Scouting for Boys - Robert Baden Powell
This dashing book isn’t just for fine fellows. It is also one of the documents taken away from people’s houses since the anti-terrorist laws came in after 9/11. The laws say you have to prove why you have info that could be useful for terrorism and possession of this book is obviously danger in print.
Among all the 1920s language of ‘fellows’ and ‘savages’ it reminded me of Road Raging, a handbook from the tree protests. From my experience of staying in some of these shit holes, the bits in Scouting for Boys about keeping the camp clean would have been useful. After all catching impetigo, scabies and gardia aren’t everybody’s idea of rebellion.
It does go on a bit, in its lecturing on ‘cleanliness is next to godliness,’ in a way that would be much loved by the straight edged amongst you, such as no smoking, drinking or wanking (‘sometimes brought on by too much rich food and warm beds’).
It reads like a mixture of Boys Own, Ray Mears, and a self-help manual, grounded in some sort of mythical Holy Grail history where knights went around doing good turns. It is full of lecturing righteousness such as ‘No man is much good unless he believes in God,’ and we should be loyal to the queen and ‘everybody above me including my employer.’ One thing to nearly make me a convert though is that ‘tips’ are a ‘bad thing,’ as I bloody hate tipping
Despite all this, as a revolutionary manual it has more going for it than selling papers on the high street. It has a lot about observation and awareness which could be useful if the crunch comes, it even encourages following observation training methods of Italian revolutionary groups. Also, I’m sure if they reintroduced the six-foot long twatting stick (or staff) as seen in the pictures it might look more tempting. The fact it is written by some dead bloke and is mostly irrelevant to today should make it appeal to anarchist lovers (anoraks) of bukanin, Kropotkin etc and I love the motto -‘Never say die till you’re dead’
But I couldn’t really recommend it unless you ever have to head into the hills. So it might have been useful for the East Timorese, living in the jungle for 17 yrs, or those of you still living up trees, but not much good for the rest of us. Mind you if you know a straight edge hippy who secretly despises their lives then, with its yoga moves and homilies to folk dancing, this might be just the thing for them.
This review came from issue 7 of Now or Never To get a copy of issue 7 check out the Shop |
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