Anarchy, or NambyPamby Liberalism, in the UK (WW2 time)

So when a group of earnest young conscientious objectors offered to take them off to rural Essex and "cure" their antisocial tendencies with a mixture of fresh air, unconditional love and radical democracy, nobody asked too many questions.

Q Camp was a utopian experiment which tried to get troubled boys to operate a self-governing community in the middle of the countryside. Not much was known about it until I uncovered newly released files at the Public Record Office.

Staff included university students
Its approach was radical and a far cry from the strict authority imposed at the reform schools and borstals where the boys would otherwise have gone. But while it was an extreme experiment, Q Camp anticipated many of today's ideas about treating children with behavioural problems.

Originally the camp had been set up in 1936 for adults, but was shut when the war started. It was opened again for the young boys in 1944 and came under the control of the Home Office - not that the authorities knew that much about what was going on.

According to the newly-discovered records, the Ministry of Health complained that the first it had heard of the camp was when it received a letter from a local fuel overseer saying he was astonished children were permitted to live in such conditions.

'Horror'

The Q stood for query or quest and the camp chief was a young man named Arthur Barron, known to everyone as Bunny. Said to be full of "ideas and ideals", his philosophy was that children could learn self-discipline through shared responsibility.

"The whole philosophy was that these kids were unliked, unloved, unwanted at home," says Edward Thomas, a pacifist conscientious objector who worked at the camp.

"The theory was that if you could form a relationship with them and show that you still cared for them, that they would become civilised youngsters."

We was allowed to do virtually what we liked

Daniel O'Keefe
Q Camp resident

The idea that the community was non-hierarchical and self-governing completely baffled the authorities.

Staff and boys lived in the most primitive conditions, in ramshackle wooden huts without windows or sanitation. A Probation Service inspector described the camp as "dirty and dismal" in one report. She said the sleeping huts filled her with "horror" and the beds "looked grimy".

Work was shared, but the youngsters weren't compelled to lift a finger. A camp council of staff and boys imposed what little discipline there was. There was also a school but attendance was voluntary and the school hut was set on fire on several occasions.

Unconditional love

It was Mr Barron's belief that the young boys should not be told what to do. Smashed windows remained unfixed and obscenities were left daubed on walls because he believed it was better to leave the jobs until the boys responsible agreed to do them. They rarely did.

Daniel O'Keefe was 12 when he was sent to Q Camp after getting into trouble. After a series of court appointments he was seen by a psychiatrist who thought he could benefit from the exciting new "therapeutic community".

Thousands of children were evacuated
"We was allowed to do virtually what we liked," he says. "We didn't have to bother with school or nothing."

The other principle the camp ran on was that, regardless of their behaviour, the children should be given unconditional love. The staff did their utmost to accommodate them.

One youngster who liked horses and made a speciality of stealing them was bought one in the end.

Records show the staff themselves were considered by the authorities to be just as troubled as the youngsters they were trying to help.

"They are not conventional people and one gained the impression that they themselves are maladjusted," wrote one visitor.

'Masters and slaves'

Concerns were raised by some of the families of the boys. Mr O'Keefe's father complained to the Home Office after one visit. He had tried to take his son out for a meal and was shocked that no decent trousers could be found for him to wear.

In the end it was health and safety concerns - and one too many fires - that caused the government to put an end to the experiment. The boys were removed and the camp deemed unfit for human habitation.

So was it a failure? The Q Camp probably only got away with it for so long because in the middle of a war, and a manpower shortage, the authorities were glad to find anyone prepared to take on difficult children.

The troubles were blamed on fathers away at war
But in its determination to move away from the authoritarian model of the approved schools, it anticipated many of the ideas on residential childcare that became common in later decades.

Many of those involved went on to become senior and influential in their field.

Mr Barron trained as a psychoanalyst with Anna Freud and became an eminent child psychotherapist. Mr Thomas became a director of social work in Scotland. He counts the Q camp a success. Another member of staff, Chris Beedell, became an academic and a guru in the world of children's social work.

But others say Q Camp failed because the children themselves didn't want to share the responsibility, but wanted to feel the adults were in charge.

So much so that they organised themselves into two groups, masters and slaves - the ones who wanted to control and the ones who wanted to be controlled.

"This was the exact antithesis of what the theorists wanted to achieve," says author Maurice Bridgeland, who knew Mr Barron. "It was the opposite of all their principles," .

The Q Camp is on Wednesday, 22 November at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4.