critical assessment of work under capitalism as exploitative and subverting creative potential, the SSS movement offered a counter version of work. Focusing on cooperative gains, intrinsic satisfaction and on the beauty of craft, SSS teachers drew creatively on traditions of

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working-class culture by which to support this alternative version. They attempted to maintain connection, and bring new life, to traditions of knowledge, such as, for example, the SSSs’ incorporation of crafts and cultural leisure pursuits (needlecraft, flower drills, choir, poetry). The SSSs’ utilisation of tradition, however, was not a simple replication of historical working-class knowledge and culture. The SSS movement selectively borrowed from past traditions, to produce new (gendered, raced and classed) iterations and repetitions of old: in a kind of hermeneutic reflection, the SSS movement offered a ‘creative reinterpretation of cultural heritage’.12 Mirroring similar revivals also found in the turn-of-the-century British socialist movement, such as the use of May Day as a ‘festival of labour’, knowledge traditions were as much to do with present and future possibilities as they were to do with their past significance. Thus, these renewed knowledge and traditions relied upon imagined futures, and with this the attempt to foster contemporaneous cultures in close approximation to these. The creation of working-class socialist knowledge, cultures and identities therefore constantly moved from the past to the present and future. SSS teachers (variously and contentiously) discriminated what forms of knowledge and culture they thought best represented a socialist future, and attempted to develop counter-cultures to reflect and promote this. The SSS experience suggests that the identification and articulation of alternative knowledge constructs was not only necessary, but also central to the function of the schools. To borrow Spivak’s terminology, the ‘strategic use of essentialism’ was fundamental to the SSS’s development of counter-hegemonic practice and knowledge.13 Importantly, this was not simply about making key political decisions at specific points of hegemonic crisis. Rather, this was an ongoing project of identifying, developing, criticising and rejecting various knowledge constructs.14 As seen in the SSS experience, the diverse identifications of a socialist epistemology was subject to both diversity and debate, such as those around the ‘woman question’, and the criticism of middle-class and religious sentimentalism levelled by their PSS and CP comrades. Similar appropriations of knowledge traditions, and epistemological contestations, can be seen also in the BSS movement. For BSS teachers and students, this occurred in response to a dominant dismissal of working-class cultures that was doubly constituted by racist assumptions of black incapability. Retracing black achievement, power and success, BSSs drew on histories of colonial oppression and resistance, and narratives of black leadership and strength in their creation of alternative knowledge. They therefore looked to the histories of Africa and the Caribbean for cultural, linguistic, social and political signifiers in

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the creation of knowledge and culture. This historical and cultural turn gave rise to a range of cultural reclamations, including the emergence of Rastafarian youth culture, the embracing of traditional dress and music, and the celebration of historical black leaders. Arguably, in this case, different experiences of oppression led to different associations with knowledge traditions within the BSS movement, as compared with the turn-of-the-century SSSs. The overt coupling of racism with the structural fostering of working-class positions served to emphasise the importance of black history, culture and knowledge. While the SSS movement understood its attachment to (selective aspects of) working-class culture as a challenge to capitalist incursions on workingclass lifeworlds, the BSS movement faced a more explicit provocation. The racism of mid- and late-twentieth-century Britain dismissed black cultures and capabilities in a way that appeared to deny any social space for black community. Thus, whereas the SSS movement was responding to the fundamental shifts in class relations following industrialisation, for many within the BSS movement, knowledge construction was simply an asserted right to express a cultural heritage. However, unsurprisingly, the connection made by the BSS movement to black history and culture was not an uncomplicated reproduction of past knowledge traditions. The reiteration of black epistemology involved new – various and contested – interpretations, influenced and bound by the social and political conditions of late-twentieth-century Britain. The particular expression of blackness, and later diaspora, was a new (even if historically connected) identification.15 Mastering and criticising dominant knowledge: capability and protest A large part of the BSS and SSS assertion of knowledge authority was steeped in their mutual defence of the ability of their students to master and critique dominant knowledge. At the turn of the century, poor systems of education, the low school-leaving age and the necessity for work left a large proportion of the working class with little or no opportunity to develop their own knowledge capacities. For the mid- and latetwentieth-century black community, the assumption of low intelligence, and consequent chronic oversubscription of black children in low sets and ESN schools, left entire cohorts of black students bereft of adequate education. The development of these counter-educational movements, and the premise of their radical act, was therefore as much to do with expanding the educational experience available to these communities’ children, as it was about creating alternative knowledge.16 Supporting Gramsci’s (and Arendt’s) thesis that counter-hegemony must be built upon the command and familiarity with dominant

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knowledge, these school movements did not disregard basic skills or reject dominant knowledge constructs in their entirety.17 In their distinct ways, these educational movements voiced similar intent to that of the radical teacher Chris Searle in 1973: We cannot afford to divert ourselves with notions of de-schooling when we need more schools, more teachers, more books, more facilities for our working class children, more concentration to develop their frustrated and insulted potential … We have to confront the enormity of the problem as an organised and inter-related body: teachers’ parents, and school students. We can educate for stoicism and acceptance, only passing onto our children the identity of the exploited and underdeveloped, or we can educate for struggle and solidarity, showing our children that we are fighting and learning with them, affirming ourselves, our class, and our right and determination to control our own social and educational future.18

For SSS educational practice this injunction primarily focused on introducing children to science, history, politics and philosophy – subjects paid little attention in the mainstream school system. Challenging perceptions of working-class educational apathy and inability, SSS teachers endeavoured to provide students with the opportunity to master the knowledge of a range of disciplines. However, for the most part, the SSS movement did not concern itself with the teaching of basic skills. Viewing themselves as distinct from the provision of state schooling, SSS teachers preferred to lobby the state for improvements in mainstream education. Given the nascent character of the universal British education system at this time, it is perhaps unsurprising that the movement sought further reform alongside its independent educational activities. Responding to a markedly different state educational system, and less confident of the ability of the institutions of a century-old school system to reform, the BSS movement did have as its focus basic skills. Frustrated with the failure of state schooling, across all of the various political orientations within the movement BSSs attempted to directly intervene in their children’s education. Finding inspiration in examples of achievement from the diaspora, BSSs sought to counter powerful discourses of inability and drew strength through proving capability. Thus, in a more explicit way than the SSS movement, BSSs asserted their right to dominant and basic knowledge through instituting rigorous basic skills teaching. In their different ways, the two school movements reflected a Gram­­­ scian concern for the acquisition and mastery of traditional knowledge in order to then subvert, critique and transform its underpinning presumptions. As Gramsci states, ‘… it is above all in [the peasants’ and

