John Field's book is the first in-depth study of Britain's many work camp systems. Highly readable, and based on painstaking archival research, as well as reminiscences of those involved, it tackles aspects of work, masculinity, training and citizen service that sound remarkably familiar in today's world. Labour colonies flourished in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, providing a combination of work and discipline for such diverse groups as the unemployed, alcoholics, epileptics, ex-servicemen and 'mental defectives'. Socialists, anarchists and feminists also founded their own land colonies, in the hope of building a new world. Government and others also used work camps to train potential emigrants for the Dominions. With the unemployment crisis of the 1930s, these different initiatives were overtaken by a national system of government work camps, designed to 'harden' the long term unemployed. The book also explores residential training schemes for women, including the domestic servant training centres of the interwar years, and nineteenth-century colonies for deviant women. While specific British circumstances shaped the systems that developed here, we can also understand work camps as an international phenomenon, ranging from well-known systems in Germany and the USA to lesser-known camp movements in Sweden and Ireland. Yet almost all work camp movements shared a preoccupation with men, seeking to reshape their bodies through heavy labour. Working men's bodies will interest anyone specialising in modern British history, as well as those concerned with social policy, vocational education and male identities.
