When Philip Larkin published his poem, This Be the Verse, in 1971, his fierce, economical dissection of family life sent out shockwaves.

Both its brutal brilliance and its blunt language made it quickly notorious. No wonder. The first verse went about its business briskly and forcefully:

They **** you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

Soon the poem was everywhere – in newspapers, on walls, in sober texts about family problems, and in anthologies. It became so pervasive that 10 years after its first publication, Larkin remarked sardonically: “I fully expect to hear it recited by a thousand Girl Guides before I die.”

Unsurprisingly, that didn’t happen, but Larkin would surely have been surprised by the news that a number of Boy Scouts had been chanting: “Let’s kill the Jews.” It happened at a Remembrance Service in Romford, Essex, when Jewish Second World War veterans came in. Dressed in full uniform, some of the Explorer Scouts followed the lead of a 15-year-old in their ranks and shouted: “Here come the Jews. Let’s kill the Jews.”

It is really hard to know where to begin with this.

We’re not talking about the catch-all scapegoats, “feral youths”. We’re talking about well-turned-out boys in uniform at a solemn service to remember those who gave their lives in the battle for freedom from the Jew-hating, Jew-burning Adolf Hitler and his Nazi ethnic cleansers. Lots of youngsters about the same age as the chanting Romford Scouts perished in a frenzied, yet clinical, bout of mass murder. Burn, burn, you Jews, gays and gypsies, the source of all evil.

And now, in the year of Our Lord 2009: “Here come the Jews. Let’s kill the Jews.” Chanted by Boy Scouts at a Remembrance service. So help us God.

Paul Freedman, an 84-year-old Jewish former RAF pilot who laid a wreath at the service, challenged the Scouts. “I told them I was a Jew and I’d spent four and a half years in the RAF during the Second World War, and that Jewish people had sacrificed so much for freedom,” he said.

You could weep for that man.

The county commissioner of Greater London North-East Scouts, Dean Jefferys, has issued a letter of apology to the local synagogue. He said he was “shocked and appalled” and that all Scout members offered their “most sincere and profound apologies”.

Ah, but we mustn’t engage in moral panic, must we? After all, some of the boys wouldn’t know what it is all about. Boys will be boys, especially when there’s a bit of fun to be had during a boring event. And so on.

Actually, there are times when something akin to moral panic is appropriate, if we are to retain any claim to being moral human animals. Sickening anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe, whether it be by insult, assault or desecration of graves. Because it demonises a whole group, anti-Semitism is a poisonous, murderous creed. The Trojan worm of racism, once downloaded, can infect the mental and moral hard disk. Christian anti-Semitism has, in the past, been virulent. Jews have been viciously portrayed as “killers of Christ”. Roman Catholic collusion and Martin Luther’s inflammatory anti-Jewish rhetoric are shameful stains on the Christian record.

Is it anti-Semitic to oppose the actions of the state of Israel? Of course not. Injustice is injustice is injustice. However, there can be a foul and slippery progression from opposition to Israeli policies to attacks on Jews. I find the rhetoric of some people on the political left truly disturbing. It is astonishing that individuals who would be the first to stand up against any kind of fascism should come close to aligning themselves with totalitarian leaders of some Arab states whose hateful racist incitements are utterly abhorrent. But Boy Scouts? Where did they get this stuff from?

Larkin’s view is bleak:

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

There must be better ways.

Mustn’t there?