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workers’] interests to submit to the permanent discipline of education and to create a conception of their own of the world, and the complex and intricate system of human relations, both economic and spiritual, which shapes social life on the globe’.19 Thus, the acquisition of skills and knowledge was linked to a fundamental critique of its core tenets. Consequently, the mastery of traditional or dominant knowledge occurred within defined (socialist or black) political boundaries. For example, the SSS movements’ science and history curriculum had a specifically socialist flavour. Nature studies were used as exemplars of the ‘natural’ (and gendered and raced) cooperation intended for human life; histories of working-class struggle and culture served to reinforce allegiance to working-class identities and socialist futures; and literacy skills were put to work in the enthusiastic critiques of British capitalism and poems for socialism. Such educational practices did not attempt to quell dissent or to proselytise dogmatically. Rather, the mastery of dominant knowledge occurred with a particular intent, and one, it must be noted, that also underscored the importance of the independence of the intellect. Certainly for the SSS movement this intent was felt variously: from Christian socialists to ardent trade unionists and secularists the men and women of the SSS movement incorporated a range of relationships to dominant knowledge constructs. Similar, and perhaps more complicated, patterns are found within the BSS movement. Without doubt, the aim to master traditional knowledge was tied to the desire to demonstrate the stark absences within the social and political structures that it supported and produced. BSS basic skills practice occurred alongside passionate criticism of the absence of black knowledge within and beyond basic skills: black culture, history, geography and black contribution to ‘western’ knowledge were all taught by teachers in BSSs, who also campaigned for it to be taught in mainstream schools. However, influenced by powerful discourses of social mobility and aspiration present in both late-twentieth-century Britain and diasporic genealogies of black success, many within the BSS movement tied the mastery of dominant knowledge to the mastery of dominant economic and social hierarchies. As examined in this book, this inflection within the BSS movement created significant debate, particularly as some BSS teachers opted for greater government involvement in and funding of their operations. The emphasis on the possibility for black success and mobility signal the very different class experiences of these two communities. For the SSS movement, the epistemological creation of socialist selfhood was connected to working-class cultures that had a direct historical connection to their surrounding geographies. As a consequence, the assertion

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of working-class culture involved the celebration of localised and settled existences. In contrast, the predominantly migrant black community neither identified their selfhood with the working-class geographies nor the work traditions of Britain. Struggling against the practices of empire, and having the black diaspora as their point of reference, BSSs were less attached to the British working-class experience as an epistemological resource. Nevertheless, the aspirational tendency within the BSS movement did not obscure a fundamental critique of dominant knowledge. Even for those who explicitly desired class mobility, this was viewed as a profound challenge to existing knowledge constructs and social structures, as mobility was accompanied by the assertion of black knowledge and capability. Pedagogic authority: childhood, gender and expertise Connected to the creation, mastery and critique of knowledge was the concurrent claim of expertise and authority. In asserting this, the BSS and SSS movements drew on their respective community traditions of education: the autodidactic traditions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century working-class Britain in the case of the SSSs, and the cultural struggles against enforced illiteracy and the traditions of self-help e­ ducation in the Caribbean and Africa for the BSSs. It is important to note too that in responding to their British context, some BSS teachers also found salience in the histories of working-class radicalism (including the SSS movement),20 and in contemporaneous initiatives, such as the community-based progressive education movement of the 1960s and 1970s. By finding inspiration in the ability of communities to create know­­ ledge with little or no resources, these movements placed great importance on the independence of their educational authority. This act placed everyone involved in these movements as current or potential experts – ‘everyone is a philosopher’. In many ways, then, the BSS and SSS teachers could be understood in the Gramscian terms of ‘organic intellectuals’.21 Initiated and sustained by local communities members, BSSs and SSSs defended and developed the educational authority of teachers, parents and students. In BSSs and SSSs, parents, neighbours and family friends became positioned as knowledge experts and active community leaders. With both movements having high numbers of women participants, this occurred alongside the incorporation and challenge of gender norms. The connection of the two movements to childhood, families and parenting created the cultural conditions within which women could easily participate without disrupting dominant conceptions of women’s work and identity. As a consequence, gender norms pervaded BSS and SSS cultures,

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as in the associated socialist and black political fields. However, the explicit politicisation of the school movements, and the celebration of local community activism as political, did disturb dominant gendered narratives. Through developing and implementing the schools’ curricula, and involvement in wider political and cultural work, women across these two movements were in positions of community-authority. As suggested in Reay and Mirza’s research on contemporary BSS practice, and the work of Hunt on women in turn-of-the-century socialist education, these schools did support women in creating new and subversive practices that challenged hegemonic gender cultures.22 As a consequence, the political cultures of these school movements did not obfuscate traditional women’s work in favour of grand (masculine) images of individual greatness. Rather, with the genuine concern to develop community-centred collective cultures, both men and women were congratulated for their daily acts in building their respective projects, for being, in the words of the SSS movement, ‘one of many builders’. Gender roles for men and women were therefore reconstructed within the localised forms of authority supported in the schools. Having the realm of childhood at its foundation, this construction of authority also celebrated children’s own expertise. As intergenerational cultural spaces, BSSs and SSSs fostered respect for children’s capabilities and independent political views while also fiercely protecting the sphere of childhood. Demanding better (and longer) state education provision and creating diverse socialist and black learning experiences, BSSs and SSSs actively protected and developed alternative childhood cultures. And while respect for adults was expected, and the curriculum for the most part predetermined by the teachers, the independent intellect of children was acknowledged and fostered. In the SSS movement this was attempted through its non-partisan remit and emphasis on creating an independent (socialist) space of growth in order to allow students to make their own political and intellectual commitments. With similar intent, in BSSs this occurred through respecting and listening to students’ experiences of state schooling and working with students on joint campaigns against ESN schools, school exclusions and police violence. Imagined communities Drawing on past knowledge and traditions, the teachers and students of BSSs and SSSs developed a range of cultural and educational practices that they hoped would foster present and future collective spaces of counter-hegemony. At the centre of this was the notion of a socialist

