The final session of the five-day gathering was meant to begin with a song (specially written for the occasion) but 10.30am had arrived and there was no sign of the musician. I improvised, asking the folk in the marquee: ‘What’s been good about Peace News Summer Camp this year?’ People called out that the field (inSuffolk, England) was lovely; the weather had been kind (it always is, for some reason); the food (from Veggies, the activist caterers) was good; the workshops had been interesting (I think there was particular mention of Australian historian Douglas Newton’s workshop about his fascinating book, The Darkest Days: The Truth Behind Britain’s Rush to War, 1914).

Then someone shouted out that the camp had been like the society we want to make.

I had to keep facilitating the plan for the session (which was on the 100^th anniversary of the day that Britain declared war on Germany; we wanted to have something about ‘declaring peace’), but really I was caught by that observation. That’s exactly what the idea of the camp is.

Every year, we write in the publicity and the programme something along these lines:

‘Welcome to Peace News Summer Camp and to five days of exploration, celebration and empowerment. The camp will be a small self-governed society run by democratic camp meetings, a viable example of the kind of world we are trying to bring about. It will help build a radical movement for the future by building a living community today.’

When someone shouted out that that was what they had experienced, I wanted to follow that thread, and find out more about what they meant by that, whether there were other people who felt the same way, and what the camp meant by for them.

One of the things that comes through in the evaluation forms every year (this was the sixth annual camp) is appreciation for the warmth of the micro-society that is built:

‘Peaceful environment that reaches out to all. A kind and loving community.’ (2013)

‘Workshop programme was varied and interesting. Warm and friendly atmosphere. Wonderful to watch people come out of their shells and make friends. INCLUSION.’ (2012)

‘Great friendly community.’ ‘Thank you for organising and creating a lovely village.’ (2010)

‘Friendly, welcoming and can’t wait for the next one – peace on!’ (2009)

An organiser from Earth First! Summer Gathering (from which Peace News Summer Camp has drawn a lot of inspiration) said this year that she thought the strength of our camp was the quality of the speakers we get in (we offered about 50 two-hour workshops in five days, including whole-camp sessions). Which prompted me to think that actually our main strength is the friendliness of the camp – which raises the question of how that is created.

One critical element is that we all literally, physically, build the camp together.

The camp always starts on Thursday morning, and the time before lunch is spent actually putting up structures and finishing off preparing the camp. There is a lot of work done before Thursday. Some set-up volunteers come on Monday evening to unload the marquees and water pipes and all the equipment, and we put a lot in place over Tuesday and Wednesday, but that morning session on Thursday is really needed, we usually still have a lot to do to get the camp ready.

This year, for the first time, we had to construct our own compost toilets – we rented them from an activist supplier, but we still had to transport them and put them together. The components were much heavier (0.9 tonnes) than we expected. As this took us over the weight limit for the van we usually use (a long wheel-base Luton), instead of transporting everything on one day, we suddenly found ourselves transporting everything over two days, and the construction timetable suffered accordingly. We had to scrap all the workshops listed for Thursday afternoon because we were still putting up structures at that point.

Constructing the site together is just part of the joint work style of the camp. During the camp, participants volunteer to staff the Welcome Tent (two hours at a time); to chop vegetables ahead of meals; to look after the toilets and the hand-washing facilities; to make whatever signs are needed around the site; to check the tension of the guy ropes holding the marquees up; to keep an eye on fire safety; and so on. There is no division of labour between ‘camp workers’ and ‘participants’. No one is there just to provide a service for other people (apart from the caterers and the people running the Children’s Space). To the extent that we’re willing and able, we are all ‘site crew’.

(Quite a few speakers are also participants or organisers. Most speakers, however, come in more fleetingly, perhaps just for their workshop and a meal. There is a division of labour there.)

The work that is done is devolved to whoever is willing to do it, and they’re trusted to carry it out in the best way they know how. Some jobs need a lot of briefing (like staffing the Welcome Tent); some jobs just need guidance on the location of materials and tools (like signage). Every morning, each work group reports to a whole-camp meeting, and any camp participant can make a suggestion for action.

There is a lot of trust in the system, but there is also a clear line of authority. There is an organising group, which is accountable to Peace News, the publication. The organising group takes overall responsibility for running the camp, including making decisions on excluding people. This year, as almost every year, the organisers had to discuss asking people to leave. One person was asked to leave (before the camp even started!) for their anti-social and threatening behaviour. The organisers are accountable to the participants, but the last say on core decisions like this remains with the organisers.

While this means that the camp (of between 120-200 people) is not 100% democratic, there is direct democracy involved in a lot of areas where people have authority delegated to them, to organise their work as they see best.

We think that it is the nature of such short-term gatherings that there will be an inner core who make the final decisions in key areas, and who do not share all the information they have with all the participants. We think that we’re just transparent about not being entirely transparent, and up front about there being an authority on site. Some similar events say that they are governed by all the participants, but actually have an inner organising core (not so easily identified as atPeace News Summer Camp) who take the tough decisions.

To take one important example of a tough decision, when someone’s behaviour reaches a point where they may be excluded from the camp, there is often a lot of sensitive information involved that it would not be right to share with the whole world. A strict commitment to group democracy would mean violating people’s privacy in a very damaging way.

Returning to the question of the division of labour, it is sometimes said that one of the things that led to the demise of Climate Camp, which ran in the UK from 2006 to 2010, was the class division between the largely working-class logistics crew who transported and supervised the building of the site but who had little to do with the content of the schedule, and the largely middle-class group which constructed the workshop programme and facilitated the meetings.

I’m in no position to judge the truth of this but I am sure that how we organise the work involved in our activism is critical to how successful we will be, and I am sure that our class backgrounds play a huge part in how we work, individually and collectively, for social change.

I’m convinced that creating a classless society in the future means creating classless organisations today – and that means trying to adopt and implement the balanced job complex idea, so that everyone in the group is doing the same amount of empowering and disempowering work.

I’m not completely sure how to approach this ideal in voluntary groups and temporary gatherings (and especially in temporary gatherings organised by volunteers). I am sure that Peace News Summer Camp is a useful addition to a long tradition of trying to get to grips with these kinds of issues.

I am also sure that sharing work the way we do at Summer Camp cuts (somewhat) against class division and social separation, and this helps to create a sense of equality, trust and empowerment among us. I am sure that these qualities are key ingredients of the friendliness and inclusivity that people value as much as anything else they encounter at the camp.

Milan Rai is a co-editor of Peace News and the founder of Peace News Summer Camp.

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