Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside

Creating Good Citizens, 1930-1960

Sian Edwards

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783319651576
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Britische Geschichte

This book explores the significance and meaning of the countryside within mid-twentieth century youth movements. It examines the ways in which the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Woodcraft Folk and Young Farmers' Club organisations employed the countryside as a space within which 'good citizenship' – in leisure, work, the home and the community –could be developed. Mid-century youth movements identified the 'problem' of modern youth as a predominantly urban and working class issue. They held that the countryside offered an effective antidote to these problems: being a 'good citizen' within this context necessitated a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with the rural sphere. Avenues to good citizenship could be found through an enthusiasm for outdoor recreation, the stewardship of the countryside and work on the land. However, models of good citizenship were intrinsically gendered.

© The Author(s) 2018

S. EdwardsYouth Movements, Citizenship and the English CountrysidePalgrave Studies in the History of Social Movementshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65157-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Sian Edwards¹

(1)

Department of History, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

End Abstract

On 16 June 1958, following a roll call and inspection, the 7th Dunstable Company of Girl Guides set out on a group excursion to the local downs. When they arrived they enthusiastically began activities including stalking (the practice of observing the land and tracking wild animals) and map reading. Until, that is, they met with ‘interference’ from some Teddy Boys who were also frequenting the area.¹ The experience of the 7th Dunstable Company, detailed in one of the club’s logbooks , reveals an interesting contention in the relationship between young people and the countryside in the late 1950s: on the one hand the countryside was a space utilized by youth organizations in their citizenship training , while on the other it was a space of relative freedom for unsupervised adolescents.

The growth of ‘youth’ as a social category in the mid-twentieth century, resulting from shifts in patterns of education , work and leisure , has been well documented by historians. However, historical studies often pay little or no attention to the place of the countryside in experiences of young people at this time, whether that is that through experiences of rural youth , or of the use of the countryside by urban adolescents.² This project was born out of the realization that rural experiences of leisure have often been ignored or sidelined in favour of the urban. This is true in spite of the fact that, despite changing leisure patterns across the mid-century, the countryside remained a significant feature of the popular recreation at this time. The extent of this has not yet been sufficiently acknowledged in existing historical scholarship on young people’s leisure experiences in the mid-twentieth century.³

Through an examination of four key movements, the Boy Scout Association (BSA) , the Girl Guide Association (GGA) , the Woodcraft Folk and the Young Farmers’ Club (YFC) movement, this study explores the central position of the rural, and particularly the English Countryside, in understandings of good citizenship for young people across the mid-twentieth century.⁴ In doing so it develops our understanding of youth and leisure in this period in two ways; firstly, by focusing on the structured and organized education and leisure activities provided by youth movements in the mid-century, and secondly, by exploring the centrality of the countryside within them. Through a study of organizational publications alongside contemporary materials, it reveals a number of continuities in the training provided by youth movements across the mid-century and the continued importance of the rural within this. In so doing, it uncovers a complex relationship between young people and the countryside in the mid-century and questions our predominantly urban understanding of youth and youth training in this period.

‘Coming of Age’: Youth in the Mid-Century

It is a truism amongst historians that the period from 1930 onwards witnessed distinctive and monumental shifts in the lives of adolescents in Britain. As such, the mid-century has been characterized as one in which young people ‘came of age’.⁵ This shift can most clearly be identified with the so-called post-war ‘youthquake’ and the emergence of the ‘teenager’ in the 1950s. In 1958, the Ministry of Education brought together sociologists, youth leaders and other interested parties to consider and investigate the state of the Youth Service in England and Wales . The committee, which included the likes of social investigator Pearl Jephcott, Woodcraft Folk leader Leslie Paul and academic Richard Hoggart, were appointed to study the changing world of post-war youth. In the subsequent report, widely referred to as the Albemarle Report , the committee declared, ‘All times are times of change, but some change more quickly than others. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in some periods the sense of change is particularly strong. Today is such a period.’⁶ It is clear then, that prominent contemporaries believed that the post-war years were a time of upheaval for young people.