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working-class community for SSSs and of a black diaspora community for BSSs. These constructions of community relied on both imagined understandings of communal identity as well as the attempted mobilisation, or lived experiences, of this. Paul Gilroy’s reflection on black community has relevance for the ways in which both of these schooling movements created cultures of collectivity. He states that the ‘black community emerges in seeking justice as an interpretive community and a community that, in recognition of its internal differentiation and its transient status as an effect of prejudice and discrimination, sometimes even looks forward to its own abolition. The language of community should be welcomed rather than disparaged.’23 In creating their language and practice of common community, BSSs and SSSs drew upon forward-looking aspirations of possible alternative futures. The SSS movement in particular expressed a range of sentimental visions of socialism in an attempt to inspire its students to remain committed to socialist politics. Yet this future imaginary was by no means closed. In actuality, it was invariably reflexive and connected to the political debates of the time. The political diversity of both of the movements, and the debates within and around the schools, created a range of ‘productive tensions’ whereby future visions provided conditional, and not teleological, inspiration for ‘transformative social action’.24 Projections of future possibilities were therefore not categorically ‘open-ended’ and ‘slippery’ based purely on ‘speculation and creation’,25 but resolutely embedded in the pragmatic task of political engagement. The BSS and SSS movements mobilised a kind of ‘utopian realism’, in the words of David Halpin, rather than a ephemeral dream, in their constant translation of future hopes into ‘action plans that seek to push out the boundaries of what is possible on the basis of what is perceived to be realizable in the light of progressive forces already underway in contemporary society’.26 Articulating the concerns of their respective communities, the BSS and SSS movements engaged with, and provided the spaces in which people could express, ‘issues, problems, anxieties, dreams and hopes’.27 In both of these school movements, the struggle against dominant knowledge and culture did not start and end in their weekly lessons. Rather, it spilled over into their everyday community life. Across these movements, teachers encouraged a culture of community responsibility and engagement that was intended to reflect future – imagined – possibilities, as well as being a direct challenge to social norms. Importantly, neither the SSS nor BSS movements created static, narrow or uniform notions of such a community engagement. In the SSS movement, from Alex Gossip who encouraged children to express their commitment to

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socialism through singing songs of support to imprisoned First World War pacifists, to Lizzie Glasier’s enthusiasm for socialist aesthetics and needlework, there was a multiplicity of creations of working-class and socialist self and community. Common across these, even in (or perhaps constitutive of) their diversity, was a clear commitment to the shared identification with local, national and international communities of ‘working-class socialists’. Similarly, BSSs also created a multitude of collective identifications with black identity and community. Conclusion: children’s radical education Initiated, led and maintained by their respective communities, the BSS and SSS movements point to a different history of British education from that of the narrative of progression found in the successive governmental reforms towards comprehensive state schooling. Local and fragmentary in character, SSSs and BSSs signal the history of active working-class educational cultures within which men and women attempted to provide an alternative future for their children. While both attracted the interest and support of prominent members of their respective political fields (socialist and black), for the most part these school movements were sustained by the efforts of local community members, including a significant proportion of women. Creating their own independent cultures, pedagogies and curriculum, and negotiating relationships with their associated political fields and the mainstream education system, BSSs and SSSs created diverse, contested and at times ambiguous children’s counter-publics. In part, the impetus to write these histories arose from the persistent presence of assumptions of working-class and black educational inactivity and deficiency within contemporary educational policy, and the continued failure of state education to shift patterns of class disadvantage. It is hoped that this book brings attention to these two often forgotten schooling movements. In addition to this, I have also sought to respond to the need to develop greater complexity in the understanding of radical education, with particular attention on the intersectional relations of class, race and gender. At the heart of this book is therefore a concern to understand better, and to examine the diversity, ambiguity and contested character of radical movements for change, which incorporate children and young people. While acknowledging the sociological context from which this research impetus emerges, the historical approach has aimed to avoid mining historical experience for instructive or illustrative exemplars. This book has not sought to romanticise unnecessarily working-class

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counter-hegemonic education, but to understand its interrelations, contradictions and reflexivities. Thus, the histories of the SSS and BSS movements cannot provide policy solutions, but rather assist us, in an increasingly pragmatic forward-thinking instrumentalist political climate, to reconsider the relationship of education to social change, and the struggles that many communities face in determining and claiming ‘really useful knowledge’. Comparison across these two movements has revealed similar attempts to assert educational authority, while also throwing up clear historical and cultural divergences. Such differences have created an opportunity to explore the processes of class constitution and educational cultures in very different historical and political conditions, and in particular the place of racism and alternative collectivities of blackness in recent British class history. In addition, both of these movements highlight the significance of gender and women in the history of radical education. As I have explored in the chapters above, both the SSS and BSS counterpublics created complex gendered discourses in developing their political impetus around children and young people. With high levels of involvement of women in the two movements, and a focus on family and local activism, gendered discourses and experiences can be seen reinforcing, transgressing and contesting dominant norms and ­understandings of class. Furthermore, focusing on each of these school movements’ particular mobilisation of emancipatory education, this book has given in-depth attention to the pedagogical and political cultures of counter-hegemonic education. Translating radical politics for children’s education, BSSs and SSSs created autonomous, but related, fields of practice within their respective political milieux. Importantly, their dedicated intent as a children’s venture engendered discourses and practices that fostered enthusiasm, but also ambivalence and at times conflict, with their peers in the ‘adult movements’. Nevertheless, this occurred through a constant relationship with their radical fields and the wider public sphere. E ­ xplicitly incorporating political critique into their education, and encouraging critical engagement with the state and its institutions, these school movements articulated their emancipatory ideal as a localised, but contextualised, endeavour. Counter-hegemonic education in these instances therefore spilled over the confines of educational and cultural activity and into the wider public sphere. As counter-publics, SSSs and BSSs asserted the political importance of childhood, and of children as political beings, while also protecting childhood as a particular sphere of growth. In defiance of presumptions of deficiency, the BSS and SSS movements’ independent initiation of education attests to the historical genealogy of

