AS A JEWISH EX-SCOUT, I OWE HIM SO MUCH
As a Jewish boy growing up in East sussex in the late 1950s, one of the highlights of my life was membership of the Jewish 52nd Brighton Cub Pack and, later, the 15th Hove scout Troop.
Any idea that the scout movement Robert BadenPowell founded was somehow a hotbed of anti-semitism is patently ridiculous. The plan to pull down his statue on the grounds that he was a Nazi sympathiser could not be more misguided.
It is true that, in 1937, BadenPowell was wined and dined by the German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop and senior Hitler Youth figures, who wanted their organisation to be in ‘closer touch’ with the scout movement.
But Baden-Powell declined the subsequent invitation to visit Germany to meet Hitler – and there is no suggestion that he sympathised with the Nazi project by the time its true horror became clear. He was even listed in Hitler’s ‘black book’ of individuals to be detained when the Nazis conquered Britain.
What’s more, Hitler regarded Baden-Powell’s scout movement as subversive, because boys in the scouts were encouraged to think for themselves – unlike in the Hitler Youth where they were forcefed propaganda.
WHEN
I joined the scouts, my father was a farmer on the south Downs, a few miles outside Brighton. One of the great joys was being driven to the hall where the Cubs met at the Middle street synagogue in the centre of the town. Friendships were made then which have lasted to this day.
When we were 10 or 11 years old, we graduated to the more mature world of the 15th Hove scout Troop. Our group’s leaders were young chaps who had recently served Queen and country as conscripted troops.
Baden-Powell’s ethos ran though all our gatherings. I have to admit that when it came to learning my knots (particularly the sheepshank) I was a total failure. But then I have never been known for my dexterity – map-reading, geography and the compass were where my skills truly lay.
The best reasons for being in the scouts were the camping trips, initially in the sussex countryside, then in Folkestone and eventually at scouting’s prime training centre: Gilwell Park in the depths of Epping Forest in Essex, where Baden-Powell himself used to lecture.
It was during the annual jamboree at this vast campsite that our Jewish troop had the opportunity to mix with scouts from all denominations and backgrounds.
I had encountered antisemitism in the playground and the classroom when at school. I still remember the art master claiming Jewish boys couldn’t paint – had he never heard of Chagall, Pissarro, Kandinsky and Lucian Freud? – but such ignorant prejudice was never part of my scouting days.
I remember them with enormous fondness, and Baden-Powell is often in my thoughts. That such a giant figure of my childhood should now be disparaged and in danger of being obliterated from history fills me with despair.