The Woodcraft Folk

I read an article this morning about the Woodcraft Folk taking young people aged 11 / 13 (depending where you read) to the demonstrations about the proposed rises in university tuition fees. The article I read was in the Daily Telegraph (but I can’t find it online – p16 of the paper though!) or a much shortened version in the Evening Standard.

Now it’s all well and good to protest against things that you disagree with, but I don’t think that taking young people who are that young to protests which have a very high chance of violence breaking out is very clever. Having taken groups of Scouts to London in the past, I know it’s hard enough keeping everyone together normally, let alone in a protest where things could go wrong at any moment.

The Woodcraft Folk are, to quote from their website

A movement for children and young people, open to everyone from birth to adult. We offer a place where children will grow in confidence, learn about the world and start to understand how to value our planet and each other.

Sounds good. But there are a couple of issues I have with them.

First of all, it might be worth while mentioning that I may be a little biased against them, based on the one time I met some Woodcraft Folk. I was on summer camp as a Scout and we had gone somewhere for the day (no idea where) and we came across these scouty type people who obviously weren’t Scouts. We said hello to one of their leaders and asked who they were. The leader replied along the lines of ‘ Woodcraft Folk, don’t you know your Scouting history?’ and stomped off! So, being the mature Scouts we were, we immediately renamed them the ‘Flower Fairies’ and proceeded to take the mickey out of them (out of their hearing of course!).

So please feel free to carry on reading and let me tell you about my reservations about this organisation, but please take a look at their website, have a read and make your own mind up!

They started in the 1920’s and to quote them –

Just after the First World War one of the leading figures in the Scouting movement broke away from what he considered to be its militaristic approach…

Now I find this a bit odd as in 1917, in the middle of the Great War, Baden-Powell was horrified at the thought of all the men who had been Scouts being slaughtered on the battlefields (this was no longer the type of war he himself fought, but a highly mechanised one) and he wrote –

The roots of Scouting have grown among young people of all civilised countries and are developing more each day. It might be thought that if in years to come, a considerable proportion of the future citizens of each nation forms part of this brotherhood, they will be joined by a bond of personal friendship and mutual understanding such as has never existed before, which will help to find a solution to terrible international conflicts.

So Scouting itself was becoming an organisation dedicated to peace and friendship amongst countries. Indeed in 1937, the World Conference resolved –

The Conference resolves that the International Committee be requested to do all that it can to ensure that Scouting and Rovering in all countries, while fostering true patriotism, are genuinely kept within the limits of international cooperation and friendship, irrespective of creed and race, as has always been outlined by the Chief Scout (Baden-Powell). Thus, any steps to the militarization of Scouting or the introduction of political aims, which might cause misunderstanding and thus handicap our work for peace and good will among nations and individuals should be entirely avoided in our programmes.

(see here).
So the Scouts were hardly militaristic even then. The Woodland Folk seem to have a huge chip on their shoulders about the Scouts and similar organisations. The leader who spoke to me and my fellow Scouts is a case in point, but so are the Oxford Woodcraft Folk.

On their webpage it asks –

DO YOU LIKE……

Camping, making stuff, building rafts, archery, abseiling, singing, high ropes, rock climbing, making brilliant friends, putting on shows, helping others, doing lots of really cool stuff?

Sounds good to me! But then asks –

ARE YOU TURNED OFF BY……

Marching, saluting flags, uniforms, bossy adults?

PARDON????
Marching – Scouts are not known for square bashing, that’s the Cadets. We do a bit very occasionally, on Remembrance Day (and badly!), for example, but that’s it.

Saluting Flags – OK guilty as charged. But there is nothing wrong in showing respect to the symbol of your country and what it stands for.

Uniforms – Guilty again. But what is that young girl on your webpage wearing? Oh, it’s your uniform!

Bossy Adults – Erm I’m lost here. It doesn’t matter what organisation you belong to, some leaders / adults are going to be bossy, shouty, annoying, kind, helpful or inspirational.

The other thing is that I’m not too sure about their politics. I’ve said before that Scouting should be apolitical (here and here), but should engage our young people to take an interest in the issues that affect them and should converse with all political parties.

But isn’t that what the Woodcraft Folk are doing by attending these protests? Well no. They are taking a particular side and not engaging all parts of the political spectrum. In fact a lot of the protests just annoy many people and reduce the sympathy for the students and potential students!