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independent working-class and black educational cultures. As well as unveiling the active working-class cultures that have variously patterned educational history, this book also signals the continued failure of state education to develop practices of social equality, and of dominant policy discourse to recognise – and reform – its deficiencies. In their different ways, BSSs and SSSs were essentially concerned with asserting their own educational authority and agency, demonstrating the capacity of their children, defending the social space in which to express their cultural and political identifications, and campaigning for economic and social justice. Responding to their specific political, economic and social conditions, the SSS and BSS movements created the imaginative and cultural space in which to explore alternative collective identities, and contest dominant versions of incapability and injustice. Notes   1 Simon ‘Introduction’, in Simon (ed.), The Radical Tradition in Education in Britain, pp. 9–20.   2 See D. Trohler, ‘The establishment of the standard of history of philosophy of education and suppressed traditions of education’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23 (2004), 367–91.  3 Catherine Squires explores similar processes in the relationship between the US State and the black press in the first half of the twentieth century in ‘The black press and the State: attracting unwanted (?) attention’, in R. Asen and D. C. Brouwer (eds), Counterpublics and the State (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 111–36.   4 Mirza and Reay, ‘Spaces and places of black educational desire’.  5 See Fraser, ‘Identity, exclusion and critique: a response to four critics’; Fraser, Justice Interrupts.  6 Teitelbaum, Schooling for ‘Good Rebels’; Tager, ‘A radical culture for children of the working class’; D. J. Wilson, ‘“Little comrades”: socialist schools as an alternative to public schools’, Curriculum Inquiry, 21:2 (1991), 217–22; for a discussion on US CP youth activities see Mishler, Raising Reds.  7 Alleyne, Radicals against Race.  8 See M. Greene and M. Griffiths, ‘Feminism, philosophy and education: imagining public spaces’, in N. Blake, P. Smeyers, R. Smith and P. Standish (eds), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 73–92.   9 These sorts of processes can also be seen at work in the analysis of post-war British education as explored in Baron et al., Unpopular Education. 10 Johnson, ‘Really useful knowledge’, p. 80. 11 Johnson, ‘Notes on schooling of the English working class 1780– 850’. 12 P. Ricouer, ‘Hermeneutics and the critique of ideology’, in G. L. Ormis-

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ton and A. D. Schrift (eds), The Hermeneutic Tradition (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 298–334, pp. 329–30. 13 B. Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London and New York: Verso, 1997). 14 G. C. Spivak, S. Denius and S. Jonsson, ‘An interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’, Boundary, 2, 20:2 (1993), 24–50. 15 See Hall, ‘Negotiating Caribbean identities’; Hall, ‘Black diaspora artists in Britain’. 16 See H. S. Mirza, ‘“The more things change, the more they stay the same”: assessing black underachievement 35 years on’, in B. Richardson (ed.), Tell It How It Is: How Our Schools Fail Black Children (London: Trentham Books, 2005), pp. 1–9. 17 H. Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 173–96; Gramsci, Selection from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 27–39; H. Entwistle, Antonio Gramsci: Conservative Schooling for Radical Politics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979). It should be noted that Arendt’s thesis differs significantly from Gramsci’s in that she contends that education of children should not make any claim to inculcating for the ‘good life’, but focus its enterprise exclusively on the transmission of existing knowledge traditions. 18 C. Searle, This New Season: Our Class, Our Schools, Our World (London: Calder & Boyars, 1973), p. 9. 19 A. Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1957), p. 21. 20 E.g. Stone, The Education of the Black Child in Britain; McCalman, ‘African Caribbean Schooling and the British Education System’. 21 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks; Mayo, ‘Synthesising Gramsci and Freire’. 22 Reay and Mirza, ‘Uncovering genealogies of the margins’; Hunt, Equivocal Feminists. 23 P. Gilroy, ‘Joined-up politics and postcolonial melancholia’, Theory, Culture, Society, 18:2–3 (2001), 151–67. 24 M. Cooke, ‘Redeeming redemption: the utopian dimension of critical social theory’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 30:4 (2004), 413–29. 25 E.g. L. Sargisson, Utopian Bodies and the Politics of Transgression (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). 26 D. Halpin, Hope and Education: The Role of the Utopian Imagination (London: Routledge/Falmer, 2003), p. 60. 27 D. Hedbige, ‘Staking out the posts’, in C. Jenks (ed.), Transgression: Critical Concepts in Sociology, vol. II (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 254–80, pp. 274–5.

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ability-based school banding 129–30 ability-based testing/setting 4, 128–9 Adler, Felix 47, 110 n94 adult education 3, 5, 7, 28–30 black 137 Socialist Sunday Schools 58, 62, 104 and turn-of-the-century socialism 43 Alleyne, Brian 12, 127, 138, 188 Anderson, Tom 83–5, 107 n22 n28 Ansell, Nicola 31 archives (used in this book) 12–14, 20 n45, 21 n47, 33 Asian supplementary schools 139 Besant, Annie 47, 110 n94 black autonomy 144–5, 154 n134 black bookshops 30, 123, 125–6, 136, 150 n35 black children Black Saturday Schools 128, 135, 143–5, 159, 168, 176 and the failure of state schooling 131, 133, 155–8, 173, 195 and class and race 139 black churches 119 black community 117, 120, 122–5, 128, 131, 136, 140–1, 144–5, 159, 195, 198, 200 attacks against 125–6 and gender 145–6, 165 see also blackness Black Liberation Front 135, 141, 144

