More Camping & Socialism
Those who follow Michael Rosen’s twitter account (@michaelrosenyes) for more than his thoughts on Arsenal may have seen this week some of the details he occasionally posts about family camping holidays he went on when he was younger. His parents were Communist Party members and clearly the camping, often I think in France, had an element of austerity about it.
In his 2017 memoir So They Call You Phisher! Rosen notes that like eating marmite, camping was something that Communists did and perhaps other didn’t. These provided both with a special sense of socialist endeavour.
He also occasionally tweets details of what camping holidays entailed. Here can be seen a sense of proletarian toil in the collective good which may have been seen as character building but is probably very much a minority taste in holidays today
Who remembers ‘The Moolie’?(I think Moulinex made a manual masher.) It was a metal bowl, with a kind of grater on the bottom. You put in eg chick peas, turned a handle and you mashed the chick peas. Then you spent a week washing it up.
I don’t want to sound terribly terribly international but my mum bought one in France on a camping holiday in the 50s or 60s. It was my job to wash it up. #TeenLabour #collectivism #socialistparenting
And how do you think we had that apple purée I’ve been going on about? Pushing the stewed apple through it, of course! (‘Wash the Moolie up, Michael. Make your contribution to the collective.’)
@MichaelRosenYes (2nd September 2021)
The literature on Communism and the left and camping seems sparse (though I haven’t done an exhaustive search). Raph Samuel mentions going camping as a youth a couple of times in the Lost World of British Communism although he also suggests that Communists were often too busy politically for holidays.
Richard Evans biography of Eric Hobsbawm has him as a student in the 1930s camping and youth hostelling around France as well as Snowdonia and Surrey.
This may have been a generational CP thing. My late father was a CP member but never once suggested going camping. By contrast as an unorthodox Trotskyist I found myself camping at the Lutte Ouvriere fete in Paris and in more recent years(more union official in this case) camping at the annual Tolpuddle Festival. I also on one occasion recall going on an actual camping holiday in a field outside Scarborough. I think we lasted until the tent floated away in the rain and we retreated to self- catering in the town.
It may be taken that even when younger I was at best agnostic about camping. Basic hotels these days are in many places affordable for a few nights stay and you’ll only get wet in the shower.
Of course camping and protest still has its place. I note that many of the XR rebels currently protesting in central London camp overnight in South London. Luckily for them Sherlock Holmes doesn’t yet seem to have worked out where.
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