When I camped with Corbyn – and what British politics can learn from the Woodcraft Folk I was around 11 years old, with a large group of adults and children walking through a woodland in south […]

I was around 11 years old, with a large group of adults and children walking through a woodland in south Dorset. Jeremy Corbyn was patiently explaining to me an aspect of the rail franchising system.

No, this wasn’t my dream last night. This was the Woodcraft Folk, the anti-Scouts youth movement once derided on a prime-time comedy panel show for having “wicker uniforms”. I joined the Folk when I was six.

On Wednesday evenings we’d variously play bulldog in a community centre hall, learn about the invasion of East Timor, or go swimming at Archway pool. A few weekends a year we’d head to a youth hostel in Surrey or Epping Forest, where we’d build campfires and fail to read Ordnance Survey maps on nine-mile hikes. In the summer we’d take our tents further afield.

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Corbyn on clan duty

Woodcraft’s groups, age-divided into Elfins, Pioneers and Venturers, are run by parents and volunteers – so Corbyn became involved in our Highgate and Holloway district when his son Tommy joined. The Islington North MP – not that I knew he was that initially – became a familiar presence on camps.

He took part in “clan” duty – doing the cooking or washing up. And in the best Woodcraft spirit, listened more than he talked. One November evening Corbyn even took our entire group of 10 to 12-year-olds to Parliament to meet Tony Benn.

Honoured to help Woodcraft celebrate 90 years of Spanning the world with Friendship at their big gathering today! pic.twitter.com/QrEzqTh2Yj — Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) June 13, 2015

It’s not just Corbyn’s unexpected success that may now put the Woodcraft Folk in the spotlight. Two of Labour’s new MPs are woodies. Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who unseated the Conservative Simon Kirby in Brighton Kemptown, is the former chair of the Folk. Alex Sobel, the new MP for Leeds North West, helped re-start a group his two children attend.

Thinking for ourselves

The Woodcraft Folk might seem like the nursery of an Islington North alt-world of allotments, beards and muesli. But far from indoctrinating young people, the Woodcraft Folk taught kids like me to think for ourselves. Unlike my friends in the Scouts, I was never made to swear allegiance to God and the queen.

We swore allegiance, if you like, to each other. Our camps were way cheaper than school trips, and we joined groups from Handsworth in Birmingham, and the former mining community of Stanley in County Durham. Not to mention Woodcraft Folk-equivalents from across the world.

Changing the world

Russell-Moyle told me that seeing Woodcraft as an escape from the real world missed the point. “Capitalist education, like scouting, is about fitting people into society,” he said. “Liberal education is about creating an alternative world. The point of socialist education is… you take people out so that [they] can go back into real world to not just reject the world we have, but change it.”

Woodcraft is different from “summer camp activities”, Russell-Moyle says, because it’s not just about the benefit for individuals. “You go along [to weekly group nights] and you build up a collective,” he says. “And that’s one of the fundamentals about the Labour party.”

A mass movement?

Woodcraft gives activists a “resilience about bureaucracy”, Russell-Moyle says. Tony Benn said Labour had “never been a socialist party, but it’s always had socialists in it”. The same could be said of the 92-year-old Woodcraft Folk. It’s always has always had socialist, environmental and liberal currents.

Sobel says: “The Scouts and the Guides have modernised, but they’re still not secular youth organisations. It would be good for us a party and a movement to make Woodcraft a mass movement for young people who share those values.”

It was, after all, Sobel says, a “huge increase in youth participation which got both me and Lloyd elected”. Russell-Moyle concurs. “Jeremy Corbyn having a Woodcraft Folk background makes it easier for woodies – young people sceptical about mainstream politics – to see an alternative that inspires them,” he says.

But of course it’s not just about the one man – “there’s a group of people leading the party who inspire that confidence”. Corbyn repeatedly urged voters not to “walk by on the other side of the street” over the campaign.

I can’t help but think of the song we’d sing at the end of our Elfin group nights in that draughty community hall, which ended: “Should any be weary, we’ll help them along.”