The Plebs' League was a British educational and political organisation which originated around a Marxist way of thinking in 1908 and was active until 1926.
Central to the formation of the League was Noah Ablett, a miner from the Rhondda who was at the core of a group at Ruskin College, Oxford who challenged the lecturers' opposition to Marxism. In the 1907–8 academic year, Ablett began leading unofficial classes in Marxist political economy which were attended by Ebby Edwards, among others. Ablett returned to South Wales in 1908, where he began promoting Marxist education through local branches of the Independent Labour Party. [1]
A mixture of students and former students at Ruskin founded the Plebs' League in November 1908, also launching the Plebs' Magazine. [2] In the first issue of the Plebs, dated February 1909, Ablett contributed an article on the need for Independent Working Class Education. [3] The League ran classes teaching Marxist principles and later syndicalist ideas. [4]
During 1909, student agitation for Marxism continued at Ruskin. The students were supported by the Principal, Dennis Hird, and when he was dismissed the students went on strike, refusing to attend classes. The rebels formed the Central Labour College, which worked closely with the Plebs' League. [4]
By 1910, the Plebs' League was active in South Wales, Lancashire and Scotland. Activists included A. J. Cook, William Mainwaring, Mark Starr and John Maclean. [1] [5]
The League had sympathies with De Leonism, primarily represented in Britain by the Socialist Labour Party. It later had a relationship with the Communist Party of Great Britain. [6]
The League was absorbed by the National Council of Labour Colleges the year after the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, although the Plebs' Magazine continued to appear for many years. [6]
The Plebs' League established the Plebs Textbook Committee, which was responsible for the collective publishing of several of their books after 1921. These were attributed to "communal production" rather than individual authors. [7]
Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is a higher education institution and part of the University of West London, in Oxford, England. It is not a college of Oxford University. Named after the essayist, art and social critic John Ruskin, it specialises in providing educational opportunities for adults with few or no qualifications. Degrees taught at Ruskin were formerly awarded by the Open University. The college joined the University of West London in 2021.
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David Stanley Hill is a British Marxist politician, academic and educational activist. He is Research Professor (Emeritus) in Education at Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England, and also visiting professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and in the Social Policy Research Centre at Middlesex University, London. He was an elected Labour Party councillor for East Sussex County Council and Brighton Borough Council in the 1970s and 1980s and has been a candidate in thirteen local, national and European elections since 1972, most recently as Parliamentary Candidate in Hove and Portslade in the 2015 general election for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). In Britain, he is currently a member of the Labour Left Alliance, the Socialist Labour Network, and the Campaign for a New Workers Party.
Noah Ablett was a Welsh trade unionist and political theorist who is most noted for contributing to 'The Miners' Next Step', a Syndicalist treatise which Ablett described as 'scientific trade unionism.
The Miners' Next Step was an economic and political pamphlet produced in 1912 calling for coal miners through their lodges, to embrace syndicalism and a new 'scientific' trade unionism. The pamphlet was written by the 'Unofficial Reform Committee' a group of syndicalist and socialists involved in the Plebs' League and the Cambrian Combine strike of 1910-11. The main author is recognised as Noah Ablett.
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The Central Labour College, also known as The Labour College, was a British higher education institution supported by trade unions. It functioned from 1909 to 1929. It was established on the basis of independent working class education.
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