ABSTRACT
This paper was first written nearly three years ago, in the Spring of 1982. It was basically an attempt to analyse my personal experience as a literacy worker and to set the conflicts and quandaries involved in a wider context. It is, therefore, a specific story, set in a particular place and time. Nevertheless, the issues which I faced, both at the time, and in subsequently writing about it, have a far wider pertinence and show no signs of going away. They include the relationships of power that exist in the possession of skills and knowledge, and the conditions under which people are allowed to learn; the place of volunteer work and its relationship to such categories as professionalism and trades unionism, especially in the current context of high unemployment, state cut-backs, and a conservative version of selfhelp; and finally, the concept of literacy itself, with its extension into basic life-skills and such fields as computer skills, and its origins in the liberal philosophies of citizenship and individual rights. I am able to offer little in the way of final resolutions to the contradictions I see. What I hope this paper can do is to lay out the possibilities of transformation and resistance that existed in the Leicestershire Adult Literacy Service at one particular time. There were real gains, although they have constantly to be resecured. I have tried to show what powerful
issues of class and gender were at stake, what gains seemed possible and for whom, and the limitations that were in operation.
