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Page Background

“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,

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