This is an edited transcript of the Caroline Benn Memorial Lecture, given by Ken Jones, at the request of the Socialist Education Association, in November 2020. The lecture situates Caroline's work in the context of the 'Long Revolution' of twentieth century Britain. The lecture discusses the meaning of that revolution for education; it charts the course of the right-wing reaction to it from 1976 onwards, and the growth of managerial cultures at the level of the school which have blocked its further development. The effects within education of the Black Lives Matter and the COVID pandemic have revived, in both practical and ideational ways, some of the themes of the Long Revolution. The lecture argues that this is a change of historical significance. The possibility of change as a collective democratic project has been reawakened.