The Young Crusaders
Inspired by the fashion for Boy Scout groups, Lord Beaverbrook started his own youth movement in support of his pro-Empire campaign.
The doors of the Queen’s Hall, London, opened at 7.15pm on 16 April 1930. The evening featured a performance from Ambrose’s band – the largest jazz band in the country, with 33 musicians – as well as ‘up to the minute’ community singing conducted by Gibson Young. The audience of 3,000 under-25s, ‘most of them well known in London society’, danced along to both. A reporter from the Daily Express reported the following day: ‘One has a sentimental attachment for the old songs and the old tunes, but, for all their lilt, and their melody, they do not move to the pace which this postwar life demands.’
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