Turning the Educational Idea on Its Head: The Lib-Lab Alliance and the Organization of the Working Men’s 1867 Exhibition Tours

Abstract

At an October 1866 meeting of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association (IWA), also known as the First International, Eugene Dupont, a maker of musical instruments and the IWA’s Corresponding Secretary for France, made a proposal that for a short time turned this London association of socialists and labor leaders into a tourist agency. Dupont suggested establishing a “Special Committee” to assist “British Workingmen and others” to visit the 1867 Paris Exhibition.1 The council, as it turned out, needed little persuasion. Some members, such as Benjamin Lucraft, had participated in the 1861 “Workingmen’s” tour, and had acquired organizational experience prior to Layard and Cook’s intervention.2 Perhaps Lucraft wished to repeat the experiment? In addition, the IWA’s Parisian branch assured Dupont of their eagerness to “cooperate heartily” with the council. They, like Lucraft, also had wisdom to impart, having organized the visits of worker delegates to the 1862 International Exhibition in London.3 Yet, despite their initial enthusiasm, the IWA led the project for only a short while. Almost as soon as the IWA assembled the Special Committee, it handed the reins over to the Workingmen’s Club and Institute Union — a middle-class network of social and educational clubs that pursued a domestic civilizing mission among the artisan classes. The WMCIU, needless to say, invested the tours with a different meaning and purpose than the IWA. Nevertheless, members of both organizations managed to surmount their differences long enough to form a loose collaboration, albeit with the WMCIU playing the leading role, that culminated in the planned tours of over 3000 workers.