BADEN-POWELL, ROBERT (1857 - 1941) Soldier, Founder of the Scout Movement. I refuse to be critical of the enthusiasms or prejudices of the past. To judge someone by the age in which he lived is as superficial as defining him by his race or socio-economic group. Which of us can be confident that future generations won't regard his own contribution with a knowing smirk? Predictably today's right-on and sex-obsessed generation is more interested in Baden-Powell's political bent and alleged yearning for the boys under his command than any of his accomplishments. We can attribute this, of course, to the prurient mindset of the internet browser. Baden-Powell was a transparently well-meaning and sincere individual as, indeed, are the majority of his current leaders. There are, however, bad apples in any crop and it was my misfortune that the Drumfeld pack, of which I was briefly a member, was led by a rogue.

Details of my investigations into this individual are still too sensitive for general release. A wife and two daughters survive him, after all. Less compassionate investigators wouldn't hesitate to name and shame a man who laughed when one of his charges, bound by his fellows, was dangled by the ankles from a tree and pelted with burnt potatoes from the camp-fire. "That's what you get for being a snoop!" he scoffed at the time, blithely unaware that within a year fate combined with the diligence of Hamilton Coe would deliver an altogether harsher penalty for embezzlement, serial infidelity and benefits fraud. By a further horrible irony, he ended his life hanging from a tree in the same wood in which he supervised my ordeal. His suicide gave me no satisfaction. An unsuitable leader of boys, he was, nonetheless, a human being, albeit one governed by significant character flaws.

Since my own scouting days, incidentally, the movement's membership has been decimated by an absence of civic spirit and exaggerated terror of paedophiles. Remaining Scouts are low calibre careerists desperate for awards and activities with which to fill their c.v.'s. A significant percentage of today's scouts, I suspect, will go on to join the Rotary Club, a development which should be discouraged as urgently as experimentation with drugs.

Hamilton Coe, far right, before his tree ordeal.

 

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