Political Approach to Leisure: The “stop WWI coalition”, 1908 - 1914

Abstract

Written by six young people from Liverpool, a 1912 account of backpacking in France was the introduction of this study to Arthur Leonard and his political approach to leisure. Celebrating peace, a year after the Morocco crisis brought Europe to the brink of war, the backpackers end their adventures with a toast to friendship, long life and happy days. Determined to speak and understand French, their friendships are already international. They had learned how to explore a new country as guests rather than tourists through the Co-operative Holidays Association, founded in 1894 by Arthur Leonard with its first head office in Rhu, on the Clyde, in 1897. From the international household of his Hackney childhood, Leonard progressed to secondary school in Heidelberg. After preparing for the Congregational ministry with Dr. John Paton of Nottingham, he arrived in Barrow in 1887. Recession had forced many out of work. Barrow celebrated Victoria’s Jubilee with soup kitchens. Industrialists and wealthy landowners had made little provision for the well being of workers. Hostility between migrant communities was rife. Contemporary reports describe a wilderness of unfinished streets, unlicensed alcohol and obscene graffiti. Drainage and water supplies were poor. The Registrar General identified “a startling level of zygotic disease.” Leonard’s unorthodox approach to ministry included rambles on the Furness fells for young people, and one of the first academics whose support he enlisted was Dr Alex Hill, Master of Downing and a pioneer of environmental medicine. Leonard’s political and religious difficulties in Barrow prompted a move to the notoriously radical town of Colne. Accusations of Socialism continued. Linking the hill walking, music and ventures such as open-air services for cyclists to the National Home Reading Union, it was Leonard’s mentor, Dr Paton who recognised the national and indeed international potential of Leonard’s initiative. Challenging barriers of class, gender, faith and nationality, the Co-operative Holidays Association was intensely and deliberately educational, recruiting leading academics and other key professionals as lecturers and field guides. In 1906, centres opened in Germany and France. School exchange pupils in Britain and Germany stayed with host families and at outdoor centres. As international tension mounted, reciprocal visits developed into a formal peace movement. Studying photos in the 1912 account, it was reasonable to see that the young man whose walking clothes and footwear had been identified as German could be a friend met through these links with Germany. A mistake, but it led to the efforts of Arthur Leonard and countless others to prevent the ‘Great War’ by bringing young people together.