THE late great Bob Crow used to regularly say: “It’s time to reignite our trades councils.” Ten years on from his tragic passing, his words are more relevant than ever. This is why the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) educational trust is reviving his rallying cry.

Today, our educational trust takes the unprecedented step of opening up our educational programme to all local trades councils. For an annual donation, delegates from trades councils will have access to places on all our courses. Launching at the GFTU’s biennial general council meeting, the supreme policymaking body of the GFTU, delegates will hear from trade council activists old and new about how important this education fund will be for all trades councils.

Steve Gillan, general secretary of the POA, GFTU executive member and TUCJCC chair, is right about the importance of trades councils and their potential. Speaking about today’s launch, Steve said: “Strong trades councils embedded in our communities are integral to building our movement and opposing the far right.”

This new fund for trades councils will work in the best historical traditions of our movement — through a collectivised “pool system” — meaning that any trades council can donate and delegates from any trades council can use the places that donations provide, regardless if their own trades council has donated. This system facilitates closer co-operation between trades councils, working together to renew, rebuild and create power across our movement.

Founded in 1970, the GFTU educational trust delivers high-quality residential and online courses for the whole movement, utilising our beautiful Workers’ Retreat (Quorn Grange Hotel). For this year’s programme, we took the big step of providing all our educational courses free to our affiliates.

This has seen an incredible response, with over 1,800 registrations since July, which will put us on track to exceed 2,000 by the end of this year’s programme. We will launch the new programme for 2025-26 at this year’s Durham Miners’ Festival.

This development is part of our commitment as a federation to education, solidarity and unity in action. If we want our trades councils to play that vital role of co-ordination, a “hive” of activity supporting disputes, campaigns and the workers’ movement, we must invest in it. This includes ensuring educational opportunities are not just available, but actively promoted.

In April, we launched a similar offer to all union branches and regions from GFTU non-affiliated unions, providing more ways to access our educational work. We are clear that the incredible strike wave of 2022-23, coinciding with the movement declining by 200,000 (two-thirds of them women in the private sector), provides our movement with urgent challenges we must address.

We believe providing a rich tapestry of different educational courses and pathways to engage, develop, and grow trade unionists, many who have gotten active for the first time, provides part of the solution to rebuilding workers’ power.

Our programme this year was the biggest we have ever delivered, and we pioneered many new courses. This included bargaining, organising and campaigning around AI and data, and bargaining and organising for neurodiversity — equipping workers and trades unions with the skills, experience and politics to face up to and counter the interconnected crisis facing our broken political and economic model.

In his book Solidarity Divided, Bill Fletcher Jr — US activist, writer and organiser — poses a challenge to the US movement when he highlights how little is spent on the education and development of activists compared with other areas of union activity. For Fletcher and co-author Fernando Gaspin, committing resources to education and activist development, key political education, not just functional skills (like handling a grievance), is fundamental to renewal.