One hundred years ago the North East was at the forefront of independent working class education as self-educated shipyard workers and miners sought to understand the conditions in which they lived. The key organisations nationally were the Plebs League and the Labour College Movement, both of which sought a politically committed answer. ‘Left for the Rising Sun, Right for Swan Hunter’ – whose title reflects the main choices for working people at the time – celebrates the memory of those autodidacts who took part in the long struggle for an education that was otherwise denied to them.