9 Camps as social service and social movement
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John Field
Abstract
A wide variety of voluntary work camp systems developed in the interwar years. This chapter distinguished between those which provided a social service, including the main work camp systems organised by university students, and the pacifist International Voluntary Service camps; and camps organised in order to promote social change, including nationalist and environmentalist camps that both prepared people for a future world and exemplified aspects of life in the new world. Once more, there was a clear gender division, with work camps aimed almost exclusively at men. Unemployed women were recruited into what were effectively holiday camps, to recuperate; and women in the IVS camps acted as domestic workers, while the men performed symbolically heavy manual labour.
Abstract
A wide variety of voluntary work camp systems developed in the interwar years. This chapter distinguished between those which provided a social service, including the main work camp systems organised by university students, and the pacifist International Voluntary Service camps; and camps organised in order to promote social change, including nationalist and environmentalist camps that both prepared people for a future world and exemplified aspects of life in the new world. Once more, there was a clear gender division, with work camps aimed almost exclusively at men. Unemployed women were recruited into what were effectively holiday camps, to recuperate; and women in the IVS camps acted as domestic workers, while the men performed symbolically heavy manual labour.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Abbreviations ix
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 Colonising the land 9
- 2 ‘We work amongst the lowest stratum of life’ 32
- 3 Labour colonies and public health 57
- 4 Alternative living in the English countryside 77
- 5 ‘The landless man to the manless land’ 99
- 6 Transference and the Labour government, 1929–31 125
- 7 Incremental growth 148
- 8 ‘Light green uniforms, white aprons and caps’ 173
- 9 Camps as social service and social movement 195
- 10 ‘Down with the concentration camps!’ 222
- Conclusion – Understanding work camps 245
- Select bibliography 264
- Index 271
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Abbreviations ix
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 Colonising the land 9
- 2 ‘We work amongst the lowest stratum of life’ 32
- 3 Labour colonies and public health 57
- 4 Alternative living in the English countryside 77
- 5 ‘The landless man to the manless land’ 99
- 6 Transference and the Labour government, 1929–31 125
- 7 Incremental growth 148
- 8 ‘Light green uniforms, white aprons and caps’ 173
- 9 Camps as social service and social movement 195
- 10 ‘Down with the concentration camps!’ 222
- Conclusion – Understanding work camps 245
- Select bibliography 264
- Index 271
