Quakers and youth hostels

Duncan Simpson, in the first of a two part series, considers the influence of Quakers on the youth hostel movement in Britain

The practical nature of youth hostel work and the simplicity of youth hostels both reflect values and concerns associated with Friends and were part of the reason so many were attracted to the movement in its early days.

Those involved hoped that by bringing together people from different communities and backgrounds, youth hostels would contribute to world peace. The lack of a creed or a single leader for youth hostels and their robust democracy, taking account of all views, shows the influence of Quakers like TA Leonard, ‘Jack’ Catchpool, John Cadbury and many others who took part in creating youth hostels from 1929 onwards.

The absence of a creed was a cornerstone of youth hostels. Their charitable object showed that they were open to everyone. Though they aimed to introduce young people to the countryside, youth hostels opened in towns and cities. They welcomed people of all ages.

They held no religious affiliation, unlike other young people’s organisations, like the YMCA and YWCA. Each youth hostel displayed the times and places of all the local religious services available.

They had no single leader, unlike the Scouts and the Boys Brigade. They were resolutely democratic and their members wore no uniform. They followed no single set of beliefs and attracted men and women from diverse backgrounds.

The influence of Quakers can be seen most clearly in the welcome youth hostels offered to all and the fellowship youth hostel members aimed to create amongst themselves.

Thomas Arthur Leonard, often known as the father of social tourism, among others inspired youth hostels. He came to the Religious Society of Friends in 1920. The absence of a rigid creed and the freedom for intellectual and religious thought attracted him. Leonard was president of the first regional group, which began youth hostels on Merseyside, and then a vice-president of the national association. He had founded the Cooperative Holidays Association in the early 1890s whilst he was still a congregational minister in Colne in Lancashire. In his autobiography, Adventures in Holidaymaking, he wrote that he wanted to encourage a better kind of holiday for his congregation, holidays that did not lead ‘to thoughtless spending of money, the inane type of amusement and unhealthy overcrowding in lodging houses… [that] made for vitiated conceptions of life and conduct and produced permanent effects on character.’

Forty years later, Leonard encouraged the general desire for places to stay in the countryside, along the lines of youth hostels in Germany, into creating a youth hostel movement in Britain. He had great hopes for youth hostels as an organisation offering simple accommodation for working class men and women.

Simplicity

When the national Youth Hostels Associate (YHA) looked for a first president they chose George Macaulay Trevelyan rather than TA Leonard. They turned to the Cambridge professor, historian and author of bestselling history books. GM Trevelyan was not a Quaker but he numbered amongst his friends Philip Noel-Baker. During the first world war he had served in Italy as commander of a Red Cross Brigade with Philip Noel-Baker and others from the Friends Ambulance Unit.

GM Trevelyan brought to youth hostels a pared-back simplicity. He praised the spartan nature of early youth hostels. His own life was spartan. His home was described as lacking in comfort. He and his brother, Charles Trevelyan, gave generous financial help and they are particularly associated with the youth hostels at Once Brewed in Northumberland and Black Sail in Cumbria.

For GM Trevelyan, youth hostels were not ‘abodes of luxury’. He told The Times newspaper in 1933 that their cheap and spartan fare had drawn out the right type of young men and women who took their holidays ‘strenuously and joyously, without slacking or rioting…’

A practical idea

Youth hostels were always practical. Ideas and influences were only important in the way they manifested themselves in the buildings that became youth hostels. Youth hostel work was practical. John Dower, who was married to GM Trevelyan’s niece Pauline, designed youth hostels like the one at Malham in Yorkshire. He and his wife were Quakers. His brother, Arthur, was chairman of the regional youth hostel group in Yorkshire and later a chairman of YHA nationally.

John Dower influenced the development not only of youth hostels but also of the countryside and national parks. He drafted the report in 1945 that led to the creation of national parks. The first national park opened in 1951. Following his untimely death in 1947 Pauline continued to play a leading role in youth hostels, and their son Michael continues the family involvement with youth hostels to the present day.

Another Quaker, E St John Catchpool, better known as ‘Jack’ or ‘Catch’, was the first secretary of the Youth Hostels Association.

George Haynes, director of the National Council of Social Services, forerunner of today’s National Council of Voluntary Services, writing in Catchpool’s autobiography, Candles in the Darkness, called him ‘one of the leaders who took part in the early planning of the movement and as its first secretary, its chief architect. He was the mainspring in its rapid development during the 1930s and was untiring in his efforts to expand the work and enlist support for it.’

Jack Catchpool followed a course of active social service. He was sub-warden at Toynbee Hall, the universities’ settlement in the East End of London, under JJ Mallon. He was active in boys’ and neighbours’ clubs. He campaigned for space where children could play safely off the streets – work that led him to join the London County Council’s education committee.

In 1930 his appointment as the first national secretary of the Youth Hostels Association gave him the chance to indulge what he called his ‘hobby horses’.

George Haynes said that T Corder Catchpool, Jack’s brother, had always been ‘an active and much respected member of the Society of Friends. His life is a striking example of the influence exercised by that remarkable community…’

Jack Catchpool was born in 1890 and educated at Sidcot, a Quaker school in North Somerset. He spent four years at Woodbrooke College in Birmingham, where he took a social studies course and was secretary of the Friends Social Service Union. Soon after the outbreak of war in 1914 he joined the Friends Ambulance Unit.

After the introduction of conscription in 1916 he refused to serve in the army but he, unlike many others, including his brother, was exempted from military service.

He joined the Friends War Victims Relief Committee mission to Russia. After three years in Russia, Armenia, and the Far East he returned to Britain via Palestine in 1919. He had added a strong international conviction to his pacifism and dedication to social service.

Peace

It would be wrong to say that youth hostels were pacifist. Some youth hostel members were in the military. Some took an active part in war. Others did not. But many believed that youth hostels could help create conditions for peace.

Richard Schirrmann, the German founder of youth hostels, witnessed men from opposing sides in the first world war exchanging gifts on the Western Front. He afterwards spoke of his hopes that youth hostels might contribute to peace. By bringing young people from different countries together in youth hostels, where they could meet and understand each other, war in the future might be avoided.

Duncan is author of Open to All: How youth hostels changed the world.

Correction (14 March 2017): A reference to Corder Catchpool being born in 1890 was corrected to Jack Catchpool, who spent time in Russia doing relief work.

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