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At the beginning of the Edwardian era, boys of Britain were in danger. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:12 | |
Unhealthy, unmotivated and under bad influences. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:19 | |
They were in trouble and needed help. | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
Many feared that if they didn't get it, the nation's morality would be fatally undermined | 0:00:22 | 0:00:28 | |
and the Empire would rapidly decline and fall. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:31 | |
Salvation came in the unlikely shape of a book. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:38 | |
It was written by a war hero but was a manual for peace. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:45 | |
It aimed to mould men but celebrated being a boy. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
It influenced the lives of millions, and it introduced a code of common values around the globe. | 0:00:54 | 0:01:00 | |
Its name was Scouting For Boys. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:09 | |
The Scouts are a British institution, | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
so much part of the national consciousness that we imagine they've been going forever. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:32 | |
But actually, scouting didn't win over the nation's affections gradually. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:38 | |
It was an overnight sensation. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:41 | |
It all began in 1908 with a best-selling handbook. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:46 | |
In the 20th century, only the Bible, the Koran | 0:01:47 | 0:01:51 | |
and the thoughts of Chairman Mao sold more copies than Scouting for Boys. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:56 | |
How to make buttons out of bootlaces. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:02 | |
How to fly Britain's flag. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
The boy who apes the man by smoking will never be much good. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:12 | |
The book is definitely not the expression of a systematic ideology. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:21 | |
Instead, it is a ragbag of disparate ideas | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
held together only by the personality and experiences of one man, | 0:02:24 | 0:02:29 | |
scouting's maverick founder and Boar War hero, Robert Baden Powell. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:35 | |
He is pro British Empire but anti men with waxed moustaches. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
And he's completely obsessed by boots. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
It's surprising how much meaning you can read from the boot. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:51 | |
To wear your heels down on the outside, means that you're a man of imagination and lover of adventure. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:58 | |
But heels worn down on the inside signify weakness and indecision of character. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:03 | |
He may have had some peculiar ideas, but Baden Powell was also very charismatic. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:13 | |
Hello, you boy in the corner there, you ought to be a boy scout. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:17 | |
You're a fine looking fellow and I know you'd make a jolly good backwoodsman, by the look of you. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:23 | |
You're ugly enough, anyway. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
Actually, I was never in the Boy Scouts. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:28 | |
I think at that age I was probably too busy making jokes about Baden Powell's Scouting for Boys...is he? | 0:03:28 | 0:03:35 | |
Naughty old Baden Powell! Not realising that wasn't a very new joke, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:39 | |
and that it's always been easy to laugh at Baden Powell and at the Scouts, | 0:03:39 | 0:03:43 | |
and it's become something of a national tradition to do exactly that. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
But I found re-reading Scouting For Boys, it is an extraordinary book. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:52 | |
It's very radical and it addresses all sorts of issues that we think | 0:03:52 | 0:03:56 | |
of as modern - citizenship, what to do with disaffected youth, social responsibility. | 0:03:56 | 0:04:03 | |
But it's very eccentric, very Edwardian and very English, | 0:04:03 | 0:04:07 | |
and that's what appealed then, and that's what appeals to me now. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:12 | |
To try and get the measure of the man behind the movement, I'm off to see the current Lord Baden Powell. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:21 | |
-Hello. -Hello, how nice to see you. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
Do come in. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:25 | |
-Here it comes. -Very old fashioned, isn't it? | 0:04:28 | 0:04:31 | |
What's he doing? | 0:04:34 | 0:04:36 | |
He's doing his daily exercises. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:39 | |
I mean, there's no question he was quite a nutcase, really in some ways! | 0:04:40 | 0:04:46 | |
Throughout his life he'd always got | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
this thing he'd got to keep himself up to scratch, as he called it. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:53 | |
And he was quite preoccupied by personal health all the time. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:57 | |
And you knew him? | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
Well, yes. I was a very little boy. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:02 | |
-Is that you? -That's me at the age of four. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
When my mother was having her second child I was shovelled off to Kenya and I spend three months with them. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:10 | |
All I remember is, like a lot of children, | 0:05:10 | 0:05:14 | |
I was like a rattling cage, I was always asking questions and it was "shut up, shut up, go and play." | 0:05:14 | 0:05:20 | |
But for the first time in my life somebody said, "Oh yes, I'll explain that to you" | 0:05:20 | 0:05:25 | |
and I do remember this incredible interest in little boys, | 0:05:25 | 0:05:30 | |
and I mean that in the nicest way. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
-Yes, well, it's almost impossible to say it now. -Absolutely. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:37 | |
He could mentally bring himself down to their level and explain things to them in words of one syllable. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:42 | |
Simple as that, really. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
The first step towards success in training your boy is to know something about boys in general. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:54 | |
It is well to recall so far as possible what your ideas were when a boy yourself. | 0:05:54 | 0:06:00 | |
Robert Baden Powell was born in 1857, | 0:06:03 | 0:06:05 | |
the son of a professor of geometry at Oxford University and the eighth in a family of 10 children. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:12 | |
The kind of person who was going to invent the Boy Scout which was a very odd institution, I think | 0:06:14 | 0:06:20 | |
is the sort of boy who would have been thrown on his own resources | 0:06:20 | 0:06:26 | |
in a way at an early age. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
Baden Powell, when he was only three, lost his father. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:32 | |
And he became obsessed with the idea of what was said that fathers say to boys that makes them manly later on. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:40 | |
His widowed mother was, however, pushy enough to get him the best available training as a man. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:47 | |
He was accepted on a scholarship to one of England's leading public schools, Charterhouse. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:57 | |
Life here offered Baden Powell a wealth of new experiences. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
Most of them, however, well away from the classroom. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:08 | |
Outside the school walls was the copse. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:15 | |
It was here I used to imagine myself a backwoodsman trapper and scout. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:22 | |
I used to creep about warily looking for signs | 0:07:22 | 0:07:26 | |
and getting close-up observation of rabbits, squirrels, rats and birds. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:32 | |
At Charterhouse, Baden Powell also witnessed a well-established scheme | 0:07:36 | 0:07:41 | |
for turning feckless boys into responsible men. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
