Robert Roberts (15 June 1905 – 17 September 1974) was an English teacher, writer and social historian, who penned evocative accounts of his working-class youth in The Classic Slum (1971) and A Ragged Schooling (1976).

Born and raised above his parents' corner shop in a deprived district of Salford, Roberts left school at 14 to undertake a seven-year apprenticeship as a brass finisher. Used as a form of cheap labour to carry out menial tasks, he was dismissed when the apprenticeship ended in 1926. Roberts inherited his mother's love of reading and socialist politics; while he spent the next three years unemployed, he attended evening classes to study foreign languages and social history.

In 1929, he was hired as a tutor/teacher at a commercial college. A staunch internationalist, he was dismissed from this job in 1940 when he was exempted as a conscientious objector from military service in the Second World War. After a short period teaching in Liverpool, he spent most of the 1940s and the 1950s working on a relative's farm in Yorkshire while teaching adult education classes and writing for the radio and newspapers. In 1957, he was hired as an education officer at Strangeways Prison in Manchester where he taught illiterate prisoners to read and write, experiences which formed the basis of his first book, Imprisoned Tongues (1968).

In 1971, Roberts followed this up with The Classic Slum, an account of his upbringing in Edwardian Salford which he intermixed with social and oral history. Roberts produced the book to counter what he felt were romantic conceptions of the working-class community in post-war sociological and social history studies; while emphasising the strength of many individual characters, his book highlighted the pervasive and often devastating effects of poverty, as well as the complex status distinctions and conservatism this produced among residents in his "slum". Widely praised on its release, this richly textured account has become a key source for understanding working-class experience in early-20th-century England. Two years later, Roberts moved to Hampshire where he died in 1974. His autobiography, A Ragged Schooling, was published posthumously; also praised, it was a more personal account of his childhood, teenage and early adult years.

Life

Background

Robert Roberts was born on 15 June 1905 at 1 Waterloo Street in Salford, Lancashire.. His home town had played a key role in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution: with its neighbour Manchester, it had emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries at the centre of global textile manufacturing and the new factory system of production. This led to the conurbation's rapid expansion, but it also brought poverty as the often poorly paid workers were accommodated in small, densely crowded and unsanitary housing.. Friedrich Engels was one of many social observers who commented on this;. his description of Salford in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) highlighted the terrible state of the districts where the workers lived:

Salford's economy had diversified by the time Roberts was born; cotton was still important, though engineering had become a key employer and other manufacturing industries had emerged... Nevertheless, poverty and poor housing remained endemic in working-class districts. Roberts's father, Robert (born c. 1872), was an engineer. His son described him as "firmly embedded in the working class", a "formidable figure in our neighbourhood ... a fair, handsome man, violent in drink and, when sober, eloquent after a loud-mouthed Celtic fashion".. He married Jane Elizabeth "Jennie" Jones, and with her had seven children; the younger Robert was the fourth. Jennie had been a weaver before her marriage and unlike her husband had experienced a decent elementary education.. Within a year of their marriage, the elder Robert had grown tired of travelling to Derbyshire to work for a firm of engineers. He was envious that his brothers-in-law were shopkeepers, and borrowed £40 from one of his sisters, who had all married well, to purchase a corner shop in a slum neighbourhood..

Early life (1905–1919)

Roberts and his siblings were born and raised at the family shop in Waterloo Street. Roberts would draw heavily on his experiences of growing up in this part of Salford when he compiled his autobiographical-historical books decades later. Living above and assisting in the shop allowed him to "eavesdrop on life", as he later wrote; all sorts of people from the community passed through which, along with his own parents' habits, gave him insights into the way people lived in his working-class district. Jennie ran the business, but the elder Robert's work as an engineer was punctuated by periods of unemployment; this combined with the shop's limited takings (in such a poor area) and his heavy drinking to keep the family tied to their neighbourhood for decades.. The business nearly failed in 1911.. Nevertheless, as their son later wrote, they were not "felt to be" fully part of the slum: Robert and Jennie's extended families included relatives with more money or social status than them; the elder Robert was a skilled worker, which brought higher status with it;. and Jennie ranked highly in the community because of the status ascribed to her as a shopkeeper and because she could offer credit to other residents..

