Socialist Sunday Schools

For a generation of working class children, Socialist Sunday Schools provided an introduction to political thinking and alternative ideas that neither mainstream education nor traditional church Sunday schools would countenance.
The first was set up by Mary Gray, a member of the Social Democratic Federation, in Battersea in 1892. Another opened independently in Glasgow, and by 1896 there were 16 in operation.
The schools were in a radical tradition stretching back to the Owenite and Chartist movements of 50 years earlier, and arose in response to feeling among socialists that their children were missing out on the education provided by church and chapel Sunday schools.
Socialist Sunday Schools offered secular hymns and even their own hymn book, a Socialist Ten Commandments, and a monthly periodical, The Young Socialist.
By 1914 there were 120 schools, many with hundreds of pupils. But the first world war marked the beginning of the end, and many teachers were called up or imprisoned as conscientious objectors.
Later, splits in the Labour movement as the SDF went its own way into the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Independent Labour Party left the Labour Party further weakened the movement. By the end of the 1930s the influence of Socialist Sunday Schools had effectively ended.

The Library holds a selection of Socialist Sunday School Hymn, Tune or Song Books ranging from 1907 to 1932. The earliest one held was published in March 1907 for Yorkshire Socialist Sunday School.  More on Socialist Sunday Schools...

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Explore 200 years of working class movement activism

• 1791

  Thomas Paine publishes 'Rights of man'

• 1798

  Irish Rebellion

• 1819

  Peterloo

• 1834

  Tolpuddle

• 1844

  Rochdale Pioneers

• 1848

  Kennington Common Chartist meeting

• 1867

  'Manchester Martyrs' executed

• 1868

  
  First meeting of TUC

• 1871

  Fall of the Paris Commune

• 1893

  Foundation of the Independent Labour Party

• 1913

  
  Cat and Mouse Act

• 1924

  
  First Labour government

• 1926

  General Strike

• 1931

  
  Red Megaphones first performance

• 1932

  Kinder Scout mass trespass

• 1936

  Spanish Civil War

• 1945

  Nationalisation of the coal industry

• 1948

  Birth of the NHS

• 1956

  Hungarian uprising

• 1958

  Aldermaston marches and birth of CND

• 1971

  

  Upper Clyde Shipbuilders

• 1976

  Grunwick dispute

• 1982

  

  Falklands War

• 1984

  Miners' strike

• 1990

  Nelson Mandela's  release from prison

• 1998

  

    Good Friday agreement

• 1999

  Introduction of national minimum wage

• 2001

  
  Stop the War campaign