Baden Powell was influenced by the prefect system here, but it's not called prefects, is it? | 0:07:48 | 0:07:53 | |
-It's a monitorial system. -A monitorial system, right. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:55 | |
So tell me, what is your role? What do you do? | 0:07:55 | 0:07:59 | |
It is our duty to almost act as quasi teachers | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
when teachers are not there. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
So it's our job to look after children | 0:08:04 | 0:08:06 | |
and make sure that they are feeling comfortable within the school. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
We don't look at ourselves as policemen, we look at ourselves as carers. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:13 | |
Oh right, that sounds a very thought-through line. Have you said it before? | 0:08:13 | 0:08:18 | |
I've never said that before, no. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:20 | |
In the Scouts, Baden Powell would transform prefects into patrol leaders. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:27 | |
Give full responsibility | 0:08:29 | 0:08:31 | |
and show full confidence in your patrol leaders. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:36 | |
Expect a great deal from them, and you'll get it. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:40 | |
The whole ulterior object of the scheme is to form character in the boys. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:46 | |
To make the manly, | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
good citizens. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:50 | |
Baden Powell would devise other ways to introduce the public school ethos into the Scouts. | 0:08:54 | 0:09:00 | |
England's young gentlemen had long been taught that good sportsmanship was not just for the playing field. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:08 | |
It was an attitude for the whole of life. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:11 | |
This sentiment was expressed in a popular poem, Vitae Lampada by Henry Newbolt. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:18 | |
Scouting for Boys gives instructions for acting it out in a show. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:24 | |
The sand of the desert is sodden red. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
Red with the wreck of the square that's broke. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
The gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead, and the regiment blind with dust and smoke. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:44 | |
The river of death has brimmed its banks and England's fire and honour remain. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:51 | |
The voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
Play up, play up, and play the game! | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
It's the ultimate Victorian public school poem - the equation of playing field and battlefield. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:10 | |
The Empire as a great game. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:12 | |
All wrapped up in as sentimental hymn to decent, understated patriotism. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:17 | |
It is ridiculous, of course. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:19 | |
But hugely effective. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:21 | |
Baden Powell wanted to use it to inspire boys of every class. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:25 | |
Many Edwardians assumed public school values were the privilege of public schoolboys. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:35 | |
But Baden Powell was more ambitious. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
Baden Powell wanted scouting to cross to traditional class divides, | 0:10:39 | 0:10:44 | |
which he called artificial, anyway. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:46 | |
His vision was not just for boys from the cloister, but boys from the inner-cities. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:53 | |
The fourth Scout law states that "a scout is a friend to all" | 0:10:53 | 0:10:56 | |
and underneath that it says, in big letters, "a scout must never be a snob". | 0:10:56 | 0:11:01 | |
For a man of his class, Baden Powell's insistence that all scouts | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
were equal may have been surprising, but it was genuine. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:12 | |
At this time, cricketers at Lords went in through different entrances - | 0:11:12 | 0:11:17 | |
players and gentlemen. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:19 | |
And " It's not cricket" is a phrase that denotes everything | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
that we like to think of as British fairness but, society in Edwardian England was anything but fair. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:28 | |
And he had a pretty good gut feeling that that was so. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:32 | |
At the same time he was frightened by the Labour Party. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
So he had these two sort of almost schizophrenic, opposite ideas to motivate him. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:44 | |
We are all socialists, in that we want to see the abolition of the existing brutal anachronism of war | 0:11:46 | 0:11:52 | |
and of extreme poverty and misery shivering alongside superabundant wealth, and so on, | 0:11:52 | 0:11:59 | |
but we do not quite agree as to how it is to be brought about. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:04 | |
Baden Powell was very worried by what he called | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
professional agitators, going round, stirring up trouble. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
He writes, "there are a lot of men howling about their rights, | 0:12:11 | 0:12:16 | |
who have never done anything to earn their rights. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:18 | |
Do your duty first, and you will get your rights afterwards. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
I was once accused of mistrusting men with waxed moustaches. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:30 | |
Well, so, to a certain extent, I do. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
It often means vanity, and sometimes drink. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:37 | |
But why should anyone listen to the thoughts of Baden Powell? | 0:12:42 | 0:12:46 | |
Well, because he was the most famous man in Britain. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
This is just the tip of the iceberg of all the merchandise devoted to celebrating Baden Powell. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:55 | |
It is all here - there is the Baden Powell alarm clock, Baden Powell shaving mirror, | 0:12:55 | 0:13:01 | |
Baden Powell spoons , | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
Baden Powell egg cup. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:06 | |
There is an ostrich egg, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:08 | |
painted with the face of Baden Powell. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
The Baden Powell's cigars. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
He would have hated that, because he hated smoking. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:16 | |
And it wasn't just artefacts - there was music to accompany them. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:20 | |
Here we have the Baden Powell March - "a patriotic song for Our Hero, BP." | 0:13:20 | 0:13:26 | |
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, whizz-bang, whizz-bang. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
Lots of rhyming of the word "fought" with "jolly good sort". | 0:13:29 | 0:13:32 | |
Why was he so ridiculously famous? | 0:13:32 | 0:13:36 | |
Well, he was the heroic defender of Mafeking, | 0:13:36 | 0:13:40 | |
a small town in South Africa. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
# Hurrah, oh be free for who they have fought | 0:13:43 | 0:13:48 | |
# Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
# He's just the right sort | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
# Our hero, BP | 0:13:55 | 0:13:57 | |
# Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! # | 0:13:57 | 0:14:01 | |
Baden Powell was the surprised recipient of national fame and military glory. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:06 | |
After school, he joined the Army and for over 20 years served diligently, right across the empire. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:14 | |
He was never a standard-issue military man. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
Instead he was fascinated by a form of reconnaissance work, known as scouting. | 0:14:22 | 0:14:27 | |
The covert scrutiny of an area, to gather information. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
It needed initiative, observation skills, and self-reliance, | 0:14:32 | 0:14:36 | |
and Baden Powell excelled at all of them. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:40 | |
