Workers' Liberty summer camp report

Submitted by AWL on 7 September, 2021 - 5:37 Author: Michael Elms
Woodcraft Folk campsite near Haslemere

On the weekend of 3-5 September, 40 members and friends of Workers’ Liberty gathered in a campsite near Haslemere in Surrey to enjoy some late summer sun and take part in our summer camp.

Workers’ Liberty has run an annual summer camp in Hebden Bridge since 2011, but the event was cancelled last year due to coronavirus. This year, we moved to a new location to ensure that the camp could be held 100% out of doors, for Covid safety reasons.

The camp heard talks from democracy activists in Hong Kong, an account of recent social struggles in France, and a history of the workers’ movement in Turkey. We discussed organising the unorganised with a worker who had organised collective action in the Wetherspoons chain, and considered the history of the socialist activism around the Bryant and May walkout and the Great Dock Strike of the 1880s. We discussed climate activism and our plans for the forthcoming COP26 summit protests, and enjoyed a sound system demonstration, with a talk on the technical side of building a 12-volt sound system, and the political history of sound system culture in the UK.

We enjoyed some excellent food, drinks around a campfire in the evenings, a pub quiz conducted in a well-ventilated marquee, and trips out to do wild swimming, look at local ruins, and hikes through the wooded hills surrounding our camp.

We look forward to doing a longer, bigger camp next year, and hope to see everyone who attended in the political struggles in the months to come.

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