By dint of strenuous and persistent agitation the National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC) has won its fight for recognition by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress. It and the London Labour College are to be permitted to take part in an Educational Scheme in co-operation with their old enemies the Workers’ Educational Association, Ruskin College and the Co-operative Educational Committee.
Elated by being recognized, the Plebs League and other supporters of the NCLC appear not to have recognized that this event has a quite other significance . . . the death of an idea, it gives the final blow to the theory of Independent Working Class Education which they have proclaimed and popularized. The scheme means co-operation with the organizations which in the past have been denounced by the NCLC and the Plebs League as camouflaged instruments of capitalist propaganda.
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The hard truth is that independence can be had only at a price. You cannot base an educational system on the urgent need for the overthrow of capitalism and yet honestly gain the financial support of Trade Unions whose members would not approve the overthrow of capitalism . . . the NCLC and the Plebs have just decided that the price is too great.
(From an editorial Working Class Education — the Failure of the Labour Colleges, published in the Socialist Standard, July 1925.)
FOOTNOTE: In The Times, 2nd May 1975, Mr. J. P. M. Millar, General Secretary of the NCLC had an article “How the Labour Colleges were Destroyed” detailing the way in which the TUC, once it got control, closed down almost all the activities of the NCLC and has caused the Plebs magazine to cease publication.
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