He gained a reputation as a bit of a maverick. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:43 | |
But became one of the army's youngest colonels. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:47 | |
In 1899, the Boer war broke out. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:54 | |
Baden Powell was sent to South Africa, | 0:14:54 | 0:14:57 | |
under orders to engage the enemy in the north of the region, with the help of local recruits. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:03 | |
It soon became clear that the advancing Boers had superior manpower, | 0:15:03 | 0:15:07 | |
so Baden Powell decided to hold out in the town of Mafeking. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
Even 70 years later, Baden Powell's exploits at Mafeking can inspire small boys. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:19 | |
Including me - I wrote a project about the Boer War when I was 11. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:24 | |
I wrote, "Baden Powell, though remembered for the Boy Scouts, | 0:15:24 | 0:15:27 | |
"is hardly ever given credit for his defence of Mafeking." | 0:15:27 | 0:15:29 | |
Not strictly true. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:31 | |
But controversial openings are very important in histories. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:35 | |
"He got the men to obey him to the letter, and they succeeded, doing as they were told. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:39 | |
"He baffled the enemy with bluff and tactics." | 0:15:39 | 0:15:42 | |
And here he is. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:45 | |
About to do it. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:49 | |
Right from the outset, Baden Powell was heavily outnumbered. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
There were about 2,000 armed men in Mafeking. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
1,100 of them white, the rest, native. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
Only about a quarter of all of them had any sort of military training. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
These lot were facing 6,000 Boers. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:14 | |
This was no ordinary engagement. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
And it tested Baden Powell as a leader and as a strategist. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:23 | |
It also crystallised the ideas that would later form the core of Scouting for Boys. | 0:16:25 | 0:16:31 | |
Baden Powell was assisted in his defence of the town by an unlikely force, a group of boys, | 0:16:34 | 0:16:40 | |
gathered together before the siege started. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
They became a sort of unofficial cadet corps. | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
They performed a vital role, taking messages between the various defenders. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:52 | |
Often on bicycles and under fire. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
In later life Baden Powell would recount the stirring story | 0:16:56 | 0:17:00 | |
of the cadets at Mafeking to inspire English boys. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
I said to one of these boys on one occasion, | 0:17:05 | 0:17:08 | |
"You will get hit one of these days riding about like that when shells are flying." | 0:17:08 | 0:17:13 | |
And he replied, "I pedal so quick, sir, they'd never catch me." | 0:17:15 | 0:17:18 | |
Could any of you do that? | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
Much of Baden Powell's subsequent reputation | 0:17:33 | 0:17:36 | |
was based not on his complex military strategies, but on his use of tricks and ruses, | 0:17:36 | 0:17:41 | |
to try and fool the Boers into thinking the British were better equipped than they were. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:45 | |
They didn't have any mines, but Baden Powell got these men | 0:17:45 | 0:17:49 | |
to walk out beyond the perimeter carrying big black boxes. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
Then to bury them deep in the sand at intervals. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:56 | |
Then, later on, he let off a stick of dynamite in the same area, | 0:17:56 | 0:17:59 | |
and the Boers were convinced they were laying a minefield. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:03 | |
Another of his tricks was to stake out all these posts along the front, | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
and then to have men moving between them as if they were laying barbed wire. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
They weren't, because they didn't have any barbed wire. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
But the Boers couldn't see that, and so, they believed that the whole of this front was fortified. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:19 | |
Again, it was slightly bonkers but a brilliantly effective ruse. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:24 | |
Despite such daring innovations, Baden Powell's problems magnified. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:32 | |
The town was shelled. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
Many were injured or died. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
Horses were killed for meat, | 0:18:37 | 0:18:41 | |
and food was heavily rationed. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:43 | |
Yet convinced he must lead by example, Baden Powell's positive attitude remained unshaken. | 0:18:43 | 0:18:51 | |
People expect you to be able to give them an idea of how long the food's going to hold out. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:58 | |
And you have to, effectively, pretend to be omniscient. | 0:18:58 | 0:19:01 | |
You have to be ultra-calm. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:03 | |
And Baden Powell had been a very successful amateur actor and he knew what was required. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:09 | |
He could act really cool. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:12 | |
The siege lasted 216 days but, throughout it, | 0:19:12 | 0:19:17 | |
Baden Powell's performance - because, in a sense, that's what it was - was extraordinary. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:22 | |
He managed to maintain not only a stiff upper lip but a smile, as well. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
When he wasn't pulling stunts against the Boers, | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
he was putting on plays in the town or staging games, | 0:19:30 | 0:19:34 | |
and when the public at home heard of his exploits, they glowed with pride. This was true British grit. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:41 | |
# Bravos for BP | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
# Ring, ring the bells, ring | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
# Bravos, bravos, bravos | 0:19:46 | 0:19:50 | |
# For Mafeking's king | 0:19:50 | 0:19:52 | |
# Our hero... # | 0:19:52 | 0:19:54 | |
When Mafeking was finally relieved in May 1901, the nation erupted with joy. | 0:19:54 | 0:20:00 | |
Baden Powell was proclaimed a national hero. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:03 | |
# ..To die for our duty | 0:20:03 | 0:20:06 | |
# And we'll never give in | 0:20:09 | 0:20:11 | |
# Said BP! # | 0:20:11 | 0:20:13 | |
The British may have been the ultimate victors, but the Boer War left the nation badly shaken. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:23 | |
Mafeking was one redeeming highlight in an otherwise undistinguished colonial war. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:29 | |
One of the reasons the British army performed so badly was that, compared to the Boers, | 0:20:29 | 0:20:34 | |
the healthy outdoor farmers-turned-soldiers, | 0:20:34 | 0:20:38 | |
the British troops had been weak and sickly. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:41 | |
The director general of the War Office had even issued a memo warning that between 40% - 60% | 0:20:41 | 0:20:46 | |
of the men trying to enlist, had been declared unfit for service. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
The Edwardian establishment was terrified that, after a century of rapid industrialisation, | 0:20:53 | 0:20:59 | |
Western society might be, in their words, "degenerating". | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
A deeply influential book at the time was Max Nordau's Degeneration, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:12 | |
which saw, in modern urban culture, | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
a kind of frantic pace that he believed would lead to the decline of the West. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:23 | |
The dead, carried off by heart and nerve diseases, are the victims of civilisation, | 0:21:23 | 0:21:30 | |
the consequences of states of fatigue and exhaustion, | 0:21:30 | 0:21:34 | |
of the vertigo and whirl of our frenzied life. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:38 | |
The Victorian factories had made the nation wealthy, | 0:21:40 | 0:21:44 | |
