Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
On the socially transformative roles of the bicycle and holiday camp
MAT COWARD looks at how the bicycle helped spread socialist education and the holiday camp was invented for the benefit of the working class
Caister Camp Halt was a railway station on the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway which served the holiday camps near the Norfolk coastal town of Caister-on-Sea, England [Public Domain]

KIRKPATRICK MACMILLAN is not a firm of City accountants, but something much better: the “inventor” of the bicycle.

(Inventor has to go in inverted commas, because so many people are credited with inventing various versions of what became the bicycle. Macmillan is widely held to be the man who made the key breakthrough of adding pedals).

But this week’s column is really about how socialists came to invent the holiday camp.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
A weathered medieval sculpture of a kneeling man, spotlit on a plinth against the painted brickwork of a castle hall
Features / 28 August 2026
28 August 2026

MAT COWARD explains how in the 17th century a row over whether to kneel at communion became a battle over religion, class and royal power

Anthony Wedgwood Benn with his wife after the Election Court sitting at the Law Courts, which decided that Benn has succeeded to the title of Lord Stansgate and is therefore disqualified from the House of Commons
Tony Benn / 9 August 2026
9 August 2026

Tony Benn’s constituents chose him by an overwhelming majority — but because he had inherited a peerage, parliamentary rules declared their choice invalid, writes MAT COWARD

John Tarrant / 17 July 2026
17 July 2026

MAT COWARD writes on Ghost Runner John Tarrant

Sir Richard Acland Labour MP arrives at the Houses of Parliament for its historic opening, October 26, 1950
Features / 27 November 2025
27 November 2025

MAT COWARD tells the story of the eccentric founder of a short-lived but striking experiment in ‘vital democracy,’ who became best known for giving away his estate to the nation