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black identity 10, 125–6, 135, 144, 146, 167, 193, 201 blackness 122, 134–39, 147, 177, 195, 202 and class 139–41 diversity of 137–9 and gender 118, 144–6 Black Parents Movement 117, 138, 145, 157 black politics Black Saturday Schools 122–7, 147, 168–9, 170, 178, 190 class 125–7 communism 124–5 community-based education 127, 137 migrants 198 race 124–5, 127 socialism 123–4 social change 117, 140 students of 125 working-class movements 123–5, 140, 169 see also blackness Black Power 3, 12, 136 Black Saturday Schools ability-based grouping 165 and black politics 122–7, 147, 168–9, 170, 178, 190 use of 141–4, 147, 194–5 and blackness 134–9, 195, 197–8, 200 and class 139–40, 156, 195 contemporary 11

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curricula and activities 137, 140, 142–4, 162–5, 175–6, 192–3 diversity 132, 141–3, 160, 164 emergence of 127–34 first schools 10, 117, 121 n2, 127–8 funding and resources 170–8, 191 and gender 144–6, 165–9, 171, 198–9 intergenerational character 143, 157, 162–3, 165, 178 local character 128, 132–4, 141, 147, 168–9 organisational structures/networks 128, 133–4, 155, 170, 173 pedagogies and teaching approaches 143, 160–5, 178, 198–9 and racism 136, 140, 157–8 and state schooling 10, 117, 128–31, 155–60, 164–5, 172, 174, 190–2, 195–6 and social change 186–7, 201–3 public/private sphere 187–9 Black Unity and Freedom Party 141–2 black women autonomist politics 166–7, 154 n134 and feminism 166–7 organisations of 139, 145–6, 166–7 pedagogues 168 black young people concern over 165, 178 criminalisation of 126, 163, 190 organisations of 138 Black Youth Movement 117, 138, 152 n99, 157 Blatchford, Robert 43, 48 Bogle L’Ouverture 123, 132 Bogle, Paul youth club 123, 133 Black Saturday School 142–3, 145 bookshops, black 30, 123, 125–6, 136, 150 n35

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225

Booth, Arthur 61, 95–6 Bourdieu, Pierre 6 Bourne, F. J. 60 British Council of Women Socialists 98 British Empire 89, 96 British Socialist Party 44, 53, 61, 66, 81 Young Socialist League 82 British Women’s Patriotic League 89 Brixton Black Women’s Cooperative 139 bussing/dispersal policy 129–31 Calhoun, Craig 27 Caribbean Artists’ Movement 125–6 Caribbean Education and Commun­­ ity Workers Association 132 Caribbean Teachers’ Association 162, 172 Carpenter, Edward 43, 65–6 Chartism 3, 43–4 childhood 187–9, 198–9, 202 and struggles for social change 29 changing meanings and experiences of 31–2 and turn-of-the-century socialism 44–6 and Socialist Sunday Schools 56–60, 67, 71, 99, 102 child labour 45, 56 Socialist Sunday School teachers’ personal histories of 57 children and young people 192, 196, 199–203 and Black Saturday Schools 15, 117, 126–37, 139–47, 155–62, 165, 167–9, 171–3, 176–7, 195 and the Communist Party 86–7 and community-based education 8–9, 14, 29 and contemporary education policy 6 working-class 10–11, 44–5 and socialists 46–8, 56

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Index

and Proletarian Sunday Schools 84–6 public concern over 44–5 and social change 3–5, 29–33, 186–9 and Socialist Sunday Schools 10, 13, 15, 41, 50–3, 55–64, 66–7, 71, 80–2, 88–106 and turn-of-the-century socialism 43–50 see also black children, black young people Children’s Faith Crusade 89 Christian socialism 66, 68–9, 102, 197 Cinderella Clubs 48–50 class and black politics 125–7 and Black Saturday Schools 9, 29, 126–7, 131, 139–41, 143, 156, 163, 193, 197–8 changing nature of 8–9, 22–5, 33, 185, 195, 202 and the Communist Party 86–7 and education policy 5–7, 201 and emancipation 23–7 and gender 14–15, 22, 24–5, 27–8, 201–2 and Socialist Sunday Schools 96–106 and race 3, 7, 10, 14–15, 19 n31, 22, 24–5, 27, 29, 201–2 and Socialist Sunday Schools 29, 63–5, 69, 83–4, 94, 193 and turn-of-the-century socialism 65–6 see also middle class, working class class analysis and Black Saturday Schools 147 challenges to 9 decline of 23 use of (in this book) 23–5 class-consciousness 24 class relations 9 class struggle 24–5, 29 and Black Saturday Schools 12

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and Proletarian Sunday Schools 84–5 and Socialist Sunday Schools 65, 102, 105, 197 Coalition government 5–6 Coard, Bernard 131–2, 135 colonial history 3 colonialism 10, 15, 25, 29, 127 colonies 3, 123, 127, 131 Communist Party 44–5, 66, 81, 83–4, 90–1, 104, 108 n39, 109 n70, 194 and black politics 124 children’s sections 86–7, 89–91, 102 school group meeting format 108 n43 women 86, 105 Young Communist League 45, 86–7, 90 Young Communist International 86 communism and black politics 124–5 and Socialist Sunday Schools 98, 106 community-based education 10–11 and black politics 127, 137 and children and young people 3–5, 31 progressive 198 radical 8–9, 27–8, 185, 191 and the state 4–5 and turn-of-the-century socialism 46 and women 5, 25 working-class 3–5, 15, 186, 198, 201–3 Community Race Councils 172, 190 comprehensive education 4, 11, 129 Congress of the International Young People’s Organisation 94–5 Conservative government 175 conservative politics and Black Saturday Schools 159, 187, 190, 192

