Proud to be plebs
Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell denied calling policemen in Downing Street ‘plebs’. The term has its origins in ancient Rome but was also used as a badge of pride by members of the workers’ education movement in the early 20th century.
— The League of the Plebs grew out of a power struggle at Ruskin College, the institution founded in Oxford in 1899 to provide opportunities for academic education for trade unionists, and later alma mater to John Prescott.
— In 1908 a group of students, supported by the principal Dennis Hird but opposed by the governing body, protested that the education on offer was too timid, and began lectures in Marxism.
— The purpose of the league was to take radical education out to the workers, and the league became especially active in south Wales.
— The League of the Plebs was absorbed into the National Central Labour College in 1926.
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