Scouting the future
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July 29, 2007
Hal Iggulden, co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys, believes the
Scouts - 100 years after they were founded - can solve the crisis in
21st century manhood
Roland White
In a school playground way back in the 1960s I made the first
significant moral choice of my life. My best friend had asked me if
I'd come to a meeting of his Cub Scout pack: just to see what it was
like. On the other hand, a girl in our class also wanted to know
whether I'd be at all interested in seeing her knickers. There was no
time to do both. I'm afraid I chose the knickers.
It's not that I was all that interested in knickers at the age of
nine. I could just tell that Cubs and Scouts did not somehow fit the
freewheeling spirit of the Sixties, or at least the faint whiff of the
Sixties that had reached the playground at Wookey Hole school, an
establishment so conservative that the head teacher once gave us a
day's holiday to mark a local landowner's birthday.
Here's what bothered me. The Cubs and Scouts were obviously run by a
strict hierarchy, some of whom - Akela in particular - seemed to have
peculiar names. They seemed a little too keen on uniforms and
tradition, and a Scout's idea of a solid night's entertainment was a
song that started with the words "ging gang gooli", which baffles me
to this very day. As I saw it back then, all this would soon be swept
away by the unstoppable tide of progress: woggles, scarves, ging gang
gooli and all.
Somehow the Scouts survived my childish disfavour and thrived into the
1980s. But they became distinctly unfashionable in the 1990s, when no
parent would dare let children roam free in the woods.
The movement's promise of a rugged outdoor life gradually lost out to
the allure of television and computer games. And in the fevered child
protection atmosphere that was just getting a grip, it also became
more difficult to find adults prepared to work with children and young
people.
Yet numbers have risen again over the past two years - there are
446,000 Scouts in the UK - and there is evidence that Scouting's time
might once again have arrived.
This weekend 40,000 young people from all over the world have been
setting up camp near Chelmsford in Essex for the 21st World Scout
Jamboree, which celebrates Scouting's centenary. Dotted with tents,
the site looks likes the Glastonbury festival in uniform, although
obviously a lot tidier.
It's the first time the event has been held in Britain since 1957, and
it has pitched up here to mark 100 years since Robert Baden-Powell,
founder of the Scouts, first took 21 boys on a modest camping trip to
Brownsea Island, just off the coast of Dorset.
Scouting has changed a lot over the past 100 years, and for the new
modern compassionate multicultural Scouts it's a big week: their best
chance in years to attract a lot of new recruits.
One cause for optimism is the popularity of The Dangerous Book for
Boys, which has sold nearly 1m copies since it was first published
last year with the following message: "In this age of video games and
mobile phones, there must still be a place for knots, tree houses and
stories of incredible courage."
Baden-Powell would have approved. The book not only teaches the five
knots that every boy should know, but gives instructions on building
tree houses, assembling a go-kart, and making a bow and arrow.
"I walk my dogs in woods and parks all the time and this summer I have
seen more tree camps, more bases, more gangs of little boys hiding
away in the woods than I can remember," says Hal Iggulden, co-author
with his brother Conn of The Dangerous Book for Boys.
"The feminist onslaught of the past 30 years was good for women but
bad for us. I think it had an unseen knock-on effect on men and boys,
who became timid. We have a need to do that kind of rough and tumble
stuff."
Iggulden, 35, joined the Scouts after getting into a fight with a
local Scout troop in Ruislip, northwest London.
"They were doing tree surgery," he recalls. "We buzzed them on our
BMXs, and they chased us away. A week later we joined that Scout
troop. I think we were jealous. They were climbing trees, and we
couldn't."
With the Scouts he found he could lead the sort of boisterous life
that was completely out of the question at school.
"We went off into the countryside. It was probably just outside London
but it seemed like the back of nowhere. A farmer turned up on a quad
bike and on the back he had two dead hares, which he'd shot. We got to
hold and look at the rifle.
"We skinned them, which was the first time I'd ever skinned an animal.
We skinned it and we ate it. Just learning those basic things was
good.
"We got to push all our testosterone and aggression into other things.
The night games were probably the greatest thing. They were very
rough.
"We divided into two teams. You had to hide a bright light in the
darkness - which of course you couldn't - and you had to capture the
opposition light. The Scout leaders would be one team, and we would be
the other team. I remember charging in and they would just pick us up
and throw us into thorn bushes. I was straddled across a bush,
screaming. Because to move at all was to make things worse.
"It made me tougher to a large degree. I was very proud when I was in
the Scouts because I was the patrol leader. You almost had a gang that
you could rely on."
And as for the canard that Scouting attracts paedophiles, Iggulden
remembers: "A deacon who was leader for the whole district of London
turned out to live three doors down the road from us. It was the first
time I got to know an older man on equal terms. I could talk to him in
ways I couldn't talk to my parents. He was the most gentle, lovely man
you've ever met."
Scouting's emphasis on individual responsibility and the outdoor life
makes it perfectly poised to take advantage of a backlash against the
nanny state and the culture of overweening health and safety.
