Scouting in the 70th 1932-1968
The Boy Scout Association was founded by Lord Baden Powell in 1907 and, despite gradual evolution, its nature stayed essentially the same until 1968, when a 'Scouting Revolution' affected all aspects of UK Scouting. Further changes have meant that the Scouting experience before 1968 was substantially different from that of today. This section provides background information on 70th Scouting between 1932 and 1968.
1. Sections and Age Ranges
Scouting is carried out in individual Scout Groups. Before 1968, each Scout Group included a Wolf Cub Pack and a Boy Scout Troop, while some Groups also had a Rover Crew. The Group Scoutmaster (G.S.M.) took responsibility for the overall administration of the Group. There were no hard and fast rules about what a G.S.M. should do beyond these administrative duties. Some G.S.M.s acted principally as administrators and occasional visited section meetings. Others played an active role in the running of one or more of the sections. It would be wrong to claim that one style was better than the other. Each G.S.M. worked to his strengths.
During this period, boys aged 8 joined the Wolf Cub Pack, then moved up to the Boy Scout Troop at the age of 10 or 11 (although there is evidence that some boys were as old as 13 during the war years). The Troop was the 'core section' of the Scout Group, and a Scout could remain in the Troop until he was 18 years old - a period of 7-8 years. After this, he could either join a Rover Crew and remain in that section until he was 25, or he could train to become an Assistant Scout Master (A.S.M.).
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In 1968, Rover Scout Crews were disbanded and a Venture Scout section was introduced aimed at 16-20 year olds. The Wolf Cubs were renamed Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts were renamed Scouts. A Beaver section was introduced in 1982 for younger boys aged 6-8 years old, then in 2001, the Venture Scout section was replaced by Explorer Scouts aged 14-18 years old. This means that current-day Scouts spend four fewer years in the Troop than their counterparts before 1968.
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2. The Wolf Cub Pack
Wolf Cubs began in 1916 to meet a demand from boys that were too young to join the Scouts - typically the younger brothers of boys who were already in the Scouts. Baden-Powell was keen that the new section should have its own imaginative identity. As a result, much of the programme and ethos of the Wolf Cub Pack was based on the Jungle Book written by Rudyard Kipling - a personal friend of Baden Powell.
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2.1 Organisation within the Pack
The boys in a Wolf Cub Pack were split into different sixes, with each boy wearing a coloured triangle on his left arm to identify his six.
For example, the Wolf Cub in figure 1.1 belongs to the white six. The colours of the sixes represented different wolves and were usually white, grey, black, brown, red and tawny. Each six typically had six boys. Usually, the oldest boy was the Sixer in charge of the six, and wore two yellow bands round his left arm (Fig. 1.1). The second in command (the Seconder) wore one yellow band. In the years following the Second World War, a Senior Sixer was chosen who wore three yellow stripes (Fig. 1.2). However, it is not clear whether this was an 'official' rank or not.
Figure 1 Christopher Wilson as Sixer of the White Six (1960s)
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Figure 2 Douglas Brown as Senior Sixer (1949)
The leaders in the Pack were named after characters in the Jungle Book. The overall leader was the Akela, while other leaders could choose their own names (e.g. Bagheera, Kaa, Baloo etc). However, the official term for the leader of the Wolf Cub Pack was Cub Master or Cub Mistress.