Jonathan Michie is, as usual, spot-on in arguing for universities to provide adult education. Whether by accident or design, his letter appeared in your print edition on the centenary of the formation of the first Labour government, 22 January. This matters. It was Sir Charles Trevelyan, president of the Board of Education in Ramsay MacDonald’s administration, who brought the Board of Education (Adult Education) Regulations 1924 on to the statute book. These enabled universities and voluntary organisations to be properly funded to provide liberal adult education for all – a system that enriched the nation and its democracy until Margaret Thatcher unleashed her wrecking ball.
The 1924 regulations were achieved by a short-lived minority government. Sir Keir Starmer hopes shortly to begin a rather longer term in office, with a solid majority. Let us hope that Sir Keir and his ministers, like MacDonald and Trevelyan, will see the need to create a system of lifelong adult education in what RH Tawney called “a broad and generous, humane and liberal spirit”. Siren voices will tell them we cannot afford it: the economy is in a bad way. So it was in 1924.
John Holford
Robert Peers professor of adult education emeritus, University of Nottingham