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and childhood 45 and Socialist Sunday Schools 15, 65, 80, 88–91, 105, 190, 192 Co-Operative Comrades’ Circles 90 co-operative movement/guild 66, 81, 89–90 Coordinating Council of Black Supplementary Schools 133 counter-hegemony 33, 190–1, 194–5, 199, 202 counter-publics 14, 29, 32–4, 38 n69, 185–9, 201–2 and blackness 118, 125, 147 and Black Saturday Schools 157, 178 and Socialist Sunday Schools 56, 65, 71, 80, 98, 105 Crane, Walter 48, 60, 92 critical pedagogy 26 feminist challenges to 31–2 cultural capital 6, 156 Darwin, Charles 59, 93 Department of Education and Science Circular 7/65 128 Dewey, John 26, 100 n94 dispersal policy 129–31 Docherty, Mary 86 Doulton, A. J. F. 130 East London Black Women’s Organisation 145–6, 154 n134 educational policy 5–7 education see adult education, communitybased education, comprehensive education, radical education, universal education Educationally Sub-Normal schools 128–9, 131, 142, 158, 195, 199, Edwards, Bertram 5 Engels, Friedrich 24 ethical societies/movement 47–8, 53,

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227

110 n94 emancipation 23, 26–7, 46, 85, 102, 117 of British slaves 142 in distinction from empowerment 8–9, 25 of women 100–1 emancipatory education see radical education empire 23, 29, 124, 142, 198 Empire Day 104 Fabian Society/fabianism 44, 48, 66, 124 feminism 3, 9 black 166–7 feminist education 26, 30 critiques of critical pedagogy 31–2 feminist histories 5, 97 feminists (socialist) 98 First World War 12 Socialist Sunday School opposition to 94–5, 104, 201 Fraser, Nancy 14, 32–3, 187 Free School Coalition initiative of 6 Spitalfields Jew’s 48 White Lion 161 free school meals 4, 46, 87, 104 Freire, Paulo 8, 26, 30, Black Saturday Schools 161–2, 180 n22 Gallacher, Jean 90 Garvey, Marcus 124, 140 Black Saturday School 124, 133–4, 135, 141, 145 gender 22, 26, 28, 31–2, 188–9, 198–9, 202 and blackness 118 and Black Saturday Schools 144–6, 166–72, 178 and class 23–4, 27, 28, 96–8 and Socialist Sunday Schools 41, 46, 56, 66, 96–106 Ghose, Ajoy 142, 161

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Index

Gillies, Val 7 Girl Guides 58, 67 Glasier, John Bruce 56, 58, 61 Glasier, Katherine 56 Glasier, Lizzie 41, 64, 92, 95, 98, 201 and religion 68–9, 88 Gossip, Alex 51, 60–1, 94, 104, 200 Gould, F. J. 45, 47–8, 59–60, 69, 93–4, 96, 105, 110 n94 Gramsci, Antonio 8–9, 14, 30, 196–8 Gray, Mary 9–10, 46–7, 49–50, 81, 91 Greater London Council 174–5, 177, 181 n60, 190 Gutman, Amy 26 Habermas, Jurgen 32 Hardie, Keir 48, 50, 56, 68, 94, 101–2, 163 Haringey Council 130–2 Harrison, Brian 13, 105 Harrison, J. F. C. 5 hegemony 8, 14, 28, 30, 32–3, 165–6, 186, 190 see also counter-hegemony Hobsbawm, Eric 60 Honeyford, Ray 157 Humphries, Stephen 27 Hunt, Karen 28, 97, 113 n157, 199 Huntley, Jessica and Eric 132 immigrant children (‘problem of’) 129–31 imperialism 3, 7, 22, 29, 94, 127 struggles against 123–4 Independent Labour Party 44, 53, 58, 61, 64, 66, 68–9, 74 n59, 79 n153, 81–3, 90–1, 99, 104, and the Communist Party108 n39 Inner London Education Authority 158, 172–5, 181 n54, 190 internationalism 64, 80, 91, 93–5 IQ 130–1

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James, C. L. R. 124 Black Saturday School 124, 133 Jewish Workers’ Circle 48, 65, 73 n32 John, Gus 132, 139, 173 Johnson, Richard 5 Jones, Claudia 125, 141 Jones, Valentino 140, 172, Kahan, Zelda 61, 112 n141, 113 n157 Kean, Hilda 90, 109 n70 Labour Church 44, 53, 66, 99 children’s initiatives 49 labour child 45, 56, 57 domestic 96, 101 divisions of 23, 96–7, 99 socialist discourses of 53–4, 64, 85, 92, 94, 101, 105, 194 labour exploitation 3 labour market 24 labour power 25 labour relations 30 Labour MPs 78 n142, 90, 91, 95 Labour Party 81, 82, 89, 124 Lamming, George 126 Lansbury, George 48 La Rose, John 123, 132–3, 138, 142, 157, 170 Lee, Jenny 67, 77 n112 London Carnival 125–6, 193 London County Council eviction of Socialist Sunday Schools 88, 190 McArthur, Archie 48, 50–1, 68, 81, 99 McLean, John 84 McMillan, Margaret 32, 45–6, 50, 57–8, 68, 88, 105 McNab, Clarice 104–5 Malcolm X 136, 140–1 Montessori School 142, 144, 161 Mann, Tom 48

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Index Manton, Kevin 46 Martin, Jane 32, 46 Martyn, Caroline 51, 68, 112 n141 Marx, Eleanor 48 Marx, Karl 24, 26–7, 43, 58, 72 n3, 85, 93, 193 Marxism 43–4, 62, 84, 95, and Pan-Africanism 124 May Day 10, 60–1, 68, 70, 81–3, 90, 92, 190, 194 middle class and Black Saturday Schools 140 and contemporary education policy 5–6 interventions into working-class education 7–8, 43 and Socialist Sunday Schools 92, 99, 102, 192, 194 and turn-of-the-century socialism 44, 56, 66 migrant communities and education 3, 127 and contemporary policy discourse  6 migration 11, 29, 122 migrants 25, 119 and education 3, 15, 48, 127 post–Second World War 124–7 and black politics 198 Mirza, Heidi S. 12, 32–3, 159, 187, 199 Moral Instruction League 47 Moses, Peter 135, 141 Black Saturday School 132, 181 n60 mothers and Black Saturday Schools 128, 141, 165–6, 168 and Socialist Sunday Schools 64, 70, 97–8, 105 working-class 7, 45 mother nature 92–3 National Association of Supplementary Schools 133–4, 155, 170, 173, 175

