EC Meeting May 2018

The GFTU Education programme, Education For Action 2016-18, makes it explicit that ‘seriously neglected’ history of trade unions and the working class movement is a priority for the trust and the history of the movement will also be particularly relevant as we approach the 120th anniversary of the founding of the GFTU itself. Many UK citizens in the post World War Two generation were inspired by AL Morton's 1938 classic book, A People's History Of England, which told the history of those who had fought in previous generations for legal, economic and social justice. For the 30 years of the post-war political consensus, this strand of British history was commonly taught in schools and was often portrayed in popular culture, particularly on television. But since 1979 this history has disappeared from our schools and almost completely from our mainstream, popular culture. However, many UK citizens today, especially those under 35, have had little or no opportunity to engage with the history of the struggle for legal, economic and social justice, and as a result the idea that achieving and maintaining economic and social justice involved political ‘struggle’ is becoming increasingly remote from public consciousness. The impetus to set up the People’s History Hub arose from the collective experience of a group of activists, academics who had been trying to discuss the history of the struggle for economic and social justice with both students in Higher Education and commissioners in the theatre, film and television industries. It was clear to us that for many people under 35 there was almost a complete ignorance about even the most famous incidents in this people’s history such as Peterloo and Tolpuddle. The multi-media, digital resources on the People’s History Hub aim to make this history publicly available to all citizens, in an online, shareable, digital format, suitable for the age of social media. The Hub will be made up of online, digital ‘subject-pages’, which will display tailor-made, bite-size, video documentaries, plus written text and images that tell the story of historical events such as ‘The Suffragettes’, ‘Peterloo’, ‘Tolpuddle’ or ‘The Peasants Revolt’, along with biographies of important historical figures such as John Lilburne, Mary Woolstonecraft or Eleanor Marx. Groups of subject-pages will also be grouped into collections under broader subject headings such as, ‘The History of Parliament’, ‘The English Civil War’, Trade Unions’, ‘Slavery’ etc. Each subject-page will also carry links to more in-depth histories, digital versions of source documents and other relevant online resources, allowing The People’s History Hub to also become a central, on-line access

! © Public Domain Arts & Media CIC

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