‘Strikers, communists, tramps, and detectives – lessons from the 1966 seafarers’ dispute’
Hamilton House, NUT HQ, London, WC1H 9BD
Tuesday 27 November 2012, 6.00pm RMT’s guest speaker to deliver this year’s Charles Watkins Memorial Lecture is labour movement academic Professor Roger Seifert, whose lecture will be entitled ‘Strikers, communists, tramps, and detectives – lessons from the 1966 seafarers’ dispute’. Professor Seifert is the author of a forthcoming book on the 1966 seafarers’ dispute, and this should be an excellent evening about an epic episode in the union’s fighting history and the lessons it still holds for today. This free event will be held at the National Union of Teachers HQ, Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD at 6.00pm. Refreshments will also be provided. The Memorial Lecture was initiated in 2009 as a result of an Annual General Meeting resolution. It commemorates the role of Charles Watkins, a key founding activist of the National Union of Railwaymen in 1913, who was a student at Ruskin College in 1909 and took part in the Ruskin strike of that year. The 2009 AGM resolved that a Memorial Lecture should be a first step towards re-establishing a tradition of independent working-class education and that a leading academic or cultural figure should speak on the question of education and class struggle. Bob Crow General Secretary RMT