Certainly the philosophy of Scouting is being taken seriously at the
top of government for the first time in many years. Gordon Brown has
apparently been impressed by research that shows how group activities
with a clear structure and well-defined aims help children to develop
social and emotional skills. They do even better if members wear a
uniform, which emphasises order and discipline.
Many well known figures learnt helpful skills with the Scouts. "My
Scouting days helped me to cope with adversity," says Sir Richard
Branson. "I've been pulled out of the sea six times by helicopters,
when my balloons and boats either sank or crashed. I once ended up in
the Arctic when it was -60C and had to worry about building an igloo.
I suspect that without my Scouting background it would have been that
much more difficult to survive these adventures."
Former US president Bill Clinton was a Scout. Survival specialist Ray
Mears, it goes without saying, was a Scout. Yet so were Fat Boy Slim
and Jason Donovan. Even Russell Grant and Boy George were Scouts.
"I really loved being a Boy Scout," says the Newsnight presenter
Jeremy Paxman. "I loved the knots, I loved the camping, I loved making
things, I loved getting badges.
"The thing about the Scouts which I thought was so exciting is this
opportunity to do things, to make things, to discover things, to
explore the natural world and the built world with a sense of social
purpose.
"People might say it is a rather old fashioned idiom and I suppose it
is old fashioned. That doesn't mean it's not rather attractive and
rather worthwhile."
The events of the past few days have also shown Scouts at their best.
The 3rd Tewkesbury Scout hut was open at 5.30am at the height of the
flooding in Gloucestershire, ready to provide hot drinks, food and
shelter.
"Scouts have been out in their communities, helping with tasks such as
sandbagging properties and supporting refuge shelters for stranded
residents," says a Scout Association spokesman.
It certainly brings a woggle-sized lump to your throat, but will it be
enough to overcome Scouting's long-term image problem?
It has always struggled with its image. Like vicars, there is
something intrinsically amusing about Scouts. PG Wodehouse certainly
thought so. One of the characters in his first Jeeves and Wooster
novel, written in 1923, is an overzealous Scout called Edwin who
infuriates Bertie Wooster in his drive to do good deeds.
That image certainly put off potential recruits like Ian Hislop,
editor of Private Eye. "I never joined the Scouts," said Hislop after
making a BBC programme on the origins of Scouting. "I think at that
age I was probably too busy making jokes like 'Baden-Powell's scouting
for boys, is he? Naughty old Baden-Powell'.
"But I found, rereading Scouting for Boys, it is an extraordinary
book. It's very radical and it addresses all sort of issues that we
think of as modern: citizenship, what to do with disaffected youth,
social responsibility. I talked to some Scouts and felt mildly
embarrassed that I'd been snotty about it. There were some quite tough
lads saying, 'This is a brilliant thing and it's kept me on the
straight and narrow, and we're very grateful about it'."
To be honest, the founder of the Scout movement has not helped its
image. He was a free thinker: today we might think him an oddball. He
was married late in life, to a much younger woman, and then chose to
sleep out in all weathers on his balcony. Yet back in the early 1900s
he was this country's greatest military hero since the Duke of
Wellington.
He made his name in the Boer war when he successfully defended against
a 217-day siege of the town of Mafeking. His tactics were a
masterpiece of original thinking. To deter the Boers from attacking,
he ordered his men to pretend to set out barbed wire and to pretend to
dig in mines. To add authenticity, he exploded fireworks from time to
time.
Short of manpower, he also recruited a cadet force of teenage boys to
act as messengers and lookouts: an early version of the Scouts.
Baden-Powell returned to England in triumph. Popular songs were
written in his honour and his face peered out from china plates and
cigarette cards. More important, a military training manual he had
written, Aids to Scouting, was a bestseller.
It was the success of this book that encouraged him to gather 20 boys
from different classes and backgrounds on Brownsea Island. He taught
them about animal tracks, first aid, knots, and camping skills. In the
evenings they gathered around a camp fire to hear Baden-Powell talk
about his adventures in the army. The event was a roaring success and
was followed shortly after by the publication of the book that so
tickled Ian Hislop, Scouting for Boys.
Certainly the book is often comic to the modern reader. Here, for
example, is Baden-Powell on the importance of wearing your hat
correctly: "It is said that you can tell a man's character from the
way he wears his hat. If it is slightly on one side, the wearer is
supposed to be good natured. If on the back of his head, he is bad at
paying his debts. If worn straight on the top, he is probably honest
but very dull."
Early Scouts had a lot to remember. While keeping a lookout for badly
worn hats, they were also under instructions to breathe through their
noses, not their mouths, to smile at all times, and never to offer
tips in return for service.
Yet the central core of Scouting for Boys has a surprisingly modern
ring. The importance of equality - especially racial and religious
equality - is written into Scout law. According to the fourth rule of
Scouting: "A Scout is a friend to all, and a brother to every other
Scout, no matter to what country, class or creed the other may
belong."
Baden-Powell was particularly hard on snobbery. "A Scout must never be
a snob," he wrote. "A snob is one who looks down upon another because
he is poorer, or who is poor and resents another man because he is
rich. A Scout accepts the other man as he finds him, and makes the
best of him."
