The former Principal of Ruskin College, John Hughes died aged 86 on the 1st November 2013.  This was only two weeks after his wife of 66 years, Vi, died aged 91.  They met when they both travelled to Yugoslavia in 1948 to help rebuild the Sarajevo railway line as Young Communists. Both became tutors at Ruskin from the late 1950s. John specialised in Economics, Politics and Industrial Relations.  As well as teaching, John wrote numerous publications, worked with the Trades Union Congress and also Labour ministers in the Wilson Government. He believed that the unions in conjunction with Labour were the dynamic to change society in a socialist direction.

With Roy Moore, he founded Ruskin’s Trade Union Research Unit which for many years conducted crucial research for trade unions seeking better pay and conditions including the miners, teachers, public sector workers, car workers and seamen, In conjunction with this, he established a Labour Studies Course and advanced courses for trade union officials.  Locally they worked to improve conditions in the Oxford car factories. In 1979 he was appointed Principal of Ruskin College succeeding Billy Hughes. His many achievements were underpinned by his socialist beliefs, his commitment to working-class education and a socialist society.

His thirty years saw changes from Ruskin as a place for young male shop stewards and activists, to one that included substantial numbers of women and increasingly older people.

Believing in roses as well as bread, Vi Hughes set up the Literature course at Ruskin and also helped students to improve their written expression. A lover of poetry she brought many writers to the College to read to and discuss with students.   She had previously taught in schools in Aberdeen and Edinburgh before moving on to work with the Workers’ Education Association. Vi too, was passionate about redressing inequality and education.  She incorporated politics and social justice into her teaching of literature. After Vi stopped teaching at Ruskin she wrote about Access to the Arts for the Arts Council and latterly set up the Ransackers’ project which enabled those aged over 55 to undertake research projects at Ruskin or Plater College. Her enthusiasm for culture and politics was well-known as was her local activism which included Chair of Governors at a local Comprehensive school.

John Hughes had a tremendous impact in the development of Ruskin College during significant periods in history when the labour movement went through many shifts and challenges.  His legacy still lives on.  Both John and Vi Hughes made major contributions to Ruskin College. They were well known in the local community and built up relationships between Ruskin and the neighbourhood. They will be sadly missed.

Katherine Hughes and Annie Skinner – November 2013

Links to Obituaries  

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/22/john-hughes

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/community/obituaries/obits/10807008.Former_Ruskin_College_principal_and_trade_unionist_was_appalled_by_war/

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/15/vi-hughes

PRESS RELEASE EMBARGOED UNTIL 0800 THURSDAY 28 NOVEMBER

Launch of newruskinarchives

http://newruskinarchives.org.uk

Academics, historians and former staff and students of Ruskin College in Oxford have launched a new online archive to record and crowd-source historical information about past students, following the controversial destruction of the college student records last year.

The site already contains over 50 entries on former students of Ruskin, the labour movement college in Oxford, and we are hoping that the site will encourage historians, friends and relatives of ex-Ruskin students to provide information about hundreds more. The site will also share photographs and other historical ephemera about the college that people are willing to share.

The site has been launched a year after an international petition of 7,500 signatures condemning the destruction of the vast bulk of student records dating from 1899 onwards was presented to the governors of Ruskin college.

There was much press coverage of the scandal and widespread criticism of the actions of the Principal, Audrey Mullender, who decided to destroy these records. Mullender retires at the end of November 2013.

The project:

We realise that it will never be possible to ‘recreate’ the material that was so needlessly destroyed. But, we think it important to acknowledge the life experiences of people whose memory has been treated with such disregard. We also want to ensure that the destruction of the archives is not forgotten. Thanks to a generous one-off grant from History Workshop Journal this website aims to create ‘history’, outside an academic institution, through (potentially) the work of thousands of people, contributing their own knowledge and experience to a database of former students. Although some material exists in other publications, material has never been gathered together in one, searchable, place.

