[lbo-talk] SEIU hates the Boy Scouts... and so do I

[James Heartfield]

In Britain the scouts have a reputation for Royalism and Empire-loyalism that they have long tried to live down. My girls go to the Woodcraft Folk - much to my embarrassment - so as not to have to salute the Queen. Other groups like the Boys Brigade (Methodist-backed) took off for the same reason: that Baden-Powell's scouts could never shake off their origins as a campaign to get Britons fit for the army.

A Glasgow from a catholic background I know told me of the time that he joined the wrong scout-group, and was in shock at the Orange Lodge banners and histrionic singing of the national anthem at every opportunity. A friend let him into the secret that there was another, Catholic and Irish Scout group that met down the road. He transferred and was bemused to find that the Scout master there quietly mumbled the national anthem at the end, while all the boys cleared up, ignoring him.

I think the scouts were on the side of the Whites in the Russian revolution...