ABSTRACT
There have been two major organizations devoted to working-class adult education in this century: the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) and the Labour College movement. By the 1930s the WEA had each year something like 60,000 mainly working-class students on a wide range of courses, though with those in Economics, Politics and related subjects predominating. The WEA grew fast in student numbers, and after a great deal of heart searching about the fact that it was no longer predominantly supported by working-class people interested in the social sciences, became essentially a general provider of leisure education for people from all, but mainly higher, social classes. The Central Labour College was established in 1909, in the aftermath of the strike of that year at Ruskin College. The immediate cause of the strike was the dismissal of the Principal, a socialist: a decision which a large section of the students found intolerable.
