Little anchor men

9:51am Saturday 11th October 2008

As the Boys’ Brigade celebrates its 125th anniversary, the battle is on to attract new members.

THE Boys’ Brigade, apostrophe all present and correct, celebrated its 125th anniversary last weekend – Glasgow Cathedral on Saturday, Neville Parade Methodist Church in Newton Aycliffe, as doubtless in many other places, on Sunday.

The world’s first uniformed youth organisation, it was formed in Glasgow on October 3, 1883, by William Alexander Smith, to encourage what he called “Christian manliness”.

The motto, Sure and Steadfast, was based on the Old Testament passage about the anchor of the soul. The anchor remains on the crest, the hymn “We have an anchor that keeps the soul” the BB’s unofficial anthem.

Smith’s stated objective was to promote habits of “reverence, discipline and self-respect”, to which the word “obedience” was later added. It hasn’t changed since. The Boys’ Brigade, greatly and necessarily, has.

“One of the big differences is the way that boys behave,” says Brenda Laight, captain of the 1st Newton Aycliffe company. “They won’t accept discipline, not even in the way that they did 25 years ago.”

Smith, later knighted, was an old solider who wanted his organisation to be semi-military, the Brigade as smart and as well drilled as a battalion of well-placed apostrophes.

Soon after the formation he introduced his first camp, a prospect viewed with alarm by Scottish Victorian mothers – fearful combination that, Scottish and Victorian – who protested that they’d worked all their lives to put a proper roof over the we’ans’ heads, not to have some Jocky-come-lately replace it with a sheet of canvas. The Brigade spread worldwide, nonetheless, remaining particularly strong in Australia and the Far East.

The 1st Newton Aycliffe once had a membership well into three figures and a waiting list almost as long. Now there are 38, mostly a very small boys’ brigade. Last Sunday, parade service, it seemed rather a light brigade, too.

Where were they all?

“Ah,” said Brenda, “that’s a very good question.”

NEVILLE Parade Methodist Church grew with the new town in the 1950s and still attracts a good congregation of all ages.

The husband and wife ministers are Graham and Emma Morgan, Shildonbased.

A notice at the back urges members to “Start the day Graham’s way”, a reference to the incorrigible joke books which the minister produces to raise money for Methodist charities.

Emma leads Sunday’s service, joined by the Reverend Jeffrey Spencer, a retired minister in the new town who liked Newton Aycliffe so much that he bought a house there.

It’s harvest festival, too, Emma kept so busy placing gifts on the altar that she may now know how it feels to be a Friday night check-out girl at Tesco.

They range from Heinz Baked Beans to Aunty’s Spotted Dick. Had there been peas in a pod, they’d probably have been Benedict and Bailey Crossan, identical twin BB members giving new meaning to the phrase two’s company.

Hymns and prayers are on a screen at the front, though a thoughtful lady comes around with hymn books “in case you can’t see the words”.

Words? Some of us can barely see the screen.

Still harvesting, Emma asks if anyone knows anything interesting about Ethiopia. Since none does, we learn that three-quarters of the country is higher than Ben Nevis, that only one in 500 of its people is internet- connected, that in Ethiopia it’s only 2001 (they were late starters) and that one in three children under the age of five doesn’t get enough to eat.

Why, asks Emma, is she talking about Ethiopia? “Because it’s where Bethlehem is,” replies a BB member who may have been reading too many Christmas stories.

There’s also a short history of the Brigade – a sort of look back in anchor – in which Smith is said to have wanted drill and discipline as an antidote to young boys’ unruly behaviour, and there are reminiscences from Bob Hazern, who led the 1st Newton Aycliffe 45 years ago.

“They were heady days, something on every night of the week,” he recalls afterwards. “I even had to allow myself two hours if I went to the shops because everyone wanted to talk Boys’ Brigade.

“We had a pipe band and a bugle band and we’d march through the town to services. If someone wasn’t there, one of my assistants would be straight round to his house, to find out what the matter was.”

The BB even prepared older members for job interviews – “We became so renowned that employers would ring us, asking if we had anyone going” – and 30 years ago quite famously won the Auckland and District League by a point from Crook Town Reserves after playing five games in the last week of the season.

The footballers were having a reunion later in the day, but that was in the pub.

Bob, originally in the 84th London, accepts the need for change. “It was very much based on military lines, though the boys realised that they were enjoying themselves that way.

Instead of boys roaming the streets, they were learning good habits.

“We made a real contribution to the church and to the life of the town.”

The service considerably overflows the traditional Methodist hour, eightmonth- old Deborah Megan Nicholls – there to see BB brother Callum, six – so good that she wins the column’s inaugural BB award.

That one stands for Best Behaved.

TEN years ago, Brenda Laight would have been a rarity. Now female officers are relatively common. In Scotland, where numbers have fallen by half in the past 20 years, they’re about to admit girls.

Though meetings still start with a short Christian service, though the ethos remains, the range of activities has broadened hugely. Next year there’ll even be a tattoo, though that has more to do with feet than inkies.

“We try to attract the little ones, and to keep them, because it’s so hard to get teenagers,” says Brenda.

“It’s a lot more relaxed these days, a lot less drill and that sort of thing.

I still really believe there’s a place for the Boys’ Brigade, if only we got the youngsters to take a look at us. It’s difficult with uniformed organisations these days.”

Steadfast and sure, their anchor holds, nonetheless.