The environment was also important to early Scouts. "As a Scout, you
are the guardian of the woods," says the book. "A Scout never damages
a tree by hacking it with his knife or axe. A Scout cuts down a tree
for a good reason only. For every tree felled, two should be
planted."
The problems Baden-Powell was trying to address have a very
contemporary ring: he worried that the young people of his day were a
wasted generation. He wanted to unite different classes, and to give
young people a purpose.
Unfortunately, his military style did not always find favour. There
was a breakaway Scouting movement in the early 1920s led by a
charismatic pacifist, John Hargrave, who had risen to become the
movement's commissioner for woodcraft and camping and was the Ray
Mears of his day.
Hargrave was a former soldier, but he had become a pacifist after his
experience of the first world war. His new group, the Kindred of the
Kibbo Kift, was created as a peace movement, but later became known as
the Green Shirts - uniformed opposition to the fascist Blackshirts.
Some members of Kibbo Kift found Hargrave too authoritarian and formed
the Woodcraft Folk in 1924. This was Scouting for socialists, and is
still going strong today. Judging by its website, the Woodcraft Folk
is also struggling under something of an image problem. "We do not
under normal circumstances hug trees or craft wood," it says.
Despite these early divisions, Scouting grew into a worldwide
movement, and remains one.
During the Lebanese civil war of the 1980s, Scouts drove ambulances.
They are now helping to rebuild the country after last year's war
between Hezbollah and Israel. Scouts in Madagascar are doing their
best to raise awareness of Aids, while in the troubled African states
of Congo and Rwanda Scouts have been trained as community mediators.
This week's jamboree in Essex is the United Nations general assembly
of the Scouting world, where Israeli Scouts set up camp next to
Lebanese Scouts, and Greek Cypriots pitch their tents alongside
Turkish Cypriots.
Today's campers will spend their time doing the usual Scout things:
canoeing, building rafts, climbing, doing good deeds, and being
prepared. In keeping with modern times, they will also be learning how
to reduce their carbon footprint.
But perhaps the highlight of the 10 days will be a ceremony at sunrise
on Wednesday morning at which the campers will renew their Scouting
promise. Holding up their hands in the traditional three-fin-gered
salute, they will pipe up together in clear confident voices: "On my
honour, I promise that I will do my best to do my duty to God and the
Queen, to help other people and to keep the Scout law."
At least, that's what most of them will say. If they are Muslim or
Hindu they can now pledge themselves to Allah and Dharma. Scouts from
republics will promise to do their best for their countries. These
days you can even be an atheist Scout, promising to live life in "good
moral standing".
As you might expect from an organisation whose motto is Be Prepared,
the Scouts and Guides have been modernising ruthlessly to be ready for
their moment. Just last week the Guides set out the skills needed by a
modern young woman.
No longer need they bother with lighting fires, making jam and keeping
a scrapbook about a former colony. Instead the modern Brownie (aged
7-10) should be able to name the prime minister, swim 100 metres, care
for a pet, and surf the web safely.
Meanwhile, Senior Guides should know how to manage their money,
produce a "first-rate" CV, assemble flat-pack furniture, practise safe
sex, and perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (very possibly after
safe sex). The only hint of the old fashioned Guide movement were the
words "first rate".
Life isn't always so serious, though. My neighbour, who is a district
commissioner for Explorer Scouts, has been involved in Scouting for
the past 43 years. "I dated a Cub mistress for 18 months," he tells me
wistfully. "I found the women involved in Cubs and Scouts had a lot
more about them than anybody I met in nightclubs."
He will never speak a truer word. As for that stark choice I was
forced to make at the age of nine, I should have gone with my friend
to the Cubs - because I never saw that girl's knickers. To my secret
relief, she decided to show them to somebody else instead.
A movement born out of British grit against 'the crafty Afghan'
The very name "scout" carries with it, even among civilians, a
romantic idea of a man of exceptional courage and resource, while
among soldiers the title is so much sought after that small bodies of
mounted Volunteers and companies of Light Infantry skirmishers have
within recent years demanded to be called "scouts". A scout is,
nevertheless, a special man, selected for his "grit", and trained for
one class of work only, and that is reconnaissance. His work is not
fighting, but getting information about the country and the enemy.
The British scout has, too, to be good beyond all nationalities in
every branch of his art, because he is called upon to act not only
against civilised enemies in civilised countries, like France and
Germany, but he has to take on the crafty Afghan in the mountains, or
the fierce Zulu in the open South African downs, the Burmese in his
forests, the Soudanese on the Egyptian desert - all requiring
different methods of working, but their efficiency depending in every
case on the same factor, the pluck and ability of the scout
himself . . .
Many people will tell you that pluck is not a thing that can be taught
a man; it is either born in him or he has not got it at all. But I
think that, like many other things, it is almost always in a man,
though it wants developing and bringing out. The pluck required of a
scout is of a very high order. A man who takes part in a Balaclava
Charge is talked of as a hero, but he goes in with his comrades all
around him and officers directing; he cannot well turn back.
How much higher then is the pluck of a single scout who goes on some
risky enterprise, alone, on his own account, taking his life in his
hands, when it is quite possible for him to turn back without anyone
being the wiser.
