Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements

History's Schools

Aziz Choudry, Salim Vally, Aziz Choudry, Salim Vally

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138059108
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351672306
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

How do educators and activists in today's struggles for change use historical materials from earlier periods of organizing for political education? How do they create and engage with independent and often informal archives and debates? How do they ultimately connect this historical knowledge with contemporary struggles?

Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements aims to advance the understanding of relationships between learning, knowledge production, history and social change. In four sections, this unique collection explores:

• Engagement with activist/movement archives

• Learning and teaching militant histories

• Lessons from liberatory and anti-imperialist struggles

• Learning from student, youth and education struggles

Six chapters foreground insights from the breadth and diversity of South Africa's rich progressive social movements; while others explore connections between ideas and practices of historical and contemporary struggles in other parts of the world including Argentina, Iran, Britain, Palestine, and the US.

Besides its great relevance to scholars and students of Education, Sociology, and History, this innovative title will be of particular interest to adult educators, labour educators, archivists, community workers and others concerned with education for social change.

Part I

Engaging with activist/movement archives

1 Working with the past

Making history of struggle part of the struggle

Andrew Flinn

This chapter describes the motivations and histories of independent, autonomous archives, libraries and resource centres created and used by political and social movement activists in the United Kingdom (UK) to document and support their activist practices. Activists in Britain (and elsewhere) have a long history of creating alternative knowledge spaces with physical archival, object and library collections which function as a resource for education and campaigning, as a forum to hold historically informed discussion and debates, and as centres of collective production of a range of ‘useful’ and critically engaged historical publications. Today some of this activity takes place in online environments instead of, or supplementing, physical spaces.

The research, exhibitions, publications and other products resulting from the activities undertaken by these initiatives are intended not only to create ‘useful’ histories of past struggles which support campaigning and struggles in the present, but also to challenge and subvert the orthodox historical narratives which misrepresent or ignore other histories and presences. This process of collectively creating knowledge and learning from the past for the present and future will be referred to in this chapter as ‘history activism’. Critical commentators have termed the selective privileging of orthodox historical narrative as Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) (Smith 2006), which elides struggle or resistance histories that build solidarity, a collective consciousness and an identification with a shared past. Although as this chapter will suggest, these authorised narratives shift and change over time, incorporating aspects of previously marginalised histories, and the ‘non-authorised’ counter-narratives that seek to subvert AHD frequently have their own omissions and absences.

I will examine the development of some UK history-activist spaces such as the National Museum of Labour History (NMLH) and the People’s History Museum (PHM), the Working Class Movement Library (WCML), the South Wales Mining Library (SWML), Marx Memorial Library (MML), the public monuments, festival and museum at Tolpuddle, and the Cooperative Archive and Museum, all of which have sought to challenge AHD from a socialist or people’s history perspective. In exploring this history, the chapter will discuss how the activist frame affects the creation of the archive or library, helps to define the collections and the use of the archival space and the extent to which the institution, its collections and its broader context inform the history produced in these workshops. Although the institutions examined are broadly from the labour movement, similar examinations could be made of the role of Black, African and other national, faith and ethnic heritage bodies; queer and LGBTQ archives; and feminist initiatives, for instance.

Besides working in and with these types of institutions (between 1989 and 2001 I was variously a volunteer, archivist and researcher at the NMLH during its early years in Manchester and at times a member of various regional and national labour and socialist history groups), I also have a research interest in public history, critical heritage discourses and history from below initiatives. As a frame of reference for this work, I emphasise the importance of gender, race and class in terms of challenging and refiguring the AHD in the subject matter of exhibitions (e.g. industrial museums without workers, women, people of different ethnicities, lesbians and gays, people with disabilities), in collections which neglect the material culture of these people, and in the attitudes and ethos of the cultural elites which (still) dominate the heritage professions and in so doing “deny the cultural and historical legitimacy and agency of those groups, including working class people, whose cultural, social and historical experiences fall outside the conceptual frameworks validated by the AHD” (Shackel et al., 2011, 291–300).

