While there is a wealth of literature and research on radical adult "popular" education for social change, most of it looks forward and speculates on the educational processes best able to help the oppressed of the world overcome naive passivity and become critically aware "subjects" of social change. Within a critical education framework, this article looks in the opposite direction, starts with activists who are already critically aware and works backwards through their life histories to search for the educational experiences, formal and informal, considered to have been most influential in their development. Two hundred and seventy-eight members of the new Scottish Socialist Party responded to a questionnaire inquiring into a range of possible educational influences leading them to become socialist activists: this article analyses the findings of that study, draws comparisons with other research in the more generalised area of "active citizenship" and considers the implications this might have for adult educators working in the field of popular education. (Contains 1 table, 5 figures and 1 note.)