Being true to myself
Rhiannon Grant discusses her decision to leave Girlguiding
‘Travel to distant and exotic places. Meet interesting and exciting people, and then kill them.’ Spike Milligan once offered this as a parody of a military recruitment campaign, which is still very much in use. One of the more worrying forms it has taken is the involvement of the armed forces in schools, youth work and community groups, where military activities are presented as ‘exciting’.
In August 2018 Girlguiding announced to members, low down in an email sent during the summer holidays, that they had signed a partnership agreement with the British army to offer girls and young women opportunities to ‘develop their leadership skills’. I found out about this in September, when a friend of mine shared a petition on Facebook.
I’ve been a member of Girlguiding since I joined the Brownies at the age of seven. I’ve also been a Quaker all my life, so I’ve spent a good deal of time defending Guiding.
No, I don’t think the Guides are ‘paramilitary’ – in my unit the closest we come to marching drills is skipping in a circle. No, I don’t think wearing a uniform is a sign of preventing independent thinking – and, if you think that, shouldn’t you be more worried about schools? No, I don’t think taking a ‘Guide Promise’ conflicts with a testimony against swearing oaths. Yes, I do think mentioning the queen is problematic – but we asked our young members and they wanted to keep her. No, I don’t think dropping the word ‘God’ is worrying: the current wording – ‘to be true to myself and develop my beliefs’ – is more inclusive and at least as Quakerly as the previous phrase, ‘to love my God’.
After all those years defending one position, it was hard to accept I was going to have to change my mind. I wrote to Amanda Medler, the current chief guide, hoping the partnership with the British Army could be ended. She wrote back, politely but firmly, to say their risk assessment took people like me into account and they went ahead anyway. She said: ‘All partnerships carry some potential risk that not all members will agree with every decision.’
The way I feel about this decision goes beyond disagreeing. I’ve disagreed with Girlguiding’s decisions sometimes before. This is different.
For me to accept this partnership would be in direct conflict with my faith and, ironically, wouldn’t be keeping my ‘Guide Promise’. My ‘duty to God’ (as it was when I first made a ‘Promise’) demands that I maintain my commitment to pacifism and to searching out whatever in my way of life may contain the seeds of war (Advices & queries 31). My God is a loving God, and to ‘love my God’ requires me to protest acts which support violence. To ‘be true to myself’ is, under these circumstances, to resign from Girlguiding.
I have tendered my resignation from membership of Girlguiding from the end of this term. I couldn’t bring myself to break specific commitments to run activities, especially as my departure will leave my local team shorthanded. I considered staying until next summer, praying things would change, but so far I have seen no signs of reconsideration.
I’m going to go round my flat and collect together everything from my long career in Girlguiding – the handbooks, the neckers, the camp blanket, the long service awards, the commemorative mugs – and hide them away. I’ll grieve. At the same time, I’ll hope that one day the tide of militarisation in society will turn and I’ll be able to go back.
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