At some point in their histories all the endeavours examined here aim to provide alternative, activist-created and curated narratives to those typically advanced by mainstream history and heritage (Kean 2011). Whilst ‘new working class studies’ and critical community history projects which seek to collect, display and study the full lived experiences of working-class peoples or women’s or Black history are very significant, this chapter is predominantly concerned with activities which are explicitly “deployed … in political struggles for social and economic justice” (Shackel et al., 2011, 293). In particular, I focus on those efforts which seek to elude the appropriation and commodification of these histories, and rather seek to produce historical resources which help communities and activists negotiate contemporary challenges such as marginalisation, discrimination, workplace organisation, de-industrialisation, disempowerment and gentrification (Iles and Roberts 2012, 43–44; Klubock and Fontes 2009, 3).

First, I briefly introduce independent radical archives and heritage activities and some of the common attributes that characterise them. I then give a brief history of some of the many labour, working-class and other radical, autonomous museums, libraries and archives in the UK. I address the development of the National Museum of Labour History, now known as the People’s History Museum (NMLH/PHM), in more detail. Its nearly fifty-year history and its development first in London and later in Manchester touch on many of the key motivations, challenges, tensions and changes that many of those working in these bodies have experienced. In the course of these histories, I consider questions of the broader political context, political parties and movements; the significance of class and other identities; questions of ownership, autonomy and control over culture and knowledge production; notions of professionalism, activist learning and education programmes; and history activism, the use of histories and historical narratives within political and social movements. The chapter concludes by attempting to identify how an activist approach impacts on this type of archive and heritage activity, and what the contemporary and future challenges and opportunities for radical education in politically-aligned archives, libraries and museums are in supporting the public making of and engagement with history in order to challenge and transform society and social relations.

Mausoleums or spaces of education, resistance and liberation

This chapter echoes the assertion by previous history activists that where museums, libraries and archives have been associated with such an activist agenda, they should not be viewed as ‘ “mausoleums’ or ‘store houses of sacred relics’, but seek to provide resources, perhaps fuel or nutrition, for those challenging and disrupting the status quo. These endeavours are born out of an understanding of the making of history not as neutral and objective, academic and dry, worthy or nostalgic but rather as an aspect of political commitment and activism. This chapter proceeds from the understanding that activism is fundamentally concerned with reflexive learning, often carried out in the course of struggle and as part of collaborative effort and put into practice in continuation of the struggle or campaign (Choudry 2015). History activism is concerned with this sort of learning, learning from the past for the present and the future and using the past to mobilise and organise in the present. Thus this chapter is primarily concerned with the power and resonance of those histories, the “useful past”, to different communities and groups, and their utility as a mobilising and campaigning tool. The use of myth, histories of victories and defeats, and struggles against past oppressions and discriminations to mobilise social movements is well known, and underpins the focus of this chapter. But this characterisation of history activism leads to significant questions about what happens when these initiatives lose their dominant activist connection, become more professional and reliant on public funding. Do they tend to more closely resemble mainstream heritage bodies providing educational resources for academics and a general audience and concerned with the preservation of collections? Can they still contribute to challenging the AHD despite the loss of a close connection to a particular activist programme?

At varying points in the histories of these endeavours there is often a debate between activist and professional conceptions of what independent, autonomous museums, libraries and archives should be doing. Expressions favouring a more activist-focussed approach are not hard to find. During the debates over the direction of the People’s Palace in Glasgow in the early 1990s (disputes marked by the resignation of Elspeth King as curator of the People’s Palace), the Scottish activist and labour historian James Young argued for labour history and labour history museums not “as monuments or mausoleums” but rather as “resource centres to equip those who are struggling to eliminate unemployment, elitist education, poor housing and poverty” (Young 1990, 4).

