ABSTRACT
When J. F. C. Harrison wrote his seminal study of the history of the English adult education movement, Learning and Living 1790–1960 (1961) he had no doubt that adult education was a movement which had participated centrally in the shaping of the institutions of mass democracy in Britain. As such, Harrison added, it should be separated from the subordinate idea of the ‘education of adults’. It was not simply a series of largely voluntary organisations but an instrument of personal liberation and social justice. Adult education was an earnest business not to be confused with the ‘learning for leisure’ rhetoric (then fashionable in ministerial quarters) because it entailed a great struggle on the part of people who had little leisure to enjoy. Harrison's approach took its tone from his source material, which was drawn largely from the county in which he worked and studied, Yorkshire, and owed a great deal to the seriousness of purpose of that great puritan of the movement, the founding District Secretary of the WEA Yorkshire District, George Thompson. 1 But for Harrison, Yorkshire could not help being the ‘epitome of England’.
