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THE teaching of working-class history has an exciting future, a TUC Congress fringe event heard today.
Organised by the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), the virtual meeting came ahead of tomorrow’s launch of the Their Legacy – Our History course.
The series of free online classes, run in association with the Workers’ Educational Association, will focus on key events in labour history from the Peasants’ Revolt to the Diggers and up to the formation of modern trade unions.
The GFTU is also forging partnerships with schools to develop political literacy among youngsters and working with Manchester University to investigate the history of Chartist poetry.
The launch of an official trade union apprenticeship alongside a global learning platform for resources on union history is also planned, the union body said.
Gill Westerman, from the federation’s educational trust, said: “We’re working in a number of different ways with different partners and young trade unionists, keeping working-class history alive [by] focusing on diversity and re-engaging with community organisations.”
Addressing attendees from Germany, Bochum University’s Dr Stefan Berger said: “Unions are frequently presented in the mainstream media as the last dinosaurs of an industrial age that no longer fulfil an important function in society.
“We can only counter that if we bring the message to young workers that unions today, as they were in the 19th century, are the strongest thing that ordinary people have in order to protect them from the vagaries of a market radicalism that has swept away so much.”