A few years earlier, a 1985 meeting convened by the Society for the Study of Labour History and the Social History Curators Group debated the place of labour history in museums. Whilst King (1988, 11) warned against the “ghettoization” of “labour history from the rest of the material culture of the working classes” in separate institutions, labour historian and activist John Gorman argued for the importance of independent labour museums as “places of educational activity drawing upon the living memory of the community and not mausoleums of holy relics” where the past could be used actively as “a guide to the future” (Gorman 1988, 5).

What is striking about these statements is not just their explicit connection of learning about the past with contemporary struggles and forging a better world in the future, but also the clear rejection of the perceived “mausoleum” or storehouse approach of the mainstream heritage sector. These debates about the role of activist history museums and archives, their collections and objectives, and their audiences are clearly apparent in the trajectory of many independent labour and other archives, museums and libraries including the NMLH over the last thirty years. As suggested earlier in these history activist endeavours and initiatives, there are commonly two related objectives at work. There is a commitment to challenge the AHD’s erasures and falsifications, and this engagement with public history (including the attempted subversion of dominant historical narratives) is embedded within a clear activist framework serving broader agendas of political struggles for social justice and civil rights. This chapter examines how some of these initiatives seek to meet the challenges of engaging with more inclusive formations of working-class identities and labour politics that transcend, without ignoring, the past exclusions of women, of ethnic minorities, of sexual identities, and attempt to overcome or survive the relative decline (or at least fundamental evolution) of organised labour (Klubock and Fontes 2009, 4).

Independent and community-based heritage sites¹

Studies of independent and community-based archives, libraries and museums have tended to distinguish between those politically motivated endeavours acting to counter the absences and misrepresentations relating to a particular group or community in mainstream heritage narratives and those whose inspiration is not so directly political, but rather is borne of a shared enthusiasm for the history of a place, occupation or interest. Whilst it is an important distinction, even the most locally focused community archive projects are inherently political with individuals and communities taking an active, participatory role in telling their own history and preserving collections that might not otherwise be saved or heard. Many independent and community-based heritage activities originate as a response to perceptions that mainstream heritage bodies are not interested in their histories. For some working-class, minority ethnic or LGBTQ independent community-based heritage activists, this perception is reinforced by a well-established mistrust of mainstream heritage institutions based on past experience of interactions with these bodies and by a desire to challenge these misrepresentations. Individuals and groups within these communities respond to these absences and misrepresentations by establishing their own autonomous museums, archives and libraries, “useful history” interventions into the political and cultural sphere as part of a broader agenda of social justice and political transformation. Such activity is best thought of as a social movement (or as part of a broader social movement) rather than one of preservation and heritage (Crooke 2007, 27; Flinn and Stevens 2009, 7; Gilliland and Flinn 2013, 18).

Some independent UK labour historical institutions have their roots in the growth of the organised labour movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But after the Second World War, and especially from the 1960s onwards, drawing inspiration from the work of the Communist Party Historians Group, new social history approaches, the New Left, civil rights movements, growing numbers of history from below and History Workshop-type endeavours (which sought to recover “hidden histories” and challenge the narratives of mainstream archives and museums) established new working-class, women’s, Black, gay and lesbian history bodies, including archives, libraries, museums, institutes, resource centres, Infoshops and autonomous spaces. Despite differences in terminology, there have been significant similarities in terms of the types of materials they collected and used, and the political purposes for which they utilised these “useful” histories.

One trajectory examined here is the shift (or struggle) between visions for these bodies as independent, social movement history activist organisations, and as more professionalised, more academic research and/or general public-focussed mainstream heritage bodies. Of course, this is not fixed binary choice, but a continuum on which organisations would change and move over time. Whilst many of these collections and independent institutions from the 1960s, 1970s an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• History’s schools: past struggles and present realities
• Part I Engaging with activist/movement archives
• Part II Learning and teaching militant histories
• Part III Lessons from liberatory and anti-imperialist struggles
• Part IV Learning from student, youth and education struggles
• Index