A Life in Scouting: The Memoirs
Chapter One: It Was All Mum’s Fault
I blame my mother. In 1975, she decided that my brother and I should join the Scouts. My brother was sent to Cubs, while I joined the St Lawrence Scout Troop in Stroud, Gloucestershire. I was eleven years old, and I don’t remember being consulted particularly extensively about the arrangement. Mum presumably thought it would be good for us, that we might learn a few useful skills, make some friends and get out of the house occasionally. I doubt that she imagined I would still be involved more than fifty years later, or that her decision would eventually take me into the leadership of World Scouting.
There was, however, one immediate and rather splendid advantage to joining the Scouts. At school I was still required to wear shorts, but on meeting days I could change into my Scout uniform before leaving for St Lawrence. And my Scout uniform included long trousers. I cannot overstate how grown-up this made me feel in front of my schoolfriends. Whatever the Movement’s educational ambitions, its most obvious achievement in those early weeks was to give me the opportunity to parade around school in trousers with legs that actually reached my ankles.
My first Scout camp was at Cranham, a village in the Gloucestershire countryside not far from Stroud. It rained, and I mean really rained. During the night, the water found its way through the tent, and I woke to discover that my sleeping bag, clothes and practically everything else I possessed had become thoroughly wet. I remember wondering whether camping was always like this, and whether the people who had persuaded me to come along had been entirely frank about what was involved.
Yet the curious thing is that I don’t remember being particularly unhappy. What has stayed with me is the excitement of being away with friends, doing things for ourselves and enjoying a degree of independence that wasn’t ordinarily available to an eleven-year-old. We were camping, we were Scouts, and the weather was simply something we had to deal with. I have slept in a great many tents since then, some in considerably more exotic locations than Cranham, but that first wet weekend has remained lodged in my memory.
Those early years with St Lawrence introduced me to a world beyond home and school. There were camps, activities, competitions and friendships, and the opportunity to discover that I could do things I hadn’t previously attempted. I enjoyed the practical side of Scouting, but I also enjoyed being part of a group in which everyone had something to contribute. Looking back, I can see that I was learning about responsibility and cooperation, although I certainly wouldn’t have described it that way at the time. I was enjoying myself, which is probably the best reason for any young person to be a Scout.
In 1977, I moved to Wycliffe College, where I continued Scouting with the school troop until 1979. Scouting fitted naturally into school life, and the opportunities for expeditions and outdoor activities were an important part of my experience there. I was reasonably good academically, but sport was another matter altogether. I was awkward, uncoordinated and generally rather hopeless at anything requiring physical dexterity. I could neither kick a football particularly well nor distinguish myself on the games field, and I was painfully conscious of my limitations.
I was also a shy boy, rather lacking in confidence outside the classroom. This is perhaps difficult to reconcile with the person I subsequently became, but I remember it clearly enough. I could cope with lessons, where I generally knew what was expected of me, but other situations were less comfortable. Scouting offered opportunities to try things that didn’t necessarily come easily, without the relentless comparisons that were sometimes part of school life.
At Wycliffe I became a Patrol Leader, which gave me my first small taste of being responsible for other Scouts. The College’s Scout Group had a distinction of its own: at the time, it was regarded as the oldest continuously operating school Scout Group in the world. I don’t think I gave much thought to that history as a teenager. I was rather more concerned with what we were doing that week, and whether I could persuade my Patrol to do it.
One of my most enduring memories of those years has nothing to do with knots, tents or campfires. Frank Smith, our Group Scout Leader, taught me to cook for my Cook’s Badge. I mean properly cook, in a kitchen, rather than produce something vaguely edible over an open fire. Frank was also my geography and drama teacher, and he showed me, among other things, how to stir a sauce in a saucepan using a figure-of-eight movement. Nearly fifty years later, I still do it exactly as he taught me.
What I didn’t appreciate then was that Frank was building a remarkable career in international Scouting. He would eventually chair the World Scout training committee and, later in life, receive the Bronze Wolf, the World Organisation of the Scout Movement’s highest distinction for exceptional service. I was fortunate enough to receive that award myself many years later, which means that Wycliffe College Scout Group can quite possibly claim something rather unusual: two Bronze Wolves among its former members. Not bad for a school Scout Group. I only wish I had known at the time quite what an extraordinary teacher I had.