Yes, talk to the politicians (of all parties) and get the young people to raise their concerns, but don’t take them to demonstrations where it is possible they could get hurt. Indeed there is a report in the Telegraph of a 15 year old girl being ‘beaten up by the police’ & ‘.. they broke her foot..’. Now that’s not good and deserves some further investigation, but can you imagine if I’d taken a Scout and that had happened?? Not worth thinking about.

So there you go. As far as the Woodcraft Folk are concerned, for me, the outdoorsy stuff is brilliant, they need to get rid of the chip on their collective shoulder about Scouting and engage in politics but stop being Political.

Please, though, make your own mind up!

4 Replies to “The Woodcraft Folk”

  1. Thanks for the clarification Joe. I agree that with you that they are not ‘taking’ the young people to the demonstrations.
    However they are encouraging them to go and providing adult support & I don’t think it’s sensible that they are encouraging the very young (well 11 – 13 year olds anyway) to attend.

  2. With the greatest of respect Nick I think you haven’t done your research on this one. A spokesperson from Woodcraft Folk was on radio yesterday making it extremely clear that Woodcraft Folk do not believe in encouraging anybody to protest but feel that if young people are choosing to protest (which around the UK they are) that Woodcraft Folk has a duty to be there, supporting them, making sure they are safe, warm and happy.

    Its about enabling young people to have a voice in society and I feel Scouts could learn from Woodcraft Folk in this case. Its fantastic that young people are finding a voice through Woodcraft Folk’s support and I wish I could say the same of the more powerful Scouts Association.

    After all from where I’m standing as someone who’s been involved with both organisations, Scouts today is almost exactly like Woodcraft Folk was when it began 80 years ago! (girls & boys, more racialy diverse, less emphasis on Christianity etc) there are even join Scout-Woodcraft groups in some towns but its disappointing when Scouts nationally are so condescending of what is quite obviously a really valuable UK organisation that we can all admire even if we don’t all rush off to support protests.

    I’ve been finding the Woodcraft Folk Blog “Ketled Generation” really interesting as a way of keeping track of what children (not students so much) are making of the education cuts. (Its on Woodcraft.org.uk then somewhere under the side bar item “news and stories” – it comes up as the first link if you google Kettled Generation also)

    Thanks
    Phin

  3. The claim that the Scouts have been militaristic has been hotly debated for decades: there’s evidence on both sides. The Woodcraft person who asked whether you knew your Scouting history also had a point: B-P considered Woodcraft to be the saving grace of Scouting, especially after WWI. The person who was touted as his ‘heir’, John Hargrave, and who eventually quit Scouting, was precisely the Boy Scout Commissioner for Woodcraft and Camping. Hargrave’s reasons for leaving the Scouts were complex; it was not so much that it was becoming more militaristic but that the movement was allowing itself to be taken over by military types, and certainly the Boy Scout movement, much derided before the conflict, became somewhat respectable through its services to the nation during WWI. Hargrave’s greatest criticism however was that Scouting was becoming an ‘indoors’ movement, and was losing its connection with nature.

    After the horrors of WWI, B-P sought to establish a renewed footing for Scouting by re-emphasising the woodcraft element but at the same time realized that others could claim greater credit in this respect: Hargrave’s Kibbo Kift Kindred and Leslie Paul’s Woodcraft Folk, not to mention the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, groups with whom he did not agree politically (although he kept half an eye on Hargrave’s career). The Woodcraft Folk in any case itself broke away from Hargrave, due to the latter’s authoritarianism. In my view, its own woodcraft credentials were reduced steadily after Leslie Paul’s departure, with a gradual abandonment of the more romantic elements (camp-fire rituals, woodcraft names, etc.)

    For my money, presently both the Scouts and the Woodcraft Folk fall well short of the ‘back-to-nature’ ethos of the early woodcraft movement (of which Scouting in my interpretation is but a part) – much of the curriculum stresses citizenship training of one sort or another conducted inside, and whether this is about saluting the flag or joining protests makes no difference: the upshot is that the instruction is political and social rather than about forging character through exposure to nature. Ray Mears should be the next Chief Scout.

    That there have been joint Woodie-Scouting groups recently is no surprise: when the Rover Scouts first came into existence as part of the post-WWI push on woodcraft instigated by B-P, they often went on joint hikes with Woodcraft groups, and shared much of their nature mysticism (the Rovers were also acknowledged by B-P and others to be quite rebellious in their own right, too, and not in the mould of the increasingly corporate Scouting HQ, but then after a fashion early Scouting was no Establishment affair, either)

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