The inspiration for New Horizons came from a member of the Halifax Cine Club, Eric Marshall, who was a local Scout leader. The idea was clearly to promote the Scouts, especially as a force for good for young people. To make the film Eric involved other members of the Cine Club, and his own Scout group.  Eric later emigrated to Australia, losing contact with members of the Cine Club. The Halifax Cine Club had been making 16 mm films from as far back as 1929. Their films were usually...

The inspiration for New Horizons came from a member of the Halifax Cine Club, Eric Marshall, who was a local Scout leader. The idea was clearly to promote the Scouts, especially as a force for good for young people. To make the film Eric involved other members of the Cine Club, and his own Scout group.  Eric later emigrated to Australia, losing contact with members of the Cine Club. The Halifax Cine Club had been making 16 mm films from as far back as 1929. Their films were usually collaborative efforts, often to a commission, as in this case. All those involved in the production of this film are listed in the credits. The YFA has a large collection of their films through to the late 1980s, with some others also on YFA Online, such as The Pace Egg (1961).

 

The high quality of the filmmaking shows how dedicated the so-called ‘amateur’ filmmakers were. The scene in the Juvenile Court room – with the stern judge castigating the boys lined up before him – looks as if it could have been influenced by the film techniques of expressionism. The interpolation between the book the boy is reading and his imagined scenes are also skilfully done. The whole package, together with the high quality acting, gives the film a very professional feel.

 

The film strongly reflects the moral purpose of the Scouting movement, and also its belief that it provides a direction in life otherwise lacking for the young. The film has a certain naivety: it would be easy to imagine young people mocking the film even in 1952, let alone in the more cynical and streetwise youth culture of today.  In fact many young people today may not even know what scrumping is: stealing apples from people’s gardens, a common pastime that has largely gone out of fashion. The same might also be said of some of the activities the Scouts organise in the film. 

 

Yet undoubtedly the activities of camping, making fires or learning how to make knots, like the bowline shown in the film, retain a strong appeal for many; and there is a strong claim that the Scouts do help to promote the values of self-respect and respect for others.  Much has remained the same within the Scouts, although the uniform no longer includes the Scout hat, with its flat brim, strap round crown and chin strap, seen in the film. 

 

The Scouting movement was set up in 1907 by Baden-Powell, but the history of the Scouts is a convoluted one. Baden-Powell met with various influential people in youth movements across the country, and was persuaded to write a version of his earlier Aids to Scouting, specifically aimed at teenage boys. This was Scouting for Boys, published in 1908, which became the fourth all-time best selling book behind the Bible, the Koran and Mao-Tse-Tung's Little Red Book. Baden-Powell, at that time a Lieutenant-General, had become something of a national hero after his exploits in the Boer War defending the railway town of Mafeking (or Mafikeng). Other similar organisations, like the Boys’ Brigade and the Boys’ Clubs, already existed; but many boys outside of these bought Scouting for Boys and so it was felt that there was a place for a new group. This deliberately called itself a movement rather than an organisation because it was to be ‘always on the move’. Later came the Girl Guides (not Scouts as it wasn’t seen right to have girls canoeing, hiking and such like), and the Cubs in 1917 – inspired by the Jungle Books of Baden-Powell’s close friend Rudyard Kipling. 

 

The Scouts had an ambivalent set of aims. On the one hand they were conceived of as a training ground for the army, and promoted by those wanting national conscription. The aims of doing ones duty for God, of being a good citizen and of being self-reliant were seen as consistent with this. But on the other hand Baden-Powell borrowed much from the American naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, one of the founders of the Woodcraft Indians. This gave the movement a strong naturalistic flavour, and as being something that was enjoyable as well as personally uplifting. Indeed, some groups – British Boy Scouts and the British Woodcraft Folk – broke from the core of the Scouts because they objected to some of the military overtones.
 

In his 2009 TV programme for BBC4, Ian Hislop’s Scouting for Boys, Hislop notes that in his book Baden-Powell raises issues that are very alive today: disaffected youth, citizenship and social responsibility.  He also opines that if someone like Baden-Powell tried to set up a similar youth movement today it would probably get a very different response.


 

The emphasis in modern Scouting is educational, in the widest sense: in the words of Scouting: An educational system, the aim is, ‘to help young people to develop their full physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual capacities as individuals and as members of society, and thus contribute to the development of a better world.’   Although the Scout Promise is, ‘To do my duty to God and to the Queen’, the Scout Law is non-prescriptive, with the idea of God open to all religions, and humanitarian in its values. With a more modern appeal – the military connotations are now toned down – and with a membership of 28 million in 216 countries and territories, the Scouts remain the foremost youth movement in the world.

 

References

 

For information on scouting principles see, Scouting: An educational system, World Scout Bureau, Geneva, 1998.

For information on the modern Scout movement

On Ernest Thompson Seton and Woodcraft