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National Council of British Socialist Sunday Schools 10, 51–4 Bureaux 51–2, 94 Declaration 54 non-partisan position 58, 61–2, 71, 81–3, 87, 91, 98, 105, 199 regional unions 51, 54–5, 74 n51, 82, 95 Socialist Sunday School Agenda 52 Ten Socialist Commandments/Precepts 53 syllabus 59 see also Socialist Sunday Schools National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations 89 New Beacon Books 12, 132, 143, 170, New Labour 6 North London West Indian Association 128–31 oral history/testimony (used in this book) 13–14, 33 from Black Cultural Archives 146, 151 n60, 166 of Black Saturday School teachers and students 119–21, 146 of Communist Party women 86, 105 of suffragettes 79 n162, 105 Organisation for Women from African and Asian Descent 139 Padmore, George 124 Black Saturday School 117, 124, 137, 141–3, 162, 170 Pan-Africanism 3, 66, 124, 144 parents 4, 24, 6–7, 9, 196 and Black Saturday Schools 117, 126–31, 136–8, 144–7, 156–8, 160–2, 165, 168, 170–4, 176, 178, 190, 198 and Socialist Sunday Schools 53, 67, 70, 81–2, 88, 92, 102, 198

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pedagogy critical 26 feminist challenges to 31–2 progressive Black Saturday Schools 160–4, 198 Socialist Sunday Schools 57–64 Pennington, Thomas 48 Pierson, Stanley 44 police 79 n162, 117, 157, 163, 191 racism 147 stop-and-search laws 138, 152 n97 surveillance of black communities 126, 136, 138, 158, 190 violence 138, 157–8, 199 post-colonialism 9, 29–30 see also colonialism Pring, Richard 26 progressive pedagogy Black Saturday Schools 160–4, 198 Socialist Sunday Schools 57–64 Proletarian Sunday Schools 84–7, 89–91, 102, 194 Ten Proletarian Maxims 85 public sphere 33, 46, 105, 178, 185, 202 and the private sphere 32, 96–7, 100, 103, 169, 178, 186–9 racial politics 126, 178 see also counter-publics Purvis, June 28 Queen Mother Moore 141 race 26, 31, 34, 148 n13, 193 and Black Saturday Schools 138–9, 143–4, 167 and class 7, 19 n31, 23–4, 29, 201 changing experiences of 10, 22 and black politics 124–5 , 127 and contemporary education policy 6–7 and Socialist Sunday Schools 93–6, 106, 194, 197

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racism 7, 123, 130, 135–8, 144, 147, 181 n60 in academic research 13–14 and Black Saturday Schools 126–7, 139–40 and class 3, 9, 29, 124–5, 195, 202 in education and schools 4, 10, 15, 118, 156–9, 169 and Socialist Sunday Schools 96 in turn-of-the-century socialism 65 radical education 9, 14, 25–9, 48, 185, 191, 202 approach of this book 8 Black Saturday Schools 118, 122, 162 children’s 29–33, 188, 201 and class 23, 27, 185 and gender 31, 202 genealogy 8, 118 romanticised history 8, 20 Socialist Sunday Schools 65, 102 rambling 10, 64, 69, 93, 192 Rawle, Mary Ann 100–1 really useful knowledge 7, 31, 193, 202 Reay, Diane 12, 32–3, 159, 187, 199 Reid, Fred 12, 70, 95 religion and Proletarian Sunday schools 85–6 and Socialist Sunday Schools 10, 12, 68, 71, 52–4, 68–9, 82–3 criticism of 62 debates around 70–1 and turn-of-the-century socialism 44, 47, 69 religion-of-socialism 65, 69–70 respectability childhood discourses of 45, 189 Socialist Sunday School discourses of 101–2, 192 Rose, Jonathan 3 Russell, Alfred 69–70, 88 Russia/ns 90, 112 n141

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Index Russian Revolution 83, 86, 89, 95, 108 n39 Scouts 58, 67 ‘scrap sus’ campaign 138, 146, 152 n97, 170 Seacole, Mary 140 Sealy, Clinton 117, 121, 128, 133, 143, 164–5, 169 Second World War 15, 25, 122, 131 secularism and Socialist Sunday Schools 63, 91, 104, 197 and turn-of-the-century socialism 46–8 Seditious Teaching Bill 15, 89–91, 109 p 69, 190 self-help 15, 127, 142–4, 147, 166, 173, 189, 198 sexism 4, 124 Shotton, John 5 Simon, Brian 4, 9, 12, 29, 44, slavery 25, 123, 142, 147 wage 85 Snowden, Philip 56, 69 social change and children and young people 3, 29, 31–3, 187 and education 3–4, 9, 22–3, 26, 30–1, 186, 202 socialism 43 black politics 117, 140 emancipation 25 public/private sphere 187–9 racism and imperialism 125, 186 radical 8, 23, 188 and women 28, 186 Social Democratic Foundation 9, 43–4, 46, 49–50, 53, 66, 74–5 n59, 81, 88, 133 n157 and religion 68 socialism 3, 11, and black politics 123–4 and Black Saturday Schools 140 and children 42, 44–50, 53, 60–1 education 43, 46–9

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ethical 12, 44, 47–8, 53, 65–71, 86, 88, 91 and Socialist Sunday Schools 12, 49–50, 65–7 contestation surrounding 80–8, 91, 105–6 Socialist Sunday School interpretation of 41, 49, 52–5, 56–65, 67–72, 200–1 internationalism 91–6, 106, 197 gender 96–106 turn-of-the-century 43–4, 65–7 and women 12, 28, 60, 66 Socialist Sunday Schools and the adult socialist movement 50, 62, 66–7, 80–3, 88, 189 age differentiated classes 58–9 and childhood 56–64, 191 children’s socialism 67–8, 101–2, 193, 200–1 conservative challenge to 15, 88–91, 190 curricula and activities of 41, 51–2, 59–60, 63–4, 76 n96 n99, 194 middle-class character of 92, 102, 192 diversity of 83 emergence of 43–50 first school of 9–10, 46–7, 49 and gender 96–106, 112 n141 n149, 198–9 growth and decline 50–1, 55–6 and internationalism and race relations 91, 93–6 left criticism of 83–7 local character of 50–1, 53–6, 80, 98, 100, 103 use of nature 91–3, 96, 106, 197 gendered nature of 92, 96–7 pedagogies and teaching approaches 51, 57–8, 60–3, 198–9 school minute books 13, 63–4, 100, 93,