This idea was rooted in socio-economic shifts of the time in which both labour patterns and consumption trends were symptomatic of the newly built welfare state. At this time, young people, and particularly those who were male and working class, were well placed to take advantage of both legislative and economic shifts. Employment opportunities in ‘light’ unskilled production industries, meant that many working-class youths could earn a considerable wage, which they could spend on a growing consumer-driven leisure industry, focused towards the newly defined ‘teenager’.⁷ This financial independence meant that adolescents’ opportunities for leisure and consumption were wider than they had been previously. As a result, contemporaries such as Mark Abrams identified the emergence of a distinctly new breed of ‘teenage consumer’, with economic independence and consumption patterns distinct from their predecessors.⁸

Legislative shifts also saw the compression of the adolescent lifecycle and the intensification of the ‘teenage’ experience. The 1944 Butler Education Act extended the educational horizons of young people and in 1947 the school-leaving age was raised to 15, thus extending the period in which young people were reliant on parental support. Military service, introduced for all males at the age of 18 in 1947, meant that the period from school leaving (15), to call-up (18), became somewhat of a period of interregnum between childhood and adulthood, splintering the male lifecycle. As the Albemarle report suggested, the prospect of National Service came ‘down like a shutter between the mind of the adolescent and his adult future.’⁹ For girls a similar effect was felt by the declining age of first marriage . In the period from 1931 to 1935, 21 girls in every 1000 in England and Wales were first married between the ages of 16 and 19; by 1956–1960 this had risen to 72.7 girls .¹⁰ This meant that young women were beginning their adult roles as wives and mothers earlier than they had previously. Both shifts served to create ‘generational consciousness’ amongst post-war youth.¹¹

These changes were not witnessed in historical isolation however; as recent historiography has suggested, many shifts associated with the ‘youth explosion’ of the post war period were in existence before the war.¹² Foreshadowing what was to come, the interwar period saw the beginnings of a changing relationship between young people and the spheres of work and leisure, which was only to intensify as years progressed. A degree of financial independence in the interwar period meant that adolescents had the funds to experience and take advantage of leisure opportunities at this time. Furthermore, young people were targeted by radio, magazines and fashion companies, which marked the growing recognition of the power of young people in their role as consumers. Certain leisure activities also attracted the attention of young people, with the cinema and the dancehall attracting large numbers of predominantly working-class adolescents. Therefore, the prominence of such leisure activities at this time, particularly the dancehall, as Andrew Davies argues, can be seen as symbolic of ‘a new freedom among working class youths during the 1920s.’¹³ Together these shifts, John Springhall suggests, were part of a wider institutionalization of the period of youth as a life-cycle stage in the twentieth century, with the increase in number and importance of educational, legislative, employment and cultural ‘benchmarks’ through which youth could be identified as a distinct social category.¹⁴

The recognition of the distinctiveness of adolescence also saw a growing concern towards young people, and as such the twentieth century saw a clear departure in approaches to youth. The identification of adolescence as a time of mental and emotional development by psychologist Stanley Hall in 1904 gave way to the idea that the period of youth was a time in which young people were both vulnerable and problematic. This coupled with, what John Gillis has termed, the ‘democratisation’ of the youth experience, meaning the extension of the middle class norm of adolescence to the working classes, saw contemporaries increasingly identifying a ‘problem of youth’ throughout this period.¹⁵ The juvenile delinquent was the epitome of such concerns, as will be discussed in Chap. 3.

The acknowledgement that adolescents required moral guidance and training to combat problematic behaviour saw the expansion of youth organizations which aimed to do just this.¹⁶ Youth movements including the BSA, GGA , Woodcraft Folk and the YFCs, played a central role in this preparation and training for citizenship, or so they themselves believed. By providing educational, rational and rewarding recreation, these movements hope...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Good Citizen and the English Countryside
• 3. Leisure and the Good Citizen
• 4. The Good Citizen at Work
• 5. The Good Citizen at Home
• 6. The Good Citizen in the Community
• 7. Conclusion
• Back Matter