Lord Somers camp & Power House: a response to a climate of fear: the early years 1929-1941

Master of EducationThe year 1929 saw the commencement of the Great Depression in Australia, and a period of intensified class hostility, a class bitterness which had its recent origins in the divisions in Australia which became evident during the Great War. State Labor governments and militant unions were confronted by right-wing para-military organisations such as the New Guard and the League of National Security which were Formed by middle-class citizens to defend their property against what they saw was a breakdown of civil order, and a possible communist revolution. Lord Somers Camp & Power House was not a para-military association, but it was one experiment in social amelorative engineering. Its founders, the Governor of Victoria, Arthur Lord Somers, and the St. Kilda physician, Or C. G. Mc Adam were inspired by an ideal of a united people striving harmoniously in the national interest. They saw class divisions as artificial and easily bridged by personal social contacts. They wanted to engender something of the spirit they had both experienced in the Great War in which class and sectional interests had seemed to melt away in the Face of the common enemy. They believed, naively perhaps, that people only needed to be � brought together so that they could have the opportunity to understand the others point of view, and class divisions would evaporate. To this end they organised a distinctive camp - Lord Somers Camp - and a supporting association - the Power House - to bring together prominent young leaders From the Great Public Schools with talented young apprentices From industry. It was a camp For the Future leaders of society, and it was to be an intense experience, at Lord Somers Camp. It was expected that a network of personal Friendships would be Formed, and would be maintained by regular association in the Power House, an umbrella organisation which was to conduct a number of sporting and social clubs From a headquarters adjacent to the Albert Park Lake in South Melbourne. Lord Somers and Or C. G. Mc Adam were not the Founders oF the rationale behind. the Lord- Somers Camp 6 Power House. Lord Somers was introducing to Victoria a concept he had experienced in Britain -the Ouke of York Camps - founded by the Future King George VI before he came to the throne - back in 1923. Lord Somers Camp was directly modelled on the Duke of York Camps even to the details. Was Lord Somers Camp a political instrument of upper middle-class reactionaries attempting to ensnare the pick of working class youth into the ways of imperial righteousness? It is a possible interpretation of- such a unique association's aims, but there is no documentary evidence to illustrate that this was the case. The personal social and political stance of many adults associated with Lord Somers Camp was of the "God, King, Country and Empire" variety, but this is not the same thing as suggesting that they aimed to indoctrinate working-class youth with these values. Having said this it must also be stressed that the mixing of young men From different classes in society. under Establishment leadership is a venture with profound political assumptions, even if-held at high level of generality. What did Lord Somers Camp & Power House have in common with such associations as the League of National Security or the New Guard ? In one sense nothing at all; in another sense they were different responses to the same situation of extreme class divisions within society. Did Lord Somers Camp and Power House transform society as its Founders hoped it might ? The answer to this question must be negative, because the concept of the camp and the Power House was built on- the illusion that class barriers were only artificial, and did not involve, [as they do, of course], issues of wealth, status, power, opportunity, security and access to education. These substantial matters could not be remedied by a Few social contacts among people From opposed social classes