This article analyses policy and practice in social and cultural education for adults in England in the post Second World War era, beginning with the flowering of municipal adult education and the expansion of university extra-mural provision. It tracks the emerging policy focus on extending participation to under-represented groups, and on securing a rich breadth of curriculum (life-wide learning), which flowered in the 1990s. It maps, and deprecates the subsequent narrowing of public investment to an increasingly utilitarian focus on qualifications for labour market participation with the rise of Treasury (finance ministry) influence on adult learning policy from 2003. Evidence of the wider benefits that derive from participation in learning is used to re-assert the case for publicly accessible lifelong, life-wide education for adults.