The Real Legacy of Baden Powell
The Scout Movement was a large part of my formative years. In the first year of high school I joined the troop and since then every weekend and holiday was filled with scout activities. I am grateful for the troop for teaching me life skills and other knowledge which were invaluable to my later life. I was even given the honor of becoming a troop leader to junior scouts to ensure our posterity carry on with the movement. Through all this I made friends which were very much a part of my social circle today. To be a scout is also to be a member of a worldwide family who meets regularly in jamborees and other gatherings. It is also an ice-breaker for many of us when meeting people for the first time.
There are two things sacrosanct to boy scouts: one was the oath which calls for all of us “… to do our duty to God, King and country”, in that order; and our reverence for the founder — Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. He was given a peerage and became known as Lord Baden-Powell. His initials B.P. even became the motto of the Scouts: Be Prepared. We were all taught about his illustrious army career in India, Afghanistan and Africa fighting for the British Empire. He was one of the most famous graduates of Charterhouse School which even has a war memorial commemorating him amongst the alumni who were war heroes. In school among his friends he was known as ‘Stephe’ Baden-Powell. He served in the 13th Hussars in India and was the colonel in command of the First Bechuanaland Regiment in today’s South Africa. When he founded the Boy Scouts he transferred the values of discipline, leadership and determination from the military to the Movement. Our teachers tell us he is an uncontroversial professional army officer. Well, I have to tell my teachers that this student has uncovered many things which tell us Baden-Powell has a dark past.
Baden-Powell’s book Scouting for Boys was published in 1908. It was (and I think still is) required reading for all scouts. This book (not to be confused with the Boy Scouts’ Handbook which is a textbook teaching camping, knotting and other skills) offered a few clues of his thoughts as an ardent supporter of the British Empire. He wrote that “members of Parliament who try to make the Army and Navy smaller, so as to save money… do not look to the good of their country… and care very little about our Colonies. “ He warned that “if they were allowed to have their way… we should have been talking French… may as well learn German or Japanese.” It is clear who he sees as the enemies of the British Empire and his desire to use military might to maintain or expand the colonies. Who knows if he had lived till 1957 we Malaysians may never had gained independence from our colonial masters?
One has to view Baden-Powell’s thoughts and writings in the context of the era. Eleven years before the book was published Queen Victoria reigned supreme at the apex of the biggest empire which rule one quarter of the world’s population. Close to 450 million people lived under British rule including of course Malaya (as it was then called). This included the crown jewel of India where Victoria was Empress reigning over a population ten times larger than Britain. It is worthwhile to note that India in those days included today’s India together with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Like many who served in the Empire Baden-Powell was partial to Rudyard Kipling, the famous author of the Jungle Book who was resident in India and even briefly in the then Straits settlement of Penang, my hometown. Kipling was known as the Voice of the Empire as he was a diehard imperialist. In today’s environment it would not be unfair to call him a white supremacist. In 1899 he laid bare his views when he wrote a poem appealing to the U.S. to assist the Empire:
Take up the White Man’s Burden…
Go bind your sons’ exile
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new caught, sullen peoples
Half devil and half child
Baden-Powell achieved great honours in the siege of Mafeking near Transvaal in today’s South Africa. For over 200 days beginning in 1899 he led his regiment in defending the town against the Boers (as the Dutch settlers were then called). It is portrayed as Britain’s greatest episode in the Boer War. What was rarely reported was that this was supposed to be a ‘white man’s war’ between the British and the Dutch settlers, yet more than 70% of those who died for the British were the black local population. This was because Baden-Powell excluded the blacks from the protective trenches and would cut rations from the black to feed the white. Many more blacks who did not die in the gunfights perished because of starvation. For this Baden-Powell was given the command of the South African Constabulary as a reward. This is despite the comment from General Herbert Kitchener who commanded the army in Egypt calling him a “sideshow”.
The South African Constabulary was moulded in the belief of Baden-Powell and consequently influenced the Scouts. For starters Baden-Powell designed the colonial uniforms of both the Constabulary and the Scouts complete with long socks, garters, and ubiquitous triangular scarf which can used as a sling during emergencies. The oath of swearing allegiance to God, King and Country was the mission of imperialists who desired to bring Christian Anglo-Saxon values to all the people they ruled.
Interestingly the Scout Movement is extremely popular in the one country which fought bitterly to leave the British Empire — the United States. Not surprisingly the oath only requires allegiance to God and country in the U.S. not even to the President. The highest honour for a Scout in the U.S. is to become an Eagle Scout. In Britain and many Commonwealth countries it would be to become a Queen’s Scout (in Malaysia a King’s Scout).
The U.S. with a large population of evangelicals was naturally supportive of the Scout movement which encourages Christian beliefs. The Mormon Church remains the largest and influential donor. In the name of equality the female members are called Girl Scouts and the cookies they sell door-to-door are a staple of American daily life and culture. The effect of the Scouts can be found in common everyday expressions. When one asserts that he is telling truth he ends the sentence with “scout’s honour (or honor in the U.S.)”. When a person is deemed to be incapable of guile or evil deeds he is a “boy scout”.
Under challenge from activists led by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) the Scouts Associations (for boys and girls) were forced to adapt in changing times. The first salvo was against the oath of allegiance to God. It is plain that an avowed atheist cannot take that oath and therefore cannot be a member. This challenge will see it go all the way to the Supreme Court to ascertain if the exclusion of atheist is constitutional.
The second challenge to the Scouts in the U.S. was their practice of proscribing gay scout masters and leaders. Naturally the Mormon Church and evangelicals played a large part in excluding the community. It took the Girl Scouts to take the first step of rescinding the ban. The Boy Scouts held firm. Alongside this controversy was a spate of revelation of rampant abuse of young boys which scale was dwarfed only by the Catholic diocese. Nevertheless the Boy Scouts soldiered on with their ban even at the expense of corporate sponsorship losses.
For those unfamiliar with the system which brought up Baden-Powell it is plain that the English public school and the military was an upbringing in almost exclusively male institutions. These tended to condemn the participants to difficulties with females and tendencies towards their own sex. One of the most famous of them was T.E. Lawrence better known as Lawrence of Arabia, the archaeologist who became Britain’s best undercover agent in the Middle East. His relationship with his Arab aide Selim Ahmed (S.A. in the poem included in the Seven Pillars) was documented in history as were his battle victories. Cecil Rhodes who used his money and power to buy his own country Rhodesia had a long relationship with his private secretary Neville Pickering. General Kitchener, Baden-Powell’s one-time boss, had a relationship with his aide Oswald Fitzgerald for almost ten years. Baden-Powell’s constant companion was Kenneth McLaren whom he met while serving in the 13th Hussar in India. I often wonder if the supporters of the Boy Scouts of America and its supporters of their discriminatory practice are aware of this historical fact?
Nevertheless I would reiterate that I remain grateful for the Scouts for its immense influence during my formative years. Baden-Powell was a figure writ large in the Scout movement and also in the Boys Brigade. What I presented would probably never be found in conventional history textbooks and scouting literature. Please feel free to consult your Scout leaders.
