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Scouting for boys: imperialists vs the YCL
PETER FROST digs out his old Boy Scout uniform — including his leather woggle — and looks back to the history of red-baiting in what was once Britain’s biggest male youth movement
Scouts founder Baden Powell

WE HADN’T long won the second world war, with our Soviet allies suffering 27 million dead, when in 1946 Winston Churchill made his “Iron Curtain” speech to launch the Cold War.

On both sides of the Atlantic red-baiting became an industry, and communists were persecuted everywhere from Hollywood to the Boy Scouts of Britain.

Paul Garland was a Queen’s Scout from Bristol. He was also a member of the Young Communist League (YCL). He could see no reason not to be a loyal member of both youth organisations.

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