but they had also manufactured a urban underclass. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:48 | |
Undernourished and underexercised, their offspring were now the Edwardians' problem. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:54 | |
Some thinkers suggested that degeneracy was hereditary, | 0:21:54 | 0:21:57 | |
and should be eradicated by enforced sterilisation. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:02 | |
But Baden Powell was no pessimist. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
And he was not prepared to write off the nation's youth. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
When somebody's a great national hero, they're a great national hero to boys, | 0:22:09 | 0:22:14 | |
and quite spontaneously, little boys' groups, | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
they might be choirs, they might be little local clubs, | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
who had asked him to be their patron, he sent them advice. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
When ordinary people began to buy a book he'd written called "Aids to Scouting" | 0:22:24 | 0:22:29 | |
he realised that, although they were originally designed for soldiers, | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
the same techniques could work for civilian boys. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:37 | |
Scouting is a character-building exercise. | 0:22:37 | 0:22:41 | |
It teaches self-discipline, | 0:22:41 | 0:22:44 | |
observation, inquisitiveness, these are all, to Baden Powell, good qualities. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:50 | |
Baden Powell agreed to use Aids to Scouting as the basis for a new work, | 0:22:51 | 0:22:57 | |
which would promote the health and well-being of British youth. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:01 | |
The Edwardians were the first generation to go football-crazy. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
But then, as now, not everybody approved. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:12 | |
The idea of being a fan, of spectating | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
rather than participating, did not appeal to Baden Powell. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:20 | |
He believed in a healthy mind in a healthy body. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:22 | |
Mens sano in corpore sano. | 0:23:22 | 0:23:24 | |
That was the real goal for a boy. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
My heart sickens at thousands of boys and young men, | 0:23:30 | 0:23:35 | |
pale and narrow-chested, hunched up miserable specimens, | 0:23:35 | 0:23:40 | |
smoking endless cigarettes, numbers of them betting. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:45 | |
All of them learning to be hysterical, as they groan or cheer in panic unison with their neighbours. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:52 | |
For Baden Powell, physical and moral health went hand in hand. | 0:23:56 | 0:24:01 | |
And when the men of Britain were strong, so was the country itself. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:07 | |
No body part was neglected in the quest for national vitality. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:15 | |
To be healthy and strong, | 0:24:18 | 0:24:20 | |
you must keep your blood healthy and clean inside you. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:25 | |
This is done by breathing in lots of pure, fresh air | 0:24:25 | 0:24:30 | |
and by clearing out all dirty matter from inside your stomach. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:35 | |
Which is done by having a rear, daily, without fail. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:39 | |
If there is any difficulty about it one day, drink plenty of good water | 0:24:41 | 0:24:47 | |
and practice body twisting exercises. And all should be well. | 0:24:47 | 0:24:52 | |
What struck me, editing the book, | 0:24:56 | 0:25:00 | |
was the number of times Baden Powell talks about orifices. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:06 | |
Mouths, anuses, | 0:25:06 | 0:25:08 | |
eyes, ears, all the openings of the body. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:11 | |
It seems to me that this reflects Baden Powell's concern with national self-defence, | 0:25:11 | 0:25:19 | |
with the keeping the body of the nation disciplined and controlled. | 0:25:19 | 0:25:25 | |
Not allowing any inroads to disease and infection. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
Unlike traditional educationalists, Baden Powell believed it was in the national interest | 0:25:31 | 0:25:36 | |
for boys to show initiative. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
And he charged each scout with doing a good turn every day. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:43 | |
Do you need a hand with that box? | 0:25:47 | 0:25:51 | |
There we go. | 0:25:55 | 0:25:57 | |
Good morning. Would you like some help crossing the road? | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
'Despite his best efforts, many of the issues a century ago are still high on the social agenda today.' | 0:26:02 | 0:26:09 | |
I'm going to see David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, in London, | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
Minister for Culture, and more importantly, | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
former cub scout, to discuss Baden Powell's influence on New Labour. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:26 | |
At what age did they get you? | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
-Oh God! Seven? -Seven. Right. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:32 | |
And you, All joking apart, | 0:26:32 | 0:26:34 | |
a pretty formative four years at that time? | 0:26:34 | 0:26:38 | |
Oh yeah. I remember... | 0:26:38 | 0:26:41 | |
a particular week in which the whole purpose | 0:26:41 | 0:26:46 | |
was to knock on people's doors, to say, "Can we wash your car?" | 0:26:46 | 0:26:51 | |
in a Cubs' uniform. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:53 | |
You would get money... | 0:26:53 | 0:26:54 | |
It was Bob-A-Job Week. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
You would get money for doing that. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
But it was also, this was bringing you into contact with the neighbourhood. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:05 | |
It was that, or Knock Down Ginger - knock the door up and run away. | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
But this time you knocked on the door, you got some money and you did something useful. It's a great thing. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:14 | |
The subtitle for Scouting for Boys, is actually "a handbook for instruction in good citizenship". | 0:27:14 | 0:27:21 | |
He says "Indifferent citizenship is and always has been the progeny of indifferent government." | 0:27:21 | 0:27:27 | |
Yeah... I... | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
I suspect what Baden Powell would say is that citizenship | 0:27:33 | 0:27:38 | |
is not just something that is kind of learned in the classroom. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
It is something about being a citizen and learning that, | 0:27:44 | 0:27:48 | |
with a group of other people, and with a wider community. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:53 | |
At one point, he's talking about socialism. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:57 | |
I hope he's nice about socialism... | 0:27:58 | 0:28:00 | |
Well, he claims to be a socialist at one point, which, again, I think would surprise a lot of people. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:06 | |
He is less the sort of Tory... | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
hate-figure that people imagined. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:12 | |
What Baden Powell was keen on was community. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:15 | |
I suspect that he had a kind of Gordon Brown sense of prudence | 0:28:15 | 0:28:21 | |
and hard work... | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
Oh yes! It's all in there. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:26 | |
And of thrift, and of duty. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
So there's a lot there for Labour folk, but there's a lot there, also, | 0:28:28 | 0:28:34 | |
for the kind of One-Nation Tory. | 0:28:34 | 0:28:36 | |
But, are the virtues Baden Powell encouraged in Scouts really as highly valued today? | 0:28:36 | 0:28:43 | |
Baden Powell writes about boys sort of loafing around on street corners, smoking, doing nothing. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:50 | |
He said he wanted to teach them something useful. Do you do first aid? | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
Yeah, on a number of camps, everyone has to know a certain amount of first aid, on camp. | 0:28:54 | 0:29:00 | |
In here, he describes an incident. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:02 | |
A woman was drowning in a pond and there were five useless boys on the side, | 0:29:02 | 0:29:07 | |
who didn't save her, because they couldn't swim, and couldn't do first aid. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
