Critically rethinking worker and activist education: A conversation between Jane Holgate and Miguel Martínez Lucio

The discussion between Jane Holgate and Miguel Martínez Lucio aims to reflect on some of the issues in the development and learning dimension of worker representatives and activists. It is mainly based on experiences in the United Kingdom but aims to look at some strategic issues and changes that link into broader international developments and cases. Jane Holgate has worked with a range of trade unions in the United Kingdom and has a strong sense of developments in North America – especially around the ‘organising’ tradition. She is an activist academic, and with some of her colleagues has been key to the development of Ella Baker School of Organising and been involved in Critical Labour Studies for some time. Miguel Martínez Lucio as an activist-academic and a participant in the Critical Labour Studies network, has been involved in trade union education and research support at certain points of his career in the United Kingdom and been involved in trade union and political education and sessions in a number of European contexts (in particular, Spain). For many years he has, for example worked with UNITE, UNISON, and Communication Worker activists in several sectors in the United Kingdom and in projects involving the CCOO in Spain, the CGIL in Italy and the European Trade Union Institute. The purpose of this discussion is to consider some of the challenges in terms of training and learning within the labour movement and how they have evolved over time. We are at a key moment where the decline of organisational spaces dedicated to the learning and development of trade union and worker representatives is intensifying, and where new technological opportunities and alternatives are not as clear or easily available as one would have as first imagined.