Roberts did not place his father in high esteem; in his later writings, he criticised the elder Robert's drunkenness and mocked his desire for social status (which Roberts saw as pretentious).. He admired his mother Jennie. An avid reader, she inculcated in the younger Robert a lifelong passion for reading and a socialist worldview. His formal education at Christ Church School ended at the age of 14. According to Roberts, he wanted to remain in education, but the school's curriculum did not cover the subjects needed to obtain a bursary to study at the local technical college. The headteacher would not offer extra tuition, so when Roberts sat the bursary examinations he failed and was told by his father to find work..

Apprenticeship and unemployment (1919–1929) He then began a seven-year apprenticeship as a brass finisher. During the 1920s and 1930s, apprentices in engineering were paid less than other workers.. As such, employers frequently used them as a source of cheap labour, often with limited training.. Roberts's apprenticeship consisted of his repeating mundane tasks for eight and a half hours every day:

Roberts disliked the job intensely; even after he had been there long enough that new apprentices took over the sweeping (which dispersed metal dust into the air that irritated his lungs), he was required to stand in one place for hours on end to do his job. He recalled in his autobiography that he felt trapped: he yearned to read books, learn, enjoy music and visit Europe.. During this time, he became involved in the labour movement. It was also common in the interwar period for wages to increase sharply on the completion of an apprenticeship, owing to pay structures and union contracts. This increase was often out of step with the limited productivity gained in the process (especially as the apprentice had often been used to carry out low-skilled, routine tasks); it was cheaper for an employer to lay off the apprentice on completion of his "training" and hire a new one to do the same job.. Roberts was one of many young men who suffered this fate. After finishing his apprenticeship in 1926, he was summarily dismissed. The next three years were spent jobless. He attended evening classes to learn French and study social history and English literature, and in 1927 founded the Salford Esperanto Society.

Teaching, farm work, writing and later life (1929–1974) In 1929, Roberts was employed as a French teacher by a local commercial college. According to his son, Roberts had been attending classes at the college and he obtained the position after he filled in for his teacher during a lesson and impressed the staff. He remained involved in the labour movement and became an internationalist, serving for a time as president of the Manchester Workers' International Club and opposing fascism in Europe (he paid visits to the continent to speak publicly on the topic). In 1935 he married Ruth Dean, with whom he had a son Glyn in 1937. Like Roberts, she was a keen Esperantist and a teacher.

Roberts objected to fighting in the Second World War on conscientious grounds; he was exempted from service in 1940, which led him to be sacked from his job. He then worked at the National Council of Labour Colleges in Liverpool (where he contracted tuberculosis) and then at his grandfather-in-law's farm in Yorkshire. He travelled to Sweden to work as a teacher in 1949, but his work was frustrated when his tuberculosis returned. After treatment, he came back to England. While continuing to work on the farm into the 1950s, Roberts was a part-time adult education tutor and wrote material for the radio (including the children's programme Crusoe Farm for the BBC) and the press.

Roberts was employed by Strangeways Prison in Manchester in 1957 as an education officer. His first book, Imprisoned Tongues, was printed in 1968 and described his work with illiterate prisoners. He also taught adult education classes outside of prison, sometimes with his wife. In 1971 his next book, The Classic Slum, was published, offering Roberts's account of his childhood which he intermixed with social history. Two years later, he and Ruth moved to live in Hampshire and in 1974 he was awarded an honorary master's degree by the University of Salford. He became ill with cancer and died, in Gosport, on 17 September 1974. His second autobiography, A Ragged Schooling, was published posthumously two years later. In 1985, the Manchester Studies Unit at Manchester Polytechnic held an exhibition called "The Classic Slum" at Cavendish House; inspired by Roberts's book, it contained a selection of the 60,000 photographs they had collected of Edwardian Salford. Ruth died in 2004. Their son Glyn worked in international development for non-governmental organisations, co-founded Tools for Self Reliance, and authored Questioning Development in 1974; a writer and traveller himself, he died in 2016.

Work

Imprisoned Tongues (1968)

Imprisoned Tongues was Roberts's first book. Published in 1968 by Manchester University Press, it offered an account of his experiences teaching illiterate and poorly literate prisoners to read and write. He ran hourly classes in 16-week courses. In the opening chapter, he explains that "since little seems to have been written about teaching the illiterate and educationally backward in gaol, I have tried to set down an account of my own experience in the hope that it might be useful to tutors and others coming new to the prison service".. Roberts advocated a learning programme in which beginners entered a small class and progressed to larger group sessions once they had mastered the basics.. The book included chapters on the prisoners' backgrounds, the use of role playing and group teaching styles, communication methods, and the involvement of prison staff, as well as a glossary of slang.