Contributors and entries:

Contributors include professors and university lecturers, (including Professor Paul Pickering, director of the research school of humanities and the arts at ANU in Canberra), trade union and labour movement activists (including Alex Gordon, former president of the RMT, and Harry Barnes, former labour MP), those writing about family members and their own lives.

Some people covered in the entries so far are relatively well known. They include Welsh socialist miner Noah Ablett or trade union leader Jack Jones. But we are also bringing to light traces of lives previously hidden. This includes Edgar Eagle, a boot and shoe clerk in Leicester who went to Ruskin in 1926 and then Nottingham University, but about whom little is known. Written by former Ruskin student, Denise Pakeman, she comments:

‘As a former student myself and of working class origins, it is important to me that such a tiny trace of Edgar Eagle’s time at Ruskin, his achievements and dedication to adult education become part of the New Ruskin Archives so that he is placed back within a student body of which he was a part and which many of us (if not the recently retired Principal) hold in high regard.  All the information held and kindly shared by the University of Nottingham, who obviously value their history and student/staff body, makes all the more poignant the destruction of the original Ruskin College archive.’

Who we are

We are a group who came together to try and stop the destruction of the Ruskin student archives. We welcome the contributions of others to build the site.

The newruskinarchives website (homepage): http://newruskinarchives.org.uk

Email: newruskinarchives@gmail.com

Twitter: @newruskinarchiv

Background to last year’s destruction:

http://newruskinarchives.org.uk/wp/#Background

In Autumn 2012 Ruskin College, sold its Walton Street building in central  Oxford, where it had been based for over one hundred years. During this time most of its archive of student records was destroyed and many dissertations written by Ruskin students were likewise disposed of. Artefacts, including paintings, were also dispersed to other institutions.

No legal or professional advice was taken prior to this destruction. No copies were made of the destroyed material. Such trashing of material of the past lives of former students was entirely unnecessary. As Nicholas Kingsley, Head of Archives Sector Development & Secretary of the Historical Manuscripts Commission at the National Archives, confirmed ‘it would have been acceptable to retain these records indefinitely for historical purposes’.

The Bishopsgate Institute in London offered its space to  ‘anything and everything’ the College no longer wanted. (The Institute already holds the papers of Ruskin’s former history tutor Raphael Samuel and of the History Workshop that had been so closely associated with the College.) This was turned down.

Notes to editors:

Key URLs

The newruskinarchives website (homepage): http://newruskinarchives.org.uk

Background: http://newruskinarchives.org.uk/wp/#Background

This website project: http://newruskinarchives.org.uk/wp/#This%20website%20project

The Archives Database: http://newruskinarchives.org.uk/wp/?page_id=15

Previous coverage

New Ruskin Archives | History Workshop
www.historyworkshop.org.uk/newruskinarchives/‎
10 Jul 2013 – One of the most read articles on History Workshop Online has been Hilda Kean’s impassioned plea to the Principal and governors of Ruskin …

Ruskin Archive – lobby of governors | Hilda Kean
hildakean.com/?p=1511‎
1 Dec 2012 – wreath. On November 30 many people braved the elements to lobby the governing executive of Ruskin College reiterating the demand to stop …

Ruskin archive: dust-up | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
www.theguardian.com/…/2012/oct/…/ruskin-archive-oxford-headington‎
28 Oct 2012 – Editorial: The opening of Ruskin College’s new archive has provoked a tumultuous row about the way it has handled its past. …

The TLS blog: Archives under threat at Ruskin College
timescolumns.typepad.com/…/archives-under-threat-at-ruskin-college.ht…‎
6 Oct 2012 – Archives under threat at Ruskin College … One was back on display in the College’s new premises, the other is on loan to the Marx Memorial … and historians will have a very hard time piecing together information about us. …

Row after John Prescott’s old college ‘shreds archive’ – Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk‎
5 Oct 2012 – Ruskin College, which lists John Prescott among its alumni, sparked a row after … insisted that the files were destroyed for data protection reasons. The most important details were digitised onto a new electronic database as …

The project has been announced at History Workshop Online

Nothing to see here yet. Move along please!