Kibbo Kift
Encyclopedia
The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was a youth organisation in England
from 1920 to 1951.
(aka 'White Fox'), artist, author and Boy Scout
Commissioner for Woodcraft
and Camping
, who had become disenchanted with the increasingly militaristic tendency in the Scout movement after World War I
.
Hargrave was promptly expelled from the Scouts by Scout founder Robert Baden-Powell
. With a small group of like-minded, dissident, anti-war
Scoutmasters and Scoutmistresses under his own direct leadership, he set about building an alternative and very different movement. Baden-Powell expelled Hargrave with extreme reluctance, and only after some wealthy backers had threatened to withdraw funding from the Scouts unless he was expelled.
The Kibbo Kift (archaic Kent
ish dialect for 'proof of great strength') has been described as "The only genuine English national movement of modern times" and was certainly very different from Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts
.
Based on the woodcraft principles of naturalist
Ernest Thompson Seton
that had been a key part of the early Scout programme, the Kibbo Kift was to be not merely a youth organisation but was to involve all ages and, very daring for the times, it was open to both sexes. The ideas of world peace
and the regeneration of urban man through the open-air life replaced the nationalism
and militarism Hargrave had detested in the post-World War I
Scouts.
-style' names. The correct costume had to be hand-made by each individual or 'rooftree' (family group) and while the everyday 'habit' of Saxon
hood, jerkin, shorts and long cloak must have seemed outlandish enough in the English countryside of the early 1920s; for ceremonial occasions, brilliantly coloured surcoats or silk-embroidered robes were worn by the various office-holders such as the Tallykeeper, Campswarden, Ritesmaster and Gleeman. Hargrave himself was 'Head Man' and his leadership was dynamic, inspirational and frankly autocratic.
The Kibbo Kift's central activities of hiking and camping were refined and elevated to the level of a spiritual exercise. The weekend 'Tribal' Camps and the great annual 'Althing' were marked by colourful and impressive ritual, inspired by their ideas of what Native American ceremonies might be like, but couched in language reminiscent of the Norse Sagas and rich in Saxon archaisms. Kinsmen were not only required to make their own lightweight, one-man hiking tents (the first seen in England) but to decorate them with vivid, symbolic designs of their own devising. Influenced by Hargrave's own artistic taste, an ultra-modern 'futurist' style of design became general, and the robes, regalia, tents and other items of decorative art, often of an extremely high standard, represent an extraordinary 'democratisation' of the avant-garde art of the day.
Small in number, never more than a few hundred strong, the Kibbo Kift was nonetheless quite widely known and admired. Kinsmen and Kinswomen included the Suffragette
s Emmeline Pethick Lawrence
, Mary Neal
and May Billinghurst
, the journalist Henry Nevinson
, the photographer Angus McBean
, and Ruth Clark
. The Advisory Committee included such names as Havelock Ellis
, Maurice Maeterlinck
, the Bengal
i poet Rabindranath Tagore
, H. G. Wells
and Professor Julian Huxley
. D. H. Lawrence
took an interest in the Kindred and it has been suggested that Mellors in Lady Chatterley's Lover
is based on an archetypal Kinsman.
The growth of the Kibbo Kift was not without its setbacks. In 1924, the South London co-operative lodges challenged Hargrave's leadership, and seceded from the movement. They went on to establish their own organisation, The Woodcraft Folk
, which outlived its