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and state schooling 62–3, 195–6 and social change 186–7, 201–3 public/private sphere 187–9 and the working class 11, 29, 55–6, 64, 68, 72, 80, 92, 105, 191–2 teachers 57, 71, 99–101 children and expanded curriculum 63–4, 71 internationalism 64, 93–5 ‘nature’ 91–6, 106, 197 gender 96–8 imperialism 94, 106 work, productivity and respectability 101–3 see also National Council of British Socialist Sunday Schools Socialist Sunday Schools (international) 94 Socialist Sunday Schools (US) 12, 19 n37, 76 n96, 108 n39, 188 and women 98 social mobility aspirations for in Black Saturday Schools 140, 164, 190–1, 197 in the colonies 127 and competitive meritocracy 23 Southall Black Sisters 139 Southall Youth Movement 138 SS Empire Windrush 122 state and community campaigns 4, 32–3 funding of Black Saturday Schools 171–8, 181 n60, 190–1, 197 intervention into Socialist Sunday Schools 88–91 responsibility 191 surveillance of socialist and communist activities 90–1 state schools 4–5, 9–10, 14, 31, 185, 201 and Black Saturday Schools 15, 118, 128–9, 131, 133, 135–6, 143, 155–65, 170–2,

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174, 176–8, 189–92, 196–7, 199 and Socialist Sunday Schools 45, 63, 69, 189–90, 192, 196, 199 Steedman, Carolyn 32, 45–6 Stone, Maureen 11, 173 students 31, 185, 195–6 black 7, 127–31, 147, 157–9, 178, 186, 195 in black politics 125 campaigns of 4, 187, 199 and class 5–7, 24, 186 establishing Black Saturday Schools 127, 142, 146, 160, 165, 167 interviewed for this book 13, 119–20 in Socialist Sunday Schools 10, 13, 51–2, 56–7, 59–60, 63, 65–7, 69–71, 80, 86, 88, 93–6, 191–2, 196, 198–200 and gender 15, 97–8, 100–5 in Black Saturday Schools 11–13, 117, 119–20, 122, 134, 137–8, 140, 142–3, 145, 158–64, 167–74, 177–8, 190–5, 198–9 Sudbury, Julia 166, suffrage (movement) 25, 44, 100–1 suffragettes 3, 65, 66, 100 oral history of 13, 79 n162, 105 Sylvester, Albertina 141 Black Saturday School 142–3 Tager, Florence 12, 19 n37 teachers 31, 24, 48, 185, 196 black 128, 132, 160, 170 Black Saturday School 11–12, 117–18, 122, 125, 127–8, 132–3, 135, 137–145, 147, 155–6, 158–60, 162–78, 187–94, 197–200 interviewed for this book 13, 33, 119–21, 132 and gender 12, 15, 165–9

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Index

criticism of by black community 128–9, 131, 156–9, 162, 168 Socialist Sunday School 13, 15, 44, 46–7, 51–3, 55–61, 63–5, 67–71, 80, 82–3, 88, 90–5, 97, 187–91, 193–4, 196–200 lack of childhood 57, 71 and gender 97–106, 113 n157 support for Black Saturday Schools 160, 177, 191 Teitelbaum, Kenneth 12, Tressell, Robert Ragged Trousered Philanthropists 43, 69, 85 Turner, Ben 78 n142, 91 universal education 10 see also comprehensive education Universal Races Congress 93, 100 n94 Weare, Robert 46, 50, 57 West Indian Standing Conference 125, 128 Williams, Raymond 28, 30, 32 ‘woman question’ 97, 194 women in Black Saturday Schools 12, 15, 165–9, 171–2, 198–9 and family 146, 178 and education 3, 5, 12, 25 children’s 32, 56, 188–9 public roles of 10, 28 and socialism 28, 46, 60, 92, 111 n123 in Socialist Sunday Schools 67, 96–106, 112 n141 n149, 198–9 Women’s Parliamentary Committee of the Unionist Association 89 women’s work in Socialist Sunday Schools 96–9, 103, 106, 186, 188, 198–9

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in Black Saturday Schools 146–7, 169, 178, 186, 188, 198–9 Wong, Ansel 132 Woodin, Tom 23 working-class community-based education, see community-based education working-class radicals 3, 43 working-class culture and education 3–5, 196–8, 203 moral panic surrounding 7 and emancipation 27, 102 of internationalism 64 and Proletarian Sunday Schools 86 and discourses of respectability 102 and Socialist Sunday Schools 102, 193–5, 197–8, 200–1 working class and Black Saturday Schools 11–12, 29, 117–18, 126–7, 139–41, 158, 163, 194–5, 198 and colonialism 29 and the Communist Party 86–7 exploitation of 25 and the middle class 7, 43–4, 56 and Proletarian Sunday Schools 84–6 and Socialist Sunday Schools, see Socialist Sunday Schools working-class mothers 7, 45, 128, 141 working-class movements and black politics 123–5, 140, 169 turn-of-the-century socialism 43, 45 children 44–6, 48, 71 Jewish 48 free love 66 see also communism, socialism Wright, Nigel 29 Young, Albert 84

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The Red Dawn: A Book of Verse for Revolutionaries and Others young people, see children and young people, black young people Young Socialist 10, 13, 50, 58–61, 82–3, 87–8, 92–6, 102 Children’s Page 41, 63–4, 94 establishment of 51

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Portrait Gallery 56–7 and gender 97–100, 103–4 Socialist Saints 68 Young Socialist League 82 Young Socialist Citizen Crusaders 58–9, 76 n90, 94 Zangwill, Israel 48

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