-That wouldn't be you, would it? -I've been trained in first aid, to a fairly moderate level, | 0:29:11 | 0:29:16 | |
but we're given the skills so that we know what to do... | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
Right, if I had a heart attack now, could one of you save my life? | 0:29:19 | 0:29:23 | |
-Probably. -I'm hoping. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:26 | |
By 1906, Baden-Powell was convinced that his scheme could turn dissolute boys into decent citizens. | 0:29:30 | 0:29:37 | |
And he began to write a version of what would become Scouting For Boys. | 0:29:37 | 0:29:41 | |
But it took the help of a hard-nosed salesman to galvanise him | 0:29:42 | 0:29:46 | |
and turn his modest proposal into a national sensation. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:50 | |
Arthur Pearson was proprietor of the Daily Express, and a media magnate of his day. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:56 | |
Baden-Powell, who had a suspicion of business people, | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
also knew how the world worked, that he needed a man like Pearson. | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
He didn't want to need him. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:05 | |
In fact, he hated the idea of it, but without him, it couldn't happen. | 0:30:05 | 0:30:10 | |
By summer 1907, Baden-Powell had completed a first draft. | 0:30:12 | 0:30:18 | |
He was now ready to put his theories into practice. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:23 | |
He invited 20 boys for a camping holiday off the coast of Dorset, | 0:30:28 | 0:30:32 | |
on Brownsea Island. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:35 | |
Some came from public schools, others, already working, were from local church boys' clubs. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:43 | |
But for all of them, it was a unique opportunity. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:53 | |
For Edwardian boys, the idea of camping on a small island | 0:30:56 | 0:31:00 | |
conjured up images of exoticism and intrigue. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
They were following in the footsteps of Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:07 | |
And Baden-Powell wanted to reinforce this idea of being cut off from civilisation | 0:31:07 | 0:31:12 | |
and forced to depend on their own resources. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:14 | |
So he didn't have them camp here, within sight of Poole, | 0:31:14 | 0:31:18 | |
but he had them camp a mile away, on the wildest, furthest side of the island. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:24 | |
The native boys of the Zulu and Zwazi tribes | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
learned to be scouts before they're allowed to be considered men. | 0:31:33 | 0:31:37 | |
When a boy is about 15 or 16, he is taken by the men of his village, | 0:31:37 | 0:31:42 | |
stripped of all his clothes... | 0:31:42 | 0:31:45 | |
and painted white from head to foot. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:48 | |
He is given a shield and small spear, | 0:31:48 | 0:31:51 | |
and he is turned out of the village | 0:31:51 | 0:31:53 | |
and told that he will be killed if anyone catches him | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
while he is still painted white. | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
Many Edwardians had only a superior curiosity about other races, but some, like Baden-Powell, | 0:32:02 | 0:32:09 | |
had a genuine admiration for those they ruled. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:13 | |
Within British imperial law, | 0:32:13 | 0:32:15 | |
there was a social, Darwinist ranking of the nations, | 0:32:15 | 0:32:20 | |
in which, of course, British were at the top, | 0:32:20 | 0:32:25 | |
but they were recognised to be a certain noble tribe's noble peoples | 0:32:25 | 0:32:29 | |
who distinguished themselves by their muscle on the battlefield. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
Despite his admiration for some African traditions, | 0:32:37 | 0:32:40 | |
Baden-Powell thought better of sending British boys naked into the Dorset woods. | 0:32:40 | 0:32:46 | |
Instead, he'd arranged for basic amenities to be provided on a small campsite. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:51 | |
The trip was covered by a lot of the local newspapers | 0:32:53 | 0:32:56 | |
and, clearly, their editors were thrilled to have a national hero operating on their patch. | 0:32:56 | 0:33:01 | |
This is the Bournemouth Guardian. | 0:33:01 | 0:33:03 | |
It explains how the camp was set up, and then says, | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
"The boys are to learn how the experienced scout can find life wherever he may find himself, | 0:33:06 | 0:33:11 | |
"to taste the delights of wild adventure and to track Red Indians." | 0:33:11 | 0:33:17 | |
This being Dorset, there weren't any red Indians, but there were pheasants. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:22 | |
The idea was the boys had to track the pheasants, | 0:33:22 | 0:33:25 | |
get close enough to them, not to kill them, but to photograph them, then report back to camp. | 0:33:25 | 0:33:30 | |
And this was a classic Baden-Powell technique - | 0:33:30 | 0:33:33 | |
to relocate the thrills of the Wild West in the South West. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:37 | |
This is a set of extraordinary photographs, taken on that first camp in 1907, | 0:33:47 | 0:33:54 | |
and it shows the boys literally here, | 0:33:54 | 0:33:56 | |
taking part in the various exercises that Baden-Powell had dreamt up. | 0:33:56 | 0:34:00 | |
Now, that looks like a game boys would enjoy. | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
Jump head first out of a tree and see if anyone catches you. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:09 | |
That does look fun! | 0:34:09 | 0:34:11 | |
This is a manly game. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:16 | |
This one's called The Struggle. | 0:34:16 | 0:34:17 | |
It does look quite peculiar, but it's basically people pushing their chests against each other. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:23 | |
It's meant to get the heart pounding, according to Baden-Powell. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:27 | |
First aid. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:30 | |
This one is called Dragging An Insensible Man, | 0:34:30 | 0:34:34 | |
but in this case it's a boy sitting up and laughing, which ruins it. | 0:34:34 | 0:34:38 | |
They're clearly enjoying being outdoors, | 0:34:38 | 0:34:42 | |
playing games, dangerous games, and learning practical skills. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:47 | |
When they were camping, Baden-Powell needed to collect the boys together, | 0:34:50 | 0:34:54 | |
so what did he use? A whistle? | 0:34:54 | 0:34:56 | |
No, he used this, which is a kudu horn, | 0:34:56 | 0:35:00 | |
made from antelope, which he picked up when he was a soldier in the Matabele Campaign, in 1896. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:07 | |
The Ndebele people use it for generating fearsome war cries, | 0:35:07 | 0:35:11 | |
but it's very good for collecting together small boys. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
LONG, DEEP NOTE | 0:35:14 | 0:35:16 | |
THEY SPEAK ZULU IN UNISON | 0:35:21 | 0:35:26 | |
At night, Baden-Powell taught the boys Zulu war chants | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
and enthralled them with tales of his overseas adventures. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:39 | |
Once, I went butterfly-hunting in Dalmatia. | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
Batteries had been built upon these mountain tops and it was my business | 0:35:42 | 0:35:46 | |
to investigate their positions, strength and armaments. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:50 | |
I took a sketch book, a colour box and a butterfly net in my hand, | 0:35:50 | 0:35:56 | |
and I was above all suspicion to anyone who met me. | 0:35:56 | 0:36:01 | |
They did not look sufficiently closely into the sketches of butterflies | 0:36:01 | 0:36:06 | |
to notice that the delicately drawn veins of the wings | 0:36:06 | 0:36:09 | |
were exact representations in plan of their own fort. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:14 | |
In Scouting For Boys, Baden-Powell concludes a letter | 0:36:18 | 0:36:21 | |
that one of the boys had written to him after the camp. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:24 | |
"The most important thing that a great many boys need to learn is to look at the bright side of things | 0:36:24 | 0:36:30 | |
"and to take everything by the smooth handle. I, myself, | 0:36:30 | 0:36:33 | |
"found that a great lesson. I shall never find words enough to thank you for teaching me it." | 0:36:33 | 0:36:38 | |
And that ethic of keep smiling through became a cornerstone of scouting. | 0:36:38 | 0:36:44 | |
Invigorated by the success of Brownsea, | 0:36:48 | 0:36:50 | |
Baden-Powell returned to civilisation and to completing Scouting For Boys. | 0:36:50 | 0:36:56 | |
