MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY WORKING WITH RMT

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: march/april 2026 :: RMTnews 23 The Marx Memorial Library (MML) has been working with RMT for more than five years to put class politics at the centre of trade union learning. The annual ‘Introduction to Trade Unionism’ two-day course for RMT young members is designed and run jointly by RMT young members’ committee the MML. Over the years we have all learned a lot about how best to engage young activists in thinking about class, politics, trade union history and political economy and how these topics are relevant to them as active trade unionists. By working together with RMT young members’ committee Sarah Cundy and other young RMT activists it has evolved further away from traditional teaching models. Participants do not sit and listen to lectures and presentations from the front but take part in active research, based on looking at pamphlets and documents in the MML archives that record trade union struggles. This includes issues including nationalisation and privatisation, attacks on working class organisation and living standards as well as workers’ fighting back to allow everyone to take part in discussion about what they have discovered, what it means to them and how it might change their trade union activities. After 45 years of neo-liberal economic policy and ideology, it would be easy to believe that the unchallenged rule of ‘the market’ and of billionaires and oligarchs was natural and permanent. Yet the MML archives show that this is not so. We hold pamphlets, newspapers, leaflets and posters that show that we used to have real trade union power, sectoral collective bargaining, legal sympathy action, massive trade union membership, closed shops and effective picketing. Giving young trade unionists access to records of trade union history is essential if they are to become activists who can work through their unions to change the world for the better, because only by knowing that things have been different in the past can we imagine that they can be different again in the future. The group has just finished a four-week pilot run of a new reading group, designed and led by us Marc Harris and Simon Renton. This is even further from a traditional teaching style. Discussion is based on the reading of material from our archives, much of which has been selected by reading group members. Our pilot was intended for a small, invited group of readers but we intend to welcome a more varied and larger group of readers in the near future, when we have had the chance to think about the pilot run and looked at the feedback from those who took part, we plan to run a series of reading groups. For more information email: info@marx-memorial-library.org.uk MML website is: www.marx-memorial- library.org.uk MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY WORKING WITH RMT RMT member Marc Harris and Simon Renton of the Marx Memorial Library outline their study course