Dear Colleagues,
I was fortunate to get advance notification of an article by Peter Wilby in the current edition of the New Statesman. Peter has been following recent, pitiful events involving Ruskin and wanted to provide brief coverage in his column. Here is the article:
Read obituaries of trade union leaders and Labour MPs and you will often see mention of Ruskin College, Oxford. Founded in 1899 to provide degree-level opportunities for the working class, its teachers included Clement Attlee, its students John Prescott and Dennis Skinner. Though it was not a college of the university, Oxford validated its degrees.
Now, according to Ruskin’s latest accounts, its resources are inadequate “to continue in operational existence”. It no longer offers degrees such as its internationally famous course on labour and trade union studies. On the orders of the Further Education Commission, a quango, it is being absorbed this month into a consortium of local colleges. As one ex-member of its governing board puts it, “the college has to all intents and purposes died”.
Ruskin was one of the great institutions of the British labour movement, alongside the unions, the Co-op, the friendly societies and the working men’s clubs. All are sadly diminished. Perhaps that was unavoidable, but I can’t help feeling that their decline is connected to so many taking refuge in the false comforts of identity politics.
I will follow-up soon with further coverage - and commentary - and the shocking, wholly negligent decline of Ruskin College.
In Solidarity
Ian
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