Looking back fifty years is a salutary experience. There is a sense that everything changes, and everything stays the same. Whilst people now have a global non-government organisation to support national bodies in the field of adult learning, most of the national members have a fragile financial base, and the International Council for Adult Education struggles to find secure funders for its global advocacy work. If the profession of adult education has grown dramatically since the 1960s, it feels in too many countries as though it is now well past its zenith, with the optimism of mass literacy campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s giving way to the narrow focus of the Millennium Development Goals--where one looks in vain for the explicit recognition of the role of adult education. In this article, the author looks back at the national and international associations and discusses the difference between the analysis of the work of national associations then and now. He argues that national and international movements will make themselves anew for the next fifty years.