SOCIALISTS and labour movement activists today launched the Political Education Project, “a new effort in working-class self-education in Britain, Ireland and the US.”

Organisers seek to draw on “traditions of working-class pedagogy from trade unions, the civil rights movement, and community organising” and are kicking off with an online 10-week course that will include classes on socialism, women’s oppression, anti-racism and building working-class power.

“Historically miners’ libraries, mechanics institutes, socialist Sunday schools and more supported and sustained independent working-class education ... provided part of the essential ‘infrastructure of dissent’ in which working-class movements, and the unions, were nurtured and flourished. The challenge now is to rebuild similar institutions adequate to the challenges of the 21st century,” the group’s founding statement says.