Abstract
This book is a significant contribution to the history of youth in twentieth century Britain. Exploring the activities of four leisure organizations – Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Young Farmers’ Club, and Woodcraft Folk – the book provides a much-needed study of the relationship between young people and the countryside in mid-century Britain. Edwards makes a compelling case for the on-going importance of the countryside to young people in the period between the 1930s and 1950s, while exploring how these youth organizations adapted to the significant changes undergoing many young people’s lifestyles by the 1950s.
Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside is structured around five chapters. Edwards makes a strong case for the continuing importance of the countryside in Chapter One, arguing that ‘the twentieth century … saw the opening of the countryside to other classes and as a result the scope of people who had experience of, and therefore could identify, with the rural sphere widened’ (p. 54). The following chapters explore how the four organizations framed citizenship in the realm of leisure, work, home, and community, before concluding that ‘the rural sphere was a space in which youth movements projected gendered and class-based understandings of good citizenry’. The good citizen, Edwards argues, ‘was constructed against the urban “other”’ (p. 248).
The book explores not just the experience of young people who lived in or travelled to the countryside in this period, but also examines what the countryside symbolized in mid-twentieth century Britain. Throughout, Edwards explores how each of the four organizations built the countryside into their ethos. Indeed, the real strength of this book is its focus on these four leisure organizations. The book is meticulously researched and uses the source material to great effect. Edwards gives a clear sense of how young people perceived themselves and their peers, and the young person’s voice is present in the frequent use of letters to organization magazines.
Leisure is, unsurprisingly, at the heart of this study. Edwards argues that the countryside was framed as a healthy alternative to the overcrowded and polluted streets of the inner-city throughout this period and was seen as particularly important to fixing the ‘problem’ of youth. Further, Edwards demonstrates that the idea of what constituted the ‘problem’ was changing in this period, shifting from poverty in the 1930s to self-indulgence in the 1950s (p. 31). Throughout this period, there was a growing concern among members of youth organizations that their peers didn’t know how to fully make use of the countryside or were otherwise unable to pick constructive pursuits. In 1933 the magazine for the Boy Scouts, The Scouter, argued that ‘the inability to occupy wisely, happily and healthfully leisure, whether trust upon us or occurring in the course of daily life is one of the salient problems of our time’ (p. 82). This fear was, of course, not new. Ideas about the importance of rational recreation abounded in the Victorian period, as Edwards recognizes, but have particular resonance when exploring the pursuits of youth organizations in mid-century Britain. For young people involved in institutionalized leisure organizations, leisure was framed as self-improvement, with all four organizations considering badges as a way of charting accomplishments.
The period covered by the book, 1930 to 1960, was one of swift and significant change in both the lifestyles and leisure opportunities available to young people. Changes to education and increased access to a range of leisure options meant that the organizations were under increasing pressure to retain and attract members. This became an increasingly significant problem with regards to the older members. Indeed, Edwards reveals the on-going discussion about shorts and trousers in both the Boy Scouts and Woodcraft Folk in the 1940s and 1950s, with one Boy Scout arguing in 1951 that when faced with young men on street corners wearing a ‘Spiv tie’ and ‘padded shoulders’, ‘it still calls for a great deal of moral courage to don shorts and run the gauntlet on the way to a troop meeting’ (p. 92). In this way, Edwards highlights the fast pace of change to the lifestyles of young people in this period, as well as the increasing tension between embracing modernity and protecting tradition in these organizations.
A study of this type raises questions about region. The book focuses on these organizations at a national level and as such a local perspective is missing, though this is an omission that Edwards addresses in the introduction. Edwards highlights the highly regional nature of leisure in rural areas, and more exploration of this may have further illuminated how youth in different areas of England experienced the countryside. Further consideration about the distinction between the isolated countryside and those who lived within easy travelling distance of larger towns and studies would be a fruitful avenue for further study.
Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside is an ambitious study that successfully sheds light on the often-overlooked relationship between young people and the countryside in the mid-twentieth century. It provides a new lens with which to view the changes to youth lifestyles over this 30 year period, and should be of interest to any historian of youth in modern Britain.