His original manuscript is now kept here, at the Scout Association's headquarters | 0:37:00 | 0:37:05 | |
at Gilwell Park, in Essex. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
So this is it? The book that launched the entire movement? | 0:37:11 | 0:37:15 | |
The manuscript for the book that launched... | 0:37:15 | 0:37:18 | |
There it is, handwritten. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:21 | |
I must say, I thought it would be more organised than this. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:26 | |
I thought Baden-Powell would have taken his motto, and been more prepared. | 0:37:26 | 0:37:30 | |
I get the impression that he was just jotting down things as they came to him. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:35 | |
I don't think he actually sat down and mapped out | 0:37:35 | 0:37:39 | |
what he was going to do before he put pen to paper. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:43 | |
These are the chapter headings here, and it says, "Chapter 3 - | 0:37:43 | 0:37:46 | |
"campaigning, camp life, resourcefulness, colonial life etc." | 0:37:46 | 0:37:51 | |
Not terribly linked, are they? | 0:37:51 | 0:37:53 | |
-I mean, it is more or less, will there be a bit of this and a bit of that? -Yes, | 0:37:53 | 0:37:57 | |
and, to some extent, that helps the readability of the book. The boys could dip in and dip out of it... | 0:37:57 | 0:38:03 | |
Yes. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:04 | |
..as they fancied. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:06 | |
This is a bit he's just torn out. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:08 | |
Think he's borrowed a bit of President Roosevelt's speech. | 0:38:08 | 0:38:13 | |
It's about the qualities of good soldier. Baden-Powell's crossed out "soldier" and written "Scout". | 0:38:13 | 0:38:18 | |
It's a very wide selection of material that he's read from, and cross-referenced into this book. | 0:38:18 | 0:38:24 | |
There's even Greek philosophers he's quoting. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
He's quoting American pioneers. He's lifting chunks from Kipling. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
Here we are, we've got knots. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:33 | |
"To tie a knot seems to be a simple thing, and yet there are right ways and wrong ways of doing it." | 0:38:33 | 0:38:40 | |
He's written something else in over the top. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:42 | |
"Lives depend on an knot being properly tied," is his afterthought. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:47 | |
Which is so very true! | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
-And these are his drawings? -They are his drawings. | 0:38:50 | 0:38:53 | |
It's quite difficult to actually draw a knot that people can follow and copy. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:59 | |
-Yes. -There's terrible clarity. You could follow that. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:02 | |
-Do you think? -Yes, I do. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:05 | |
Two half hitches. That one looks hard, doesn't it? | 0:39:05 | 0:39:08 | |
-No. -Even in diagram form. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:11 | |
When you open this, your job, your movement, everything here | 0:39:11 | 0:39:16 | |
comes from his notes on some bits of lined paper, doesn't it? | 0:39:16 | 0:39:19 | |
From these pages. It is quite amazing to think that the whole Scout movement | 0:39:19 | 0:39:24 | |
has flowed from him sitting down and scribbling these notes. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:30 | |
A bit like the Ten Commandments in the Christian tradition. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:33 | |
I'm sure he'd be flattered by that. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:35 | |
In January 1908, when Scouting For Boys was set for publication, | 0:39:39 | 0:39:43 | |
Arthur Pearson orchestrated the marketing. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
He decided that, rather than publish it as a single volume, | 0:39:48 | 0:39:51 | |
it should first be serialised in separate parts, which you had to wait for and could collect. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:57 | |
Scouting For Boys was a success virtually from day one. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:02 | |
By the time the sixth fortnightly instalment came out, boys were queuing to buy it. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:09 | |
Baden-Powell's original idea was that Scouting would piggyback on existing boys' movements. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:16 | |
But then, when the book came out, Scouting appealed in such a way | 0:40:16 | 0:40:22 | |
that boys wanted to Scout themselves. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:25 | |
So, Baden-Powell had more or less to scramble | 0:40:25 | 0:40:29 | |
to catch up with the wildfire success of the book, | 0:40:29 | 0:40:33 | |
so the movement followed the book. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:36 | |
It's one of the few, if not only, instances, I think, | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
in world history, of a book having generated a movement. | 0:40:39 | 0:40:45 | |
And one of the secrets of the movement's success is right there, in the opening section. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:53 | |
This is a very famous painting of a Scout, and it shows a boy in that classic Scout uniform. | 0:40:57 | 0:41:02 | |
I think we've all seen it so often that you forget how very odd it is. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:07 | |
The hat is a South African hat from the constabulary where Baden-Powell was serving. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:14 | |
Then the shirt, which is a long army shirt worn in India and Afghanistan. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:19 | |
Basically, the Army had fashioned it on the traditional Muslim shirt. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:24 | |
Shorts - which no-one in this country wore at all. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:27 | |
Parents had to cut off long trousers to make them fit. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:31 | |
So it's an odd collection of things, | 0:41:31 | 0:41:33 | |
but Baden-Powell always claimed they were all practical. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
The hat, you could carry water in. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:40 | |
The shirt, if you put two of the shirts together, | 0:41:40 | 0:41:43 | |
shoved the staves that the scouts carry, they turn into a stretcher. The scarf turned into a sling. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:50 | |
Again, for emergencies. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:52 | |
The figure here on the right isn't a Scout. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
The suggestion is, in a fairly obvious way, that he's blessing the entire Scout movement. | 0:41:57 | 0:42:02 | |
Baden-Powell also ordained a hierarchy of officers, | 0:42:05 | 0:42:09 | |
invented a Scout salute... | 0:42:09 | 0:42:11 | |
..and he composed a Scout oath. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:15 | |
On my honour, I promise to do my duty to God and the King. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:20 | |
I will try to help others, whatever it costs me. | 0:42:20 | 0:42:23 | |
I know the Scout law, and WILL obey it. | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
Crucially, the Scout law wasn't a list of forbidden acts, but one of positive aims. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:33 | |
A Scout's honour is to be trusted. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:38 | |
A Scout is loyal. | 0:42:38 | 0:42:40 | |
A Scout's duty is to be useful and to help others. | 0:42:40 | 0:42:44 | |
A Scout is a friend to all, and a brother to every other Scout. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:49 | |
In Scouting For Boys, Baden-Powell also gave the movement something critical - | 0:42:49 | 0:42:54 | |
the impression it already had a history. | 0:42:54 | 0:42:58 | |
The British Empire had quite a propensity for inventing traditions. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:02 | |
In other words, for making up a movement, an idea, an organisation, | 0:43:02 | 0:43:08 | |
and then passing it off, or indeed marketing it, | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
as something traditional and conventional | 0:43:11 | 0:43:15 | |
and steeped in the past. | 0:43:15 | 0:43:17 | |
Scouting, of course, does so by harking back to what Baden-Powell calls "the scouts of history". | 0:43:17 | 0:43:23 | |
In the old days, the knights were the scouts of Britain, | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
and their rules were very much the same as the Scout law, which we have now. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
We are their descendants and we ought to keep up their good name | 0:43:33 | 0:43:38 | |
and follow in their steps. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:40 | |
Baden-Powell even suggested that Scouting had a lineage that led all the way to the king. | 0:43:43 | 0:43:49 | |
