Edna Robinson Speaking:

Yeah, no, fabulous.

And I must admit before, um, we kind of had a distant connection.

I wasn’t really sure much about you and by now I feel really comfortable, um, that I’ve got a better sense of who you are.

So thank you very much for, um, for feeling that maybe we have some relevance to this.

And it’s really, it’s really nice to see the warmth between you all and the, you know, the sideline chat, which for me is actually where the, where the social gold comes from rather than the, uh, the formality, because we love the formality, don’t we?

And we love a structure, and we all get a bit anxious if we think we haven’t got some kind of scaffolding to hold our conversations around.

Um, but just in terms of being here, thanks again.

Um, is adult education on the edge uh, I don’t know.

I have no idea.

You can tell us some of that, but is adult, is there a need for adult education?

Is there a need for adult learning?

Absolutely more than ever, as you’ve already highlighted, from many of the context that, again, you’ve already illuminated in, as you’ve done your research, as you’re looking around at the context of today, and as seeing how social divides are growing, and confidence and fear are real issues, and you touched on the issue of feeling safe, but it’s also not feeling frightened, which is an absence of a positive.

But debt and context of life is driving people into feeling quite frightened and quite withdrawn.

And so the environment in which people are operating is often reactive.

And so, We need to absolutely understand the wider context as to why people are feeling like that.

Um, community is not a thing.

Um, it’s a rich and complex and challenging environment.

Uh, we need to go out and be confident to seek out jeopardy as well as huddling for comfort with people that we all like and respect and reinforce our own warm feeling about that we’re right and that we’ve got it right and they’re wrong and if it was all like this, it would be okay.

Because clearly, uh, communities are amazing, rich, diverse, interesting and challenging, and look, communities of interest through to geographical communities.

And the solutions are there.

And I’ll come back to some of that in a minute, but just to start with kind of who the hell are we?

You know, what, who are we, this People’s Powerhouse thing?

Well, we came out of a protest where the northern powerhouse.

Um, a group of male businessmen, and I’m not doing the gender thing too much, but male businessmen came together and hijacked the North and made a statement about the future of the North and how it was going to look.

And there was a protest by a range of people, local authority leaders, although saying, you know, hang on a minute, this isn’t a diverse or a group of people who actually have had permission to talk about the North.

And because of social media, there was then a lot of chat about it.

And in 2017, um, a range of people got together, and the People’s Powerhouse was formed, and people decided that the North was about the people.

It wasn’t about people self-selecting, to be spokespeople on behalf of the North.

It was also very clearly, a place where there was to be a discussion about the North in all its beauty and all its forms, and it wasn’t an economic conversation, just about how we create wealth or prosperity in the North.

It has to be a much more diverse and challenging and interesting conversation than that.

So from there, in 2017, we’ve had an annual convention.

We were in Doncaster the 1st year.

We were in Sunderland the year after.

We were in Bradford the year after that.

We were in COVID the year after that.

So we’re all at home in our slippers, and then this coming year, we’re going to Blackpool in this November, but again, it’ll be primarily virtual.

So we’re actually, um, We’re a, we’re a platform.

We’re not a hierarchy.

Our objectives are to create wider influence.

But to get power in the room.

They’re to empower people, and they’re also to call out poor practice.

And we have 100s of organisations from east to west of the north, and individuals, and, and we have, we don’t have an identity.

Our identity is what people in the North want it to be.

It might be trying to get Berry football club to survive.

It might be getting all the mayors in the room together to talk truth to power.

It might be, oh, it’s, it’s whatever people want the people’s powerhouse to be.

And during COVID in particular, we were challenged by economic issues and we were challenged by all the stuff around racial justice and all the issues that were emerging.

So, during uh, the, um, the high time around COVID, when people were in complete lockdown, and as you know, the North suffered really spectacularly from, um, repeated lockdowns.

We actually developed an economic justice network and a racial justice network.

And so those 2 networks have been operating during that period, alongside other wider stuff in relation to, in particular, in relation to climate and stuff.

So, We’ve um, The challenges for the North have been around the negative linguistic around it, but it’s associated with negativity in terms of comparisons, and there’s no doubt that if you look at the data, it’s staggering in terms of there has been a national decline in life expectancy, as we know, which is a disgrace for a country that is this prosperous.

But it has been particularly stark in the north.

Uh, and we’ve seen the highest level of COVID, uh, tragedy in the north as a result of a whole range of economic and social factors.

And so we’re trying to stay connected.

We have a COVID family’s network.

Um, we’re working with those families to look to, um, you know, for a, for a national inquiry, but also, um, more than that, for, so that government don’t hide behind a kind of national inquiry that we’re actually looking to look beyond the, um, superficial narratives into why things have happened.

I mean, you very articulately, Sharon talked about local authorities and so forth.

But if we’ve seen 50% reduction in local authority infrastructure, we’ve actually, um, we’ve seen a decimation of many of the things that we hold dear and many of the things that actually are part of our infrastructure that keep our society moving.

We are the most centralised country in the UK anyway.

And part of our role is to argue for more devolution so that the North of England does have an opportunity to have its own voice.

And local authorities only raise 10% of income through tax at the moment anyway.

And so we, again, whenever we look at issues, we then move into economics, and economic justice is really where all our arguments take us, which is about how we see ourselves in terms of how we grow our prosperity, our emotional prosperity, as much as our practical prosperity.

And so, if we look at where um, where austerity hit, it was in relation to not just things that we hear, you know, all poor people getting poorer.

It was a decimation of our infrastructure, about our, you know, things in relation to flood management, things in relation, as you guys know, to research, things in relation to all kinds of building blocks and infrastructure, that were part of our civic uh, connectivity.

And so for people who are more vulnerable, those things become even more important because that fear, that anxiety that people are just living on the edge economically.

Anything that jeopardises them further can be totally disastrous.

And we’ve seen through the lack of social housing, a tragic record in the UK about the building of social housing.

And I’m talking about social housing, not affordable housing that people can’t afford, but actually that whole sense of, We have really got one model, which is that we have to earn enough money in order to buy ourselves out of difficulty.

And that that erosion of our sense of civic life and civic responsibility and connectivity is like a soft edge in all of this.

We, We’ve profiled the mayors across the north, we think that the democratic structures that are emerging are great, and it’s been really good to see the mayors having a voice.

My own mayor in Greater Manchester, got himself into terrible difficulty because he spoke out very strongly against the government, and we’ve seen the central government, work around him now, and work directly with his own MPs.

So we haven’t got a true democracy.

We haven’t got a clear democratic settlement for the North.

We’ve got deals with some mayors, with some geographies and other parts of the North, have no mayoral representation at all.

So this is a used car salesman culture, where we’re actually seeing deals being done behind closed doors, and actually we in the people’s townhouse are calling for a democratic settlement for the whole of the north.

So that we are clear where our accountability sits, where decisions are being made, and most importantly, how those decisions can be formed and how policy can evolve.

At the moment it is just behind closed doors.

And this has led to all kinds of frustrations from many parts of the north where.

People are being played off against each other and resources, finite resources are going to places where there is, um, let’s say, a warmth of political connectivity rather than actual intellectual need.

So, um, we’re seeing clearly through our platform, which again, I want to emphasise, we are a, we don’t have a hierarchy.

I do strongly believe that hierarchies and institutions are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And we have to look very, very carefully at how a new generation needs a new democracy, where there is far more openness and ability to influence.

So, For me, I kind of just, you know, want to reassure you that we, we’re totally um, connected to what you’re saying and what you’re understanding.

But um, for us, education is absolutely not an institution.

It shouldn’t have an institutional identity.

And the institutions themselves may not be embedded well enough into their real communities.

We’re hearing too much emphasis on the word engagement or, and I think that that’s patronising, I think communities own their assets in their community, and literally should own them.

So, in terms of why are all the public institutions building their own buildings.

Why are housing organisations, competing for plots of land that are driving up the price so that, again, the public institutions can’t really come together.

So, And the institutions must seek out jeopardy as much as seek out consensus.

So we are more and more retreating away from people that we don’t agree with and we’re huddling for comfort with those that we do.

So we have to get into these economic debates about extractive wealth.

We mustn’t celebrate an investment in the community if we know that that’s a short term investment, and in fact, the, the, economic value of that is going elsewhere.

So it is really important that we remind ourselves that communities are Amazing, rich, complex, and [inaudible].

I just want to kind of leave the final thought, which is about, The argument about the state is that, you know, it’s a bit clunky, it’s a bit expensive, it’s a bit slow, it doesn’t kind of do the doing, and the market, on the other hand, is innovative, and it’s fiscally competent and it brings results.

And then in the middle, you have something called a community where you try and bring those 2 things together.

But in fact, you don’t actually bring them together.

You just end up with a bit of a vague muddle.

And our argument is that there needs to be a new economic solution in terms of a fourth way, which is actually where we do give assets to communities.

We do empower people to find their own solutions and that we don’t just see community as something that we do things to, or that we engage with when we want something from them.

So for me, there is a strong fourth way, which is actually hard economics, assets in communities, people being able to build up their own resilience and that we are very clear that that’s, we are all then stronger together.

And that’s me.

Iain Jones: Edna that was great. To set that in what we’ve been talking about in that broader context, there were echos of some of the things we talked about before, but there’s also a wider set of issues that were… and challenges, which I think were really great to hear. So thanks, thanks for that.

Dave Berry Speaking:

Yeah, thanks a lot for that, and that was a great presentation from Edna, who actually…

I thought it was a council of hope, really, whereas probably my presentations, maybe a bit more of a council of despair.

Um, I suppose I’m not an educational professional, so coming at this as a citizen, but always, I’ve always regarded myself as an active citizen.

You know, I’ve been a worker, I’ve been a shop steward, I’ve been a labour counsellor.

I always felt that, um, I’ve had one foot in the camp of, uh, the establishment, one outside it, but more and more I feel that, um, I don’t have that benefit of stepping inside the, um, our democracy anymore, and I feel that more and more, um, people in the networks I share, whether it’s my community, my union, Um, my family, uh, all feel that, that same, that they are economic tools rather than active citizens.

So, I suppose I’ve attended the last 2 thinking that a centenary commission is really an opportunity to ask big questions.

So I’m very keen that, you know, at the end of this process, we do ask those big questions.

And I think Edna highlighted some of them.

But I suppose for me as someone who’s tried to remain an active citizen, we also need to sort of critique where we come from, and, um, A little while ago I read this book by Diane Ray called Miseducation and she came and spoke at a Labour Party meeting that we had in it.

It really set me thinking about all the involvements I have in the state, whether as a citizen, whether as a trades unionist, I have family, who are teachers.

I have family who have workers who have been known.

Um, and I suppose I’ve been involved in trade union education and I now work with the independent working class education network.

And it’s made me begin to think about that big tent of where we are and what are the big questions we should be asking. At the end of this centenary.

Um, And I’ve become seeing that the neoliberal marketplace has come to dominate our communities.

And it is, whether we like it or not it’s become a deliberate ideology.

And these are some quotes I picked out.

As I’ve seen elements of our society change over my lifetime. To liberal, um, magics.

Um, the 1st 2 the 1st quote is Marx.

The 2nd one is by the Jesuits, and the 3rd one is by me.

I suppose I’ve been a school governor since the late 1980s.

In fact, the middle 1980s and I’ve seen, you know, what was schools very much belonging to their communities.

Uh, In fact, it’s safe to say now that the whole of our education system is a marketplace.

It’s moved from being part of their active democracy.

Many are remote from communities, whether we like it or not, we have a selective education system, and mainly by market house prices and by structures.

Staff are very much managed under neoliberal basis of appraisals, performance by results, and for the children themselves and for students.

It’s very much a philosophy, of Um, This is your one chance in life.

This is a chance you have your golden ticket or the American dream and if you fail at this, then you fail at life.

And I’ve despaired when I’ve heard teachers talking to 10 year olds about to sit there, sat’s results, saying, this exam will affect the rest of your life.

And I think this is the beginning of where they start.

And again, this is another book that I’ve recently read, which again begins to flesh out, not only what’s happened in the UK system but all around the world.

Again, further education, as someone who repaired their lack of, um, schooling through further education and through adult education, we, There must be recognition that it is on the edge.

Um, we will begin to see a, uh, consolidation around the further education sectors.

They more and more become dominated by service to employers, um, there’s pressure for results.

And again, the staff are into the same neoliberal management structure.

I suppose higher education is uh, and I don’t want to offend anybody here.

There’s lots of people from a higher education, but you’ll probably recognise some of the things here.

I come from uh, Sheffield, a city of 2 universities.

And it is very much more now becoming about the universities, almost seem a separate entity to the city.

Um, Very little engagement with normal citizens within the city.

Um, It’s very much seen as an industry, more than education, establishments, Um, There’s a growing divide almost between the red brick universities and the um, the so-called new universities or ex-polys.

But there’s also been a change.

The debt system has also changed the nature of the students at those colleges and universities.

I engage them and very much it is um, a market relationship.

I took the staff in the universities where the students themselves see themselves as customers rather than students.

And it’s a big challenge for that sector.

I suppose part of my life has been um, in the workplace as a trade unionists and I, I think it was great to see at one point where we were bringing union learning into the workplace, where we would be trying to persuade employers to take on more training.

But that too has gone into reverse.

Um, there’s very much a divide between industries that have so-called continuing professional development, whereas most workers actually will receive probably less than one or two days a year training, and most of that will be statutory training.

The management techniques, of things like teams, briefings, quality circles, Individualise the worker, disabling them and taking them away from a collective nature.

And the gig economy and self employment has put an even bigger gap between any sort of collective engagement.

I suppose part of our reviewing of where adult education is, as I say, is critiquing the education system, but also the work system.

Also the lies that we’re, all the mirages that are created, the idea of, uh, good jobs and, uh, you either get a good job or you get a bad job.

We’re actually seeing at the moment premiums arriving for so-called dirty jobs and truck drivers and factory workers, agricultural workers because of a shortage of labour.

But even in good jobs, we know that most employers are actually looking to deskill or export jobs rather than promote them.

And, you know, it really gives a lie to the focus.

That education is merely for economic purposes, as that economic platform becomes narrower and narrower.

And a couple of good jobs about, you know, I mean, lots of young people who work in call centres in Sheffield call centres are a rite of passage, really.

And um, The book work in the phones is really about the culture that’s grown up about students or young people, moving from job to job among call centres.

And again, very transitory life with very little collective organisation.

I suppose from my own trade union education, it’s, um, trade union education, like adult education is under pressure.

Um, When I became a shop steward in the 1970s, you were given 3 books.

One was My Life Battles by Will Thorne, about the beginning of the Gas Workers Industry.

The 2nd was the ragged trails of philanthropists.

And the 3rd one was Citrine’s Rules of Germanship.

And, um, it was great to see, I started work as a railman and my local counsellor, was the station supervisor, and another counsellor was a driver and a porter.

So, real engagement of workers in the, um, in active citizenship and our democracy.

But like all things, trade union education moved towards the state, um, It became overdependent on state funding.

The new realism and partnership of the 1990s moved it much more towards a technical education.

And although there are attempts in the unions now to move back towards political education.

The economics settlement we have in the workplace, mean, attracting workers or getting free time from them, becomes increasingly more and more difficult.

Again, you know, I feel that adult education is on the edge.

Edna was very optimistic about the mayoral structure, but in Sheffield, where now in a debate with our mayor who is cutting funds into adult education and to the WEA.

Um, So, you know, it’s not about to go away.

Um, you know, it is a very fragmented system.

The WEA has now become much more or less of a false than it used to be.

Um, and adult education at a local authority level in Sheffield is very poor.

There are lots of informal education.

Um, initiatives around.

But again, they’re fragmented, and I think the commission needs to think about.

Is there any way we can bring them together?

Uh, into some sort of movement as was quite clearly happening in 1919?

And I guess this is one I’d like to spend a bit of time on the gap between L learners and the education establishment.

Um, There isn’t the idea of cultural hegemony that was um, thought of by Gramsci.

And I say that more and more in our what is becoming more and more rigidly class system.

Um, Lots of talk at the moment, there’s still the old alienation from previous education.

Lots of talk around mental health issues at the moment and I look at my own community and I wonder whether they are really are mental health issues of the individual, whether they’re not systemic issues, and we need to face up to them that they are systemic rather than individual failures.

There is a tendency to medicalise all our political difficulties. In the individual.

And I think we need to be careful in that and say it’s society that needs healing rather than individuals.

When you have 10% of the population on antidepressants. Which is a pretty depressing system.

In terms of the class system and the lack of political engagement, um, To me, the Brexit experience was a very Sad one really in that.

You know, The Brexit issue for me, there were, um, realistic arguments on both sides of the way people might vote.

And yet when the debate was conducted in a very, People who disagreed were either posh or conversely, in a university city like Sheffield, I saw many people denigrated for putting forward an alternative argument over the Brexit issue.

The idea that people were acting against their own economic interests were being irrational.

You know, that’s not the communities I know.

And, um, There is a real danger there that acts as a separation and a real [inaudible] democracy.

There needs to be respect for alternative points of view around our democracy.

I suppose I may just have time.

This is something that always inspires me.

Um, just a 2 minute clip.

And I think it sums up where we need to be looking to be for, uh, a commission.

I’ll leave people to seek out the video themselves.

It’s Jimmy Reed, the ship worker, talking about alienation and the need to move education from being a rat race, to be an education for lives.

I think it’s very, yes.

Sharon Clancy: Could you put the YouTube link in the chat then people can have a look at it, maybe over lunch break?

Certainly will.

Sharon Clancy: Yeah, that’ll be fab.

Yeah.

Um, so that’s me really.

Just at the end of it, it’s that we, the idea of the commission is that we ask some big questions, I think.

Um, It did for [inaudible] between us.

Where do we stand as we did with those organisations in 1919.

Are we within the state or outside the state.

Can we organise as we did outside the state?

And can we begin to represent our workers and communities as they need?

Against a neoliberal agenda.

Okay, thanks a lot.