This chapter moves on to focus on education and participatory action research (PAR) within the trade union and labour movement. The three overarching themes of the book run through this chapter in parallel, with a particular focus on the role of ideas and the development of critical consciousness within social movements. This includes experiences of questioning whose knowledge counts and the implications for the promotion of knowledge democracy, re-examining social movements’ own histories as the basis for developing more inclusive approaches and building solidarity for the future. The trade union movement has much to learn from its past engagements with colonialism as well as its past and more recent engagements with movements for decolonisation, as this chapter sets out to explore.

Trade unionism has been criticised for failing to challenge the legacies of slavery, colonialism and imperialism in Britain and the US in particular, with continuing inequalities of race within the movement itself as well as within the wider society (Marable, 1991; Ramdin, 2017). There have been very different histories too, however, as the previous chapter has already illustrated. Although there was evidence of trade union collusion with the racist regime, for example, there was also evidence of heroic mobilisations of solidarity against apartheid. While pulling no punches on the failings of trade unions in working against colonialism and racism more generally, trade unions have also made very real contributions (Davis et al, 2006).

The first part of this chapter summarises the competing approaches that have been identifiable within the history of trade union and labour movement education, with a particular focus on the implications for international solidarity and anti-racism. This sets the context for the discussion of specific approaches to trade union education and participatory research. The Unite History Project (UHP) co-produced six short volumes about the history of one of the two component parts of Unite: Amicus and the Transport and General Workers’ Union, whose centenary would have been in 2022 had it not been for the merger, including materials produced via oral history interviews that were conducted by trade union educators and activists themselves (in order of publication Davis and Foster, 2021; Seifert, 2022; Mayo, 2022; Foster, 2022; Davis, 2023; Weir, 2023).