‘Why is Socialism necessary? Socialism is necessary because the present system enables a few to enrich themselves out of the labour of the People.’

• Socialist Sunday School Federation (in Gallagher, 2021) 

Looking to Glasgow's past, a small committee of organisers are working to revive a lost tradition of providing radical learning spaces in Scotland’s most densely populated city. Founded in the 1890’s, the Socialist Sunday School Federation once provided a radical alternative to traditional schooling, offering ‘a widespread feeling as to the inadequacy of the orthodox Sunday Schools as a training ground for the children of Socialists’ (W.C.N.L., 2016). As chronicled of the modern incarnation by Gallagher (2021), ‘one of the main objectives was to develop the next generation of socialist leaders’ - something that has arguably ceased within the contemporary Scottish party-political scene, yet, seemingly thrives within social activist and, arguably, the trade union movements (McAlevey, 2016, 2020). Indeed, several former students went on to hold prominent positions within Scottish politics, with anti-fascist Patrick Dollan elected for the Independent Labour Party and serving as Lord Provost (Gallagher, 2010; Carrigan, 2014), and Janet ‘Jennie’ Lee going on to found the Open University after serving as an M.P. for the Labour Party (Dorey, 2015). A revived version, however, was established in January 2020 (Bhadani, 2022) it’s the rationale and possibilities of this current incarnation that this submission explored. 

Through the support of a public fundraiser, the organisers raised circa £2,000 to cover essential costs involved in running the initiative, as well as a reserve to ensure compliance with child protection, and for providing food for learners as a means of providing a comfortable learning environment (Callaghan, 2021). As summarised by Callaghan (2021), the Red Sunday School affords children opportunities to develop ‘the tools to explore nature, culture and society from a radical perspective and get involved with modern day struggles such as anti-racism, feminism and the climate crisis’ (see also Bhadani, 2022). The space operates only once-per-month, resulting in circa ten to eleven sessions per year given the break over the Christmas and New Year period. With the Kinning Park Complex selected as the venue (itself a site of a one-time occupation by community members [Akilade, 2022]), the facilities were already in-place to prepare meals (the centre already runs a weekly community meal, demonstrating the appropriateness of venue choice), whilst the informal learning environment of the community-owned building (Bhadani, 2022) helps distinguish it further from traditional schooling spaces. The programme itself is not constrained by state-produced programmes, rather it is generated by the learners and families (the focus of the Glasgow Red Sunday School being children and young people), and, as such, is able to include arts, physical activities, alongside more traditional input style learning (O'Neill, 2022). One of the co-founders Mackinnon advises that the programme was specifically 'tailor-made for engaging children'. 

Through utilising a hyperlocalised literature review - that is, tapping into the historical materials produced by and about the Red Sunday Schools in Glasgow - this radical tradition will be examined to more fully communicate the premise, challenges, and legacies of these spaces in Scotland’s most populous city. The exploration will draw on the abundance of historical artefacts that chronicle the practices and impact of these radical educational spaces, as well as their prevalence. At one stage, it was suggested that there were as many as eighty-three social schools in Glasgow (Govanhill Baths, 2021) demonstrating the widespread ambitions for such spaces and the potential for any successful model to be replicable in other contexts. Although past iterations utilised an explicitly Christian doctrine, the premise of ‘Sunday School’ seems to be the most non-secular component of this contemporary version. Historically, the Socialist Sunday School Federation operated to its own series of ten-commandments which were, largely, premised upon love, community, and striving towards liberation (see Figure #1: Socialist Sunday School Federation [1957], taken from the Glasgow City Archives), and an artefact-based analysis will afford interested parties a greater understanding of the distincts that have emerged to ensure greater relevance of the model for the contemporary context. In 2021, one of the group's founding members, Mitha (2021) spoke directly to this, stating that the group 'wanted to really reconnect with the history of the Socialist Sunday school movement in a meaningful way, while also rising to some of the challenges around education today', indicating the importance of works such as this.

Glasgow boasts a rich working class history and legacy of social movements (Bhadani, 2021; Benmakhlouf, 2021; Bell, 2021; Banbury, 2021) with a huge number of these movements premised upon cross-border international solidarities (Bhadani, 2022). Exploring this example during the educational research conference will afford uniquely situated insights into a radical practice. The potentials for this work, however, are not limited to the local context. Indeed, as the school builds towards creating dedicated youth committees as a means of establishing a more democratically-run space (Akilade, 2022), a more comprehensive understanding of the Red Sunday School history stands to be of benefit to educators interested in radical and alternative schooling spaces in Scotland and beyond. This paper, therefore, will also provide contemporary insights into best practices for including children in curriculum-formulation, collective organisation of alternative youth-centric spaces, and on the importance of legacy radical practice.

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