The main things I remember from my short time as a Boy Scout are the cold, the wet, the latrines, the dark, the mosquitoes, and the cold, wet, dark, mosquito-infested latrines. But lots of kids take naturally to Scouting, and enjoy some of the best days of their lives in the movement. One such was Paul Garland of Bristol, who was both a Queen’s Scout and a Red Scout. One of those was a jolly good thing and one was a jolly bad thing. I wonder if you can guess which was which.
Of all the crackpot anti-communist campaigns of the paranoid 1950s, the panic over Reds in the Boy Scouts must win the award for sounding most like a Goon Show plot. As early as the 1920s, Baden-Powell’s mob had expelled known Communists from its ranks, and the Young Communist League had happily traded punch for punch, publicly campaigning against the pro-imperialist and militarist Scouts.
But it was during the McCarthy era that things really heated up. Britain’s purges of left-wingers from public life might have lacked the showy hysteria of the USA, or the chilling ruthlessness of West Germany, but they took place nonetheless. It was in this atmosphere that teenage toolmaker Paul Garland became, in 1954, the most famous dib-dib-dibber in the country.
On February 9th a profile of Paul appeared in the Western Daily Press to mark his appointment as District Secretary of the Young Communist League. The piece mentioned that his other interests included scouting, which he’d been involved with since he was eight, and in which he had achieved the highest honour attainable – the Queen’s Scout Award. This was obviously a boy who was pretty serious about life round the campfire.
His political views were no secret in his local Scout Group, but when the national press picked up the story pressure quickly mounted on the Scouts to expel him. On the 11th, Garland attended, in full scouting regalia, a performance of his Group’s pantomime and told journalists he would appeal if expelled. Probably because of the show’s title – Little Red Riding Hood – this development excited the international media as well.
Within days, Paul received a formal letter of “dismissal” from the Scouts, which included the comically pathetic line “I must ask you to return your badges.” Nationally, Scouting was split by the move, with many members objecting that it offended against the organisation’s principle of avoiding party political positions. One senior Scout leader wanted to know why, if Communists were kicked out, members of the Labour, Conservative or Liberal parties were allowed to stay. Others supported the leadership, warning that people like Paul would be in a position to poison the minds of impressionable young chaps with their filthy, Godless creed.
The Young Communist League campaigned for Garland’s reinstatement, saying the affair had revealed the “Tory bias” of the Boy Scout Association. The association itself argued that it was clearly impossible for a Young Communist member to obey the pledge made by every UK Scout on joining that he would “do my Duty to God and the Queen.”
A regional BBC TV programme interviewed both Garland and the association, so viewers could hear both sides of the story. Under pressure from the Conservative Party, the BBC’s Director-General banned the programme from being shown.
A long debate in the House of Lords saw the father of Bristol MP Tony Benn describe the witch-hunting of left-wing Scouts which was now underway as “repugnant to our national tradition of liberty and conscience.” Former Tory MP Earl Winterton was having none of it. Did he really need to remind his fellow peers that “If ever Paul Garland were Fuehrer of this country I know where we should all be - in a concentration camp.”
Paul’s expulsion was upheld by the Scouting authorities, to nobody’s surprise, after which he told reporters “My loyalty to the Scouts has never been questioned. I am grieved at the way things have gone.” As a nationwide right-wing panic grew about a plot by communists to infiltrate and take over institutions such as the Boy Scouts – and above all, to convert them to atheism – the Boy Scout Association searched in vain for evidence that Paul was some sort of KGB sleeper agent. Supporters and opponents alike agreed that he had been an exemplary Scout, committed to the movement and its values, and that he had never propagandized for communism amongst his toggle-wearing colleagues.
Several other Scouts were placed in the dunking chair over the next few months, accused of socialist affiliations, but gradually the Red Scout madness died down as these things always do. Paul Garland was never able to return to Scouting, though he did remain in politics. In later life he became a Labour councillor, and at the time of his death in 1999 he was Deputy Mayor of Bristol.
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Sources:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/288381726.pdf
https://grahamstevenson.me.uk/2010/12/26/garland-paul/
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,860456,00.html
Morning Star 19 June 2020
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1954/mar/11/the-scout-movement-and-communism