How the Girl Guides Won the War. Janie Hampton

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Introduction

      In my mother’s attic is a green school exercise book. ‘Name: Janie Anderson. Subject: Writing. School: St Mary’s. 21.10.1960’. I turned to the first page. ‘Brownies’ was the title. Underneath I’d written:

      On the 3rd of November I am going to be enrolled. Brown Owl gave me a paper cat to put a knot on the cat’s string tail when I do a good deed. I have at least sixty knots. I am a Sprite. I know the Brownie promise, law, motto and rymne, and I can plait. I am excited about wearing my Brownie tunick. I do not know wether a Commishner comes to be enrolled or just Brown Owl.

      At just eight years old, I already had a sense of the structure of the Brownie movement, and knew that a Commissioner was more important than ‘just Brown Owl’. Fifty years later, I can still remember my promise — ‘I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to help other people every day, especially those at home’ — and the Brownie song — ‘We’re the Brownies, here’s our aim: Lend a hand and play the game.’

      But by the time I was a teenager later in the sixties, the Beatles had arrived and I reckoned that Guides were deeply uncool. Who would choose to wear a uniform, unless it was a Sergeant Pepper fancy dress one? Why would a teenager want to attend meetings punctually, and salute a fat old Captain? I did go to Guides for a year, but at camp in Sussex, Captain got her come-uppance when a ram trotted up behind her and tossed her in the air. She spent the rest of the week lying in her bell tent, moaning. After that, how could I possibly take her seriously?

      When I began writing this book, my perspective was that of a flower-child of the 1960s, who shunned uniforms and rules. I intended to write a satire on Guides and Brownies, making fun of Ging-gang-goolies and dyb-dyb-dob, standing for ‘do your best, do our best’. But the more stories I read, and the more former Brownies and Guides I met, the more I came to realise what an important part of twentieth-century history the Guide movement was. Much to my amazement, I saw that Guides had played a crucial part in feminist history and the women’s equality movement. Their achievements, though, have been largely overlooked, their influence for the most part unrecorded.

      The feminists of the 1960s and ’70s simply could not see past the blue, pocketed shirts and navy serge skirts of the Guide uniform to the impact these girls had on the lives of Britain’s women. As well as the importance of the work they did, I learned that Guide meetings were an affordable form of further education for girls who had left school at fourteen. I came to realise that the movement’s founder, Lieutenant-General Lord Baden-Powell, was not the old fuddy-duddy I had assumed, but a forward-thinking man who wanted to make a positive difference to the lives of both boys and girls, of every class, in every nation. I also learned that the Guides were never a paramilitary organisation for the Church of England middle-class. There have been companies in factories, hospitals, female Borstals, synagogues and Catholic orphanages. The uniform was designed not to force girls to conform, but to give them a sense of belonging, especially if they had few or no smart clothes.

      Mention Girl Guides to many women, and the reaction will be strong. They will tell you either that they loved them or hated them; they were either proud to wear their uniform or refused to join. Once enrolled, they either adored tying knots or couldn’t see the point; revelled in campfire singing or loathed damp canvas tents. They either fell in love with their Captains, or thought they were fascists and sadists. Whatever their feelings, most former Girl Guides retain strong memories of their experiences.

      A survey by Girlguiding UK in 2007 found that two-thirds of Britain’s most prominent women have been Guides, and three-quarters of them say they benefited from the experience. Yet few people realise the impact that the foundation of the Guide movement in 1910 had on women’s equality, and on society in general. From the very start, when Robert Baden-Powell asked his sister Agnes to form the Girl Guides, the organisation was separate from the Boy Scouts, and not subservient to them. Baden-Powell died in 1941, but how much has his vision affected the social and political history of feminism in the twentieth century? Nearly twenty years before all British women got the vote, Girl Guides were earning badges for proficiency as Electricians, Cyclists, Surveyors and Telegraphists.

      In both world wars, Brownies and Guides took over the jobs of adults. When historians came to write up these wars, they spoke only to adults, who had either not been around or, if they had, were too busy to notice, and thus failed to mention the role of these girls and young women.

      The impact of the Guides in World War II is particularly clear. Their activities were not confined to Britain, but also included the Commonwealth, Nazi-occupied Europe and Japanese-occupied Asia. It was World War II that brought the philosophy of the Guides to the fore, and released their skills and training to the benefit of everyone around them.

      This book explores how being a Brownie or a Guide was essential training for war work. How did a Guide gaining a badge in Morse code aid fighter pilots? How did collecting 15,000 wooden cotton reels help RAF prisoners of war? And how does Guiding in those times influence the lives of women in the twenty-first century? Within days of the declaration of war with Germany in September 1939, young women were being called up to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), Women’s Royal Navy (Wrens), and the Female Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANYs). The military services soon realised that Guides with badges sewn on their sleeves had skills that were not only life-enhancing, СКАЧАТЬ