He noted that the King signs himself RI - Rex Imperator, the emperor. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:54 | |
He says "Imperator" comes from two Roman words, "Im" and "Perare", | 0:43:54 | 0:44:01 | |
which together mean "prepare for", that is, to be prepared, | 0:44:01 | 0:44:05 | |
which, rather neatly, makes the King the Chief Scout. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:09 | |
It's neat, but it isn't true. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:11 | |
"Imperator" just means he who rules, but no-one was going to object, and certainly not the King. | 0:44:11 | 0:44:18 | |
Edward VII returned the favour in autumn 1909, when he knighted Baden-Powell. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:26 | |
By now, the Scout movement had over 100,000 members. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:34 | |
Scout troops were patrolling across the country. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:38 | |
And a spin-off magazine was flying off the newsstands. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:43 | |
Scout fever had gripped the nation. | 0:44:46 | 0:44:49 | |
Scouting offered something special that other groups didn't. | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
At its core was a belief in the positive power of playing and make-believe. | 0:44:56 | 0:45:01 | |
Scouting For Boys is peppered with ideas for staging little plays, | 0:45:01 | 0:45:06 | |
dramatising poems, putting on a show. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:09 | |
It encouraged each boy to imagine himself as a potential hero on the bigger stage of life. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:16 | |
Playing and playacting had always been central to Baden-Powell's understanding of the world. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:27 | |
Peter Pan, one of the most popular shows of the age, was especially dear to him. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:32 | |
Baden-Powell was particularly fixated on it, even more so than its standard enthusiastic audience. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:43 | |
I think that was because the figure of the boy who never grows up, | 0:45:43 | 0:45:49 | |
who never loses his milk teeth, | 0:45:49 | 0:45:51 | |
who never has to confront the horrors of sexuality, | 0:45:51 | 0:45:55 | |
was to him a very, very compelling image. | 0:45:55 | 0:45:59 | |
The idea that Scouts were boys on the brink of sexual maturity was a problem for Baden-Powell. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:08 | |
And the thought that they might be tempted to indulge in self-abuse, | 0:46:09 | 0:46:14 | |
as the Edwardians termed it, horrified him. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:17 | |
But, in typically forthright manner, he drafted a section of Scouting For Boys to confront it directly. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:25 | |
No prudish sentimentality for him. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:30 | |
He even checked his copy with his mother. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:32 | |
Pearson, his publisher, however, was much more coy. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:38 | |
He rejected the original, and Baden-Powell was forced to replace it | 0:46:38 | 0:46:42 | |
with a watered-down version for instructors only. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:47 | |
This is from the appendix on masturbation, and this is what he wants to say. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:53 | |
"Now the result of self-abuse is always..." Mind you, always! | 0:46:53 | 0:46:56 | |
"..that the boy, after a time, becomes weak and nervous and shy. | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
"He gets headaches, palpitations of the heart, | 0:47:00 | 0:47:02 | |
-"and if he carries on too far, he very often goes out of his mind and becomes an idiot." -Yes. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:08 | |
-It's quite extreme, isn't it? -It's very extreme. | 0:47:08 | 0:47:10 | |
It's more extreme than even fairly conservative medical authority | 0:47:10 | 0:47:15 | |
would have gone in the early 20th century. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:20 | |
But there was a huge amount of anxiety about masturbation. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
Huge anxiety around masturbation, because, on the one hand, it caused all these problems with health - | 0:47:23 | 0:47:30 | |
it led to consumption, insanity, etc - and, on the other hand, there's an argument that | 0:47:30 | 0:47:36 | |
it's a manifestation of a lack of self-discipline, it erodes the willpower. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:41 | |
If a boy gets into this habit, he will not be a fit person to govern the Empire. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:48 | |
Part of me thinks Baden-Powell is trying to do something healthy by saying, | 0:47:48 | 0:47:52 | |
"We're far too prudish about this." | 0:47:52 | 0:47:54 | |
I think it's good that he's actually ventilating, he's talking about it. | 0:47:54 | 0:47:58 | |
We want to get this out in the open, out into the healthy fresh air and sunlight. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:03 | |
Why do you think his publisher wouldn't put it in? | 0:48:03 | 0:48:06 | |
There is this concern in saying, "Oh, God, there's this terrible habit that boys get into at school, | 0:48:06 | 0:48:13 | |
"in adolescence, and they learn it from their evil companions." | 0:48:13 | 0:48:17 | |
Yadda, yadda... | 0:48:17 | 0:48:18 | |
"..We should warn them about it." | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
And then others will come back and say, "No, they are pure innocent little lambs. | 0:48:21 | 0:48:25 | |
"You will just put this evil thought into their minds." | 0:48:25 | 0:48:28 | |
It's like the sex education debate, | 0:48:28 | 0:48:31 | |
about whether you tell them, or whether you tell them about it and they go and do it! | 0:48:31 | 0:48:37 | |
Don't lark about with a girl who you wouldn't like your mother or sister to see you with. | 0:48:38 | 0:48:44 | |
Don't make love to any girl unless you mean to marry her. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:49 | |
Despite his confident assertions, Baden-Powell was no expert on the charms of the opposite sex. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:56 | |
Whereas he would often apply the word "beautiful" to a man, he would never apply it to a woman. | 0:48:57 | 0:49:04 | |
She might be good-looking, but he would then often qualify it | 0:49:04 | 0:49:08 | |
with a word like "heavy-ish" or some sort of slightly derogatory remark. | 0:49:08 | 0:49:12 | |
I obviously read Baden-Powell's diary remarkably carefully. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:16 | |
There was an entry in the diary which said, just, "Went to Charterhouse, | 0:49:16 | 0:49:20 | |
"saw Todd's photograph album, naked boys in trees - excellent." | 0:49:20 | 0:49:25 | |
I'm sure it was nothing sort of overtly sexual. | 0:49:25 | 0:49:30 | |
But, clearly, Baden-Powell did very much enjoy looking at these naked boys. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:36 | |
For Edwardian society, an aesthetic appreciation of the young male form | 0:49:39 | 0:49:44 | |
was distinct from finding it sexually arousing. | 0:49:44 | 0:49:47 | |
Whilst works like these were being exhibited in public, | 0:49:49 | 0:49:53 | |
no-one saw Baden-Powell's interest in boys' bodies as evidence of paedophilia, or even homosexuality, | 0:49:54 | 0:49:59 | |
least of all, Baden-Powell himself. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:02 | |
Times have changed. | 0:50:03 | 0:50:05 | |
If Baden-Powell tried to start Scouting today, I don't think he'd have got very far. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:12 | |
Media interest in a national hero no longer stops at the bedroom door. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:16 | |
And an unmarried, unattached, confirmed bachelor | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
who admired pictures of naked boys would be unlikely to be allowed to be in charge of a youth movement. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:26 | |
However, Baden-Powell scholars still don't agree on his true inclinations. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:32 | |
It should be possible to speak of a sexual preference that is, in a way, a non preference. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:38 | |
"I don't want to do this sex thing!" | 0:50:38 | 0:50:41 | |
I genuinely believe that Baden-Powell was the eternal Peter Pan, | 0:50:41 | 0:50:47 | |
and that, rather than being a repressed gay man, he was in fact asexual. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:53 | |
He thought that, actually, men who did commit too early | 0:50:53 | 0:50:57 | |
to sexual relationships with women were contaminated. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
Which I think, in a way, is... | 0:51:00 | 0:51:02 | |
You don't think that unless you're gay. | 0:51:02 | 0:51:05 | |
Baden-Powell may have backed away from women, but they didn't shy away from him. | 0:51:07 | 0:51:12 | |