One afternoon, when I was about fourteen, our Patrol was undertaking a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award practice expedition in the countryside around Wycliffe. We were taking turns to lead, using a map and compass to navigate between checkpoints. When my turn came, I managed to get us completely and utterly lost.
I don’t remember the precise navigational error, although I suspect there were several. What I remember very clearly is the awful realisation that I had made a mess of things and that my friends were about to discover it. I was desperately embarrassed and close to tears. For a boy who already felt rather inadequate at anything remotely physical or practical, the prospect of making a fool of myself in front of the Patrol was almost unbearable.
Christopher, a fellow Scout, realised what had happened. He could easily have announced my mistake to everyone, taken the map away and assumed command. Indeed, there are plenty of adults who might have done precisely that, probably accompanied by a helpful lecture on the importance of paying attention.
Instead, when nobody else was looking, Christopher quietly reached across, turned the map the right way round, corrected the compass and showed me where we actually were. He did it so discreetly that the other boys never noticed. I was able to carry on leading the Patrol to the next checkpoint, my dignity intact and my confidence considerably restored.
Christopher and I haven’t stayed in touch, and I often wonder whether he remembers that afternoon at all. He probably thought little of what he had done. I have never forgotten it.
Nearly forty years later, in 2016, I found myself standing in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, delivering the address at the National Scout Service on St George’s Day. The congregation included Queen’s Scouts, adult award recipients and senior members of the Movement. I had been invited to speak in my capacity as Secretary General of The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award, and the theme of the service was journeying.
I decided to tell the story of a boy I called Johnnie, who was hopeless at sport, not especially confident and had once become thoroughly lost on a Scout expedition. I described how his Patrol Leader had quietly rescued him from embarrassment, and then revealed that I was, of course, Johnnie. I added that I was still pretty rubbish at map reading, which was entirely true.
It was an extraordinary setting in which to revisit a rather ordinary afternoon in Gloucestershire. By then, I had held national and international leadership roles in Scouting, yet the example I chose to illustrate leadership was a fellow Scout quietly rescuing a boy’s dignity. Christopher had shown me that kindness could be a more powerful expression of leadership than taking charge. It was a lesson worth carrying all the way to Windsor.
Of course, most of my Scouting was simply good fun: wet camps, games, expeditions, friendships and the usual small disasters of growing up. I was fortunate in the adults and older Scouts who made it all possible. At that age, you rarely notice the hours volunteers spend preparing activities, arranging transport and keeping everyone safe. The camp simply happens. It took becoming a leader myself to appreciate what lay behind it.
My school Scouting career ended with a rather less uplifting episode. I was promoted to Senior Patrol Leader, an honour I managed to hold for precisely one day. I got a little above myself, argued with the Scout Leader who had appointed me, and we reached a mutual understanding that my future lay elsewhere. I shall spare the Scout Leader’s name. My first experience of senior leadership was therefore impressively brief, and perhaps an early warning about the dangers of taking oneself too seriously.
When I left Wycliffe in 1979, I assumed that my Scouting days were over. There had been great fun, a few humiliations, some excellent friendships and lessons I would carry into adult life. University beckoned, and I had no reason to imagine that I would ever put on a Scout uniform again.
But in 1982, while studying at the University of Bristol, I needed to complete the service requirement for my Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Helping with a Cub Pack seemed a sensible choice. I had enjoyed Scouting as a boy; surely I could be useful to somebody else’s Cubs for a while.
On 11 December 1982, I received my first adult Scouter warrant, signed by the Chief Scout, Major General Michael Walsh. The following month, I became an Assistant Cub Scout Leader with the 160th Bristol. I was eighteen, enthusiastic and probably rather less experienced than I imagined. Being responsible for Cubs, I would soon discover, was quite different from being a Scout oneself.
I meant to do enough volunteering to earn the Award. Instead, I discovered that I enjoyed helping the Cubs and that the friendships among the leaders mattered to me. Years later, I would become Secretary General of The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award, an agreeable twist given that its service requirement had brought me back into Scouting. Had I chosen a different form of service, my life might have taken quite another course.
Mum, meanwhile, had probably long since forgotten that decision she made in 1975. I certainly hadn’t.