Established in 1917 'for the purpose of Independent Working Class Education', the Victorian Labor College was based on the British model. Its socialist purpose was personified in founding members like W.P. Earsman and Guido Baracchi, who taught classes on industrial strategy and Marxist economics. With the support of trade unions and the Victorian Trades Hall Council, it added public speaking, labour history and politics to the syllabus and maintained a bookstall at its Trades Hall headquarters. Sustained by indefatigable supporters like the Brodneys and, later, Ted Tripp, it conducted a viable program of classes until the late 1970s when educational, political and labour market changes diminished its earlier relevance. It was revived in the mid-1980s.