skygiants

I don't think that's a parallel, though.

The Home Guard was a new institution at the time, and part of Orwell's point was that it would be shaped by the people who were willing to get involved, because it hadn't yet settled down into institutional inertia. Plus, being a Socialist in the Home Guard of British Army was not unsafe.

And of course it was also doing an important job guarding the country from Nazis, which was kind of in the interests of anyone who was identifiably a Socialist and liked not being in a concentration camp....