International Marxist Group Archive

Magazines, bulletins and booklets of the IMG and its forerunners, 1961–1984

The Centre for Socialist Education

· The Week Vol. 4, No. 17, 4 November 1965 · p. 4 of the scan · 572 words

The scan: The Week v4 no17.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Tesseract OCR) from a scan of a stencilled typescript and has not been corrected. Expect misread words; titles in particular are often garbled where the issue printed no contents list. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: capitals heading; heuristic; title from the OCR of the heading.

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a Oth October, just over 40 socialists met to launch the Centre ee eicaation at the ACTT Hall, Soho Square. The meeting came ae about as the result of many discussions which had been stimulated by pores articles on the need for socialist education, notably one by Ralph Miliban in the Socialist Register. The meeting had been confined to a fairly smell number of representative people who had taken part in these discussionse The attendance was representative of a large number of trends and sections of. the academic world and Labour movement. It is sufficient to say that the following journals and organisations were represented: New Left Review, NALSO, Views, Labour's Voice, Bristol Left Club, Humberside Voice, Campaign for Socialism, the "Manchester" Group, Voice of the Unions and the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. Among the noted academics present were: Ruth and David Glass, K.W. Wedderburn and Ralph Miliband, There were activists from CND and MCF in attendance, and members of Labour Parties in the Midlands, Scotland, London, Surrey, Bristol, Manchester, Essex, and elsewheree Ralph Miliband, who was in the chair, opened the meeting by stressing the need for socialists to find ways to promote co-ordinated discussion and researche He outlined a scheme for the formation of a national centre for socialist education, which would initiate and service a network of local socialist educational enterprises, which would convene seminars and study groups, and publish papers, artadagaisneetye pamphlets, Such a Centre would have to create the necessary/iae néery to underpin such activity, he added, Ken Coates then outlined a number of specific proposals for the establishment of such a Centre. Discussion on these proposals was lively. Some speakers laying stress on the need for a patient and not too ambitious approach to the project, others concentrating on the problems of forming such a Centre and made various suggestions for overcoming them. Notable among the contributions were ones from Stan Mills, who emphasised the need for involving workers in the scheme, among other questions; Tony Topham, who outlined the experience of a group in Hull, which carried out similar activity to that envisaged; and Ruth Glass, who stressed the need for a firm ideological basis for such a venture. The discussion lasted for several hours and when the a vote for taken on the project, there was unanimous approval. The meeting then got dow to consider practical steps. Ken Coates was elected as convenor of a steering committee to explore the possibilities of immediate action. The following people were elected to serve: Perry Anderson, Robin Blackburn, Rosalind Delmar, Richard Fletcher, Charles van Gelderen, Ruth Glass, Bob Gregory, Pat Jordan, Walter Kendall, Russell Kerr, Ralph Miliband, Stan Mills, John Palmer,’ Alan Rooney, Mike Rustin, Peter Sedgewick, Ken Tarbuck and Tony Topham. Mary Klopper (Aberdeen) and Tom Nicholls (Bristol) were elected as corresponding members. Several people at the meeting expressed their support for the venture but were obliged to decline nomination because of heavy existing commitments. Other decisions taken included: the organisation of a number of regional conferences (Scotland, Yorkshire, Midlands, South West, Newcastle, and London) where the proposal could be discussed and membership solicited; that a national conference be held before February lst in order to approve proposals for a scheme of work and a constitution; that membership would be open to all socialists; that the London members of the committee should be responsible establishing a London Centre: and a vress statement was anvroved.

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