Billy Hughes (educationist)

Herbert Delauney Hughes (7 September 1914 to 15 November 1995), known as Billy Hughes, was a British adult educationist and Labour Party politician. Born in Swindon, he was educated at home by his mother, a former headteacher, until the age of eleven, and graduated in modern history from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1935. He was Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton West from 1945 to 1950 and served as parliamentary private secretary to the Secretary of State for Education, Ellen Wilkinson. From 1950 to 1979 he was principal of Ruskin College, Oxford, an institution founded in 1899 to provide university-standard education for working class adults with few or no qualifications. He presided over an expansion of its facilities and student numbers and persuaded the government to make it mandatory for local education authorities to provide grants to its students. He also served as president of the Workers' Educational Association.