Yet he didn't give marriage any serious thought until his mother began to put him under pressure. | 0:51:12 | 0:51:18 | |
Olave Soames was only 23 to Baden-Powell's 54 | 0:51:18 | 0:51:23 | |
when he met her in 1912. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
She was a tomboy, interested in sports and games, | 0:51:27 | 0:51:31 | |
and they shared an instant rapport, marrying less than a year later. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:36 | |
She was completely un-clothes-conscious, never painted her face, as it was described. | 0:51:36 | 0:51:43 | |
Baden-Powell thought the best women weren't very much interested in sex, | 0:51:43 | 0:51:47 | |
and I think that that would be true of her. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:50 | |
He did get her pregnant with Peter, | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
and he managed subsequent pregnancies, | 0:51:53 | 0:51:57 | |
but after that, he slept out on a balcony for the rest of his life. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:01 | |
There was a single bed on a veranda outside the front of their house. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:06 | |
It was an open veranda, and he would go upstairs to bed, | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
having sat around a fire, sat almost on the embers to keep warm, | 0:52:10 | 0:52:14 | |
then go upstairs, climb into bed with two blankets and a pillow, | 0:52:14 | 0:52:18 | |
and they'd come out in the morning, in the winter, and dust the snow off him! | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
Quite extraordinary! | 0:52:22 | 0:52:24 | |
The boys of Britain at the start of the 20th century | 0:52:29 | 0:52:32 | |
had no interest in the romantic life of the Chief Scout. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
They were just thrilled that, unlike most Edwardian adults, he refused to patronise them. | 0:52:35 | 0:52:41 | |
He entrusted them with civic tasks, like giving first aid, | 0:52:43 | 0:52:47 | |
or directing people in fog. | 0:52:47 | 0:52:49 | |
Responsibility, he believed, developed character. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:53 | |
Of course, this had its funny side, and Baden-Powell was the first to admit | 0:52:55 | 0:52:59 | |
that his fad of Scouting might appear ridiculous, | 0:52:59 | 0:53:03 | |
and others were quick to join in the joke. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:05 | |
This is a Punch cartoon from as early as 1909, | 0:53:05 | 0:53:09 | |
which seems to be laughing at the idea of the Scouts coming to the rescue. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:13 | |
It shows a very small boy attempting to help a rather large lady across the beach. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:18 | |
And he says, "Fear not, Grandma! | 0:53:18 | 0:53:21 | |
"No danger can befall you now - I'M with you!" | 0:53:21 | 0:53:24 | |
Yet, crucially, its titled Our Youngest Line Of Defence. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:29 | |
And this isn't any old lady. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:30 | |
This is Mrs Britannia, who stands for the entire British Empire, | 0:53:30 | 0:53:34 | |
which the Scouts have been charged with saving. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:38 | |
Remember that the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago | 0:53:39 | 0:53:43 | |
was comparatively just as great as the British Empire of today. | 0:53:43 | 0:53:48 | |
It fell at last chiefly because the young Romans | 0:53:48 | 0:53:52 | |
gave up soldiering and manliness altogether. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:56 | |
Don't be disgraced like the young Romans, | 0:53:58 | 0:54:01 | |
who lost the empire of their forefathers | 0:54:01 | 0:54:03 | |
by being wishy-washy slackers, without any go or patriotism in them. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:09 | |
EXPLOSION | 0:54:09 | 0:54:11 | |
Edwardians were obsessed with the idea of losing the British Empire. | 0:54:13 | 0:54:18 | |
When thinking of a really serious enemy, like the Germans, | 0:54:19 | 0:54:22 | |
most senior Army officers were convinced that we might lose, | 0:54:22 | 0:54:27 | |
and it would be the loss of the Empire, our country, our national wealth. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
It would have been really a catastrophe. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
By 1914, a generation of boys had been immersed in the book's patriotism, | 0:54:36 | 0:54:42 | |
and primed to see themselves as literal protectors of the nation. | 0:54:42 | 0:54:46 | |
Every boy ought to learn how to shoot and to obey orders, | 0:54:48 | 0:54:53 | |
else he is no more good when war breaks out than an old woman, | 0:54:53 | 0:54:57 | |
and merely gets killed like a squealing rabbit, | 0:54:57 | 0:55:00 | |
unable to defend himself. | 0:55:00 | 0:55:02 | |
So it might seem that the First World War was the call to arms | 0:55:05 | 0:55:09 | |
which Baden-Powell had been preparing for all along. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:12 | |
Baden-Powell insisted that every boy be able to handle a weapon. | 0:55:20 | 0:55:24 | |
But he refused to see his Scout movement as a sort of military cadet force. | 0:55:24 | 0:55:29 | |
Indeed, Baden-Powell defended himself against charges of militarism in Scouting For Boys. | 0:55:29 | 0:55:34 | |
He said there was a world of difference between self-defence, | 0:55:34 | 0:55:38 | |
standing up to bullies on the international stage, and bloodthirsty warmongering. | 0:55:38 | 0:55:42 | |
When an eminent public man wrote to me | 0:55:45 | 0:55:47 | |
that I ought not to teach boys soldiering | 0:55:47 | 0:55:50 | |
because, as he puts it, he hates war like the devil, | 0:55:50 | 0:55:54 | |
I felt bound to reply that, had he seen anything of war himself, | 0:55:54 | 0:55:59 | |
he would, like most soldiers, hate it WORSE than the devil! | 0:55:59 | 0:56:03 | |
Rather than see his Scouts become a branch of the armed forces, | 0:56:06 | 0:56:10 | |
the Chief Scout offered his boys for civilian duties - | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
running errands, working in Red Cross centres, | 0:56:13 | 0:56:17 | |
and coast-watching. | 0:56:17 | 0:56:20 | |
But the war inevitably took its toll on the Scouting movement. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:25 | |
A quarter-of-a-million former Scouts and Scout masters fought for King and country, | 0:56:26 | 0:56:31 | |
of whom 10,000 died. | 0:56:31 | 0:56:34 | |
Among the fatalities were five of the 20 boys | 0:56:36 | 0:56:40 | |
who joined Baden-Powell on Brownsea Island back in 1907. | 0:56:40 | 0:56:44 | |
After the catastrophe of world war, Baden-Powell decided that Scouting | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
had to become a force for world peace. | 0:56:56 | 0:56:59 | |
The imperialism of the original handbook was soon eclipsed | 0:56:59 | 0:57:03 | |
by the internationalist message of global Scouting. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:07 | |
That's what we're after - | 0:57:08 | 0:57:10 | |
to try and breed, in the next oncoming generation, | 0:57:10 | 0:57:13 | |
that spirit of friendship, comradeship and goodwill, | 0:57:13 | 0:57:17 | |
which is the true foundation for peace in the world. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:21 | |
That hope proved illusory, but the Scouting ideal continued throughout the 20th century, | 0:57:23 | 0:57:29 | |
even though other youth movements with less worthy aims borrowed heavily from its trappings. | 0:57:29 | 0:57:35 | |
The communist Soviet Pioneers. | 0:57:35 | 0:57:37 | |
The Italian young fascists. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:39 | |
And, infamously, the Hitler Youth. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:42 | |
But to assume that all boys in shorts are brainwashed storm troopers in waiting | 0:57:47 | 0:57:52 | |
does a grave injustice to Baden-Powell's Edwardian experiment. | 0:57:52 | 0:57:57 | |
After all, which of these movements didn't mind what religion you were? | 0:57:57 | 0:58:01 | |
Or what colour? Or what class? | 0:58:01 | 0:58:05 | |
And which of them instructed their members to smile and whistle under all circumstances? | 0:58:05 | 0:58:11 | |
One of Baden-Powell's favourite mottos was, "get a laugh on." | 0:58:13 | 0:58:18 | |
His movement was always a mixture of earnestness and playfulness. | 0:58:18 | 0:58:21 | |
He wanted to instruct boys how to cut down trees, | 0:58:21 | 0:58:25 | |
but he couldn't resist adding, "Don't chop your leg off!" | 0:58:25 | 0:58:28 | |
That's why the book is still so engaging. | 0:58:28 | 0:58:31 | |
And despite being firmly rooted in the Edwardian era, | 0:58:31 | 0:58:34 | |
he was trying to address issues that still resonate today. | 0:58:34 | 0:58:38 | |
Inner-city deprivation, boys without role models, unhealthy lifestyles, | 0:58:38 | 0:58:42 | |
the need for citizenship. | 0:58:42 | 0:58:44 | |
Amazingly, it's all in there. | 0:58:44 | 0:58:47 | |
Which is why, 100 years later, I think it's still worth saluting. | 0:58:47 | 0:58:51 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd - 2007 | 0:59:14 | 0:59:18 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:59:18 | 0:59:22 |