Back in the 1980s, Stuart Hall highlighted aspects of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony that guided him in his theoretical and political work. Hall talked about the importance of ‘the struggle to contest and disorganise an existing [dominant] political formation; the taking of the ‘leading position’ (on however minority a basis) over a number of different spheres of society at once – economy, civil society, intellectual and moral life, culture; the conduct of a wide and differentiated type of struggle; the winning of a strategic measure of popular consent; and, thus, the securing of a social authority sufficiently deep to conform society into a new historic project’.
The arena of ‘culture’ is crucial to these still-all-too-necessary struggles. That is why, for progressive people, education of others – and of ourselves – is crucial political work. If we are going to move forward and succeed, we need the understandings, skills and confidence that will enable us to create the preconditions for progress in a world dominated by hostile power, and to sustain support for deepening radical change for decades ahead. We will need to nurture our historical understanding, capacities for critical thinking, cultural sensitivity, ethical awareness and the abilities to build alliances for positive change.
For these reasons, it is well worth taking a look at the work of Amy Tait Westwell, an education worker and historian. The political organisation she’s part of (which operates in Dundee and Aberdeen, as well as in Birmingham in England and Chicago in the United States) has just launched a website which has resources for socialist educators, ‘including guides to some of the exercises we run in World School Dundee’. (Click here to access the site). Materials draw on the work of the theatre practitioner and drama theorist Augusto Boal and the thinking of the revolutionary leader Amilcar Cabral, amongst others. Amy and her colleagues hope that the Cat’s Cradle / (Tiger’s Eye) website ‘can serve as a body of resources/lesson plans which can be repurposed and developed by people engaged in all kinds of teaching, community work, and organising’.
Amy’s own website highlights work she’s developed including political education workshops; a course ‘on the diversity of labour tactics available to workers’; sessions on Marx and political economy’; and workshops on ‘worker identity and collective strength’. This session covers key organisational questions including ‘what holds a group together? How can a group of people support each other and remain strong? How have modern conditions of work and life made it harder to wield collective strength?
Amy says ‘from guilds to mass unions, to tenants’ organisations and feminist groups, radicals have had to build collective identity and strength in the face of huge challenges. I’m interested in working with people to explore different kinds of workers collectives, from different periods of history and in the present, and the glue that holds them together’.
Published 4 August 2024.