Celebrating fifty years of life-long learning

IFWEA’s affiliate, the People’s College in Ireland, celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. The college has been at the centre of workers’ education in Ireland, and provides courses ranging from trade union development and political history to music appreciation and literature. Dan Gallin, IFWEA President, extended a warm message of support to the College:

"It is an honour to congratulate the People’s College on its 50th anniversary. Through the College and our two other members in this country, the ICTU and SIPTU, the Irish presence has been strong in IFWEA. Ireland is a small country, but its labour movement has led by example many times in its history. It is these same qualities that lie at the origin of the People’s College.

The world is a very different place than it was when the College was founded. We have moved from an aggregate of national economies linked together by a network of trade, investments and credit, to an integrated, borderless global economy.

Revolutionary changes in telecommunications and transport, driven by transnational capital, has immensely increased. The autonomy and the power of the national state has been steadily shrinking. In the global labour market, workers world-wide have been compelled to compete against one another. Transnational capital can seek ever-increasing profits where it pleases; to stay in its good graces, states underbid each other, in a downward spiral of steadily deteriorating wages and conditions, social welfare cuts, mounting unemployment and restrictions on human and democratic rights.

There is not inevitable. Globalisation as a product of technological change may be inevitable, but the political response to it depends on the decisions of mere mortal men and women. The challenge is to show the way to a global economy at the service of the common welfare, and to become organised at a global level to prevail in the power struggle which will determine whether the world will become a fit place for the vast majority of humanity.

That is also the challenge before the workers’ education movement. Organisation is the key. It must move to the global level where the decisions that matter are made. Our purpose has always been to give ordinary men and women the tools, through education, to take control of their lives. Our task is to strengthen our international network, and to provide it with the instruments to study and act together, as part of the international labour movement. Modern technology has placed these instruments within our reach.

The Irish labour movement, no more than any other, can stand alone in the global economy and I know that it will not stand aside from our common struggle. We count on your solidarity for the future, as we thank you for your solidarity in the past".

email to IFWEA Journal: alana.dave@mcr1.poptel.org.uk