110-111 / 175
“Education is the most powerful weapon we can
use to change the world”
Nelson Mandela, 2003.
“We want to see the necessary economic
knowledge imparted in our labour organisations,
so that labour in the future shall not be made the
shuttlecock of political parties. Our Trade Unions
shall be centres of enlightenment and not merely
the meeting place for paying contributions and
receiving donations…our ideal is a co operative
commonwealth.”
Tom Mann and Ben Tillett, The ‘New’ Trade Unionism, 1890.
INTRODUCTION
The GFTU Educational Trust is pleased to offer its most
extensive programme since our formation in 1971.
We have listened to affiliates
and their education
officers and acted
upon their ideas for
improvements, and
carefully considered
the evaluations of our
course participants
and reviewed our
whole approach. We
have also learned from
international experiences.
What is discussed in trade
union education is vital to the
health of our country
and the 26
million workers
that work here.
How those discussions take place is equally
important so we are introducing new courses
to assist trade union educators, that is all of us,
in delivering more effective learning. As we all
recognise a good educator can change our lives
for ever. And education is not about the passing
on of information alone, it is about inspiration
and imagination, instilling commitment and
understanding.
We are introducing day-schools, and many of
these will cover the seriously neglected subject of
our history.
We offer a free day’s training to every affiliate in
addition to this programme and we manage the
entire education programme for others.
We have improved our pioneering Trade Union
Management programme aimed at developing
those who want to play a greater role in
managing their unions using the latest thinking in
leadership and management issues.
We offer regular fora for Continuous Professional
Development for specialist union officers to swap
notes and learn from outside speakers.
Following the great success of our inter-union
summit in 2015 and our union building
conference in 2016 we have a major
conference for unions in February 2018.
Our annual Youth Festival goes from
strength to strength and early
bookings for both you will see
advertised here are recommended.
We have commissioned two education
activities that can be toured among the
unions: Our History, Our Future is a great
performance piece of 75 minutes looking at the
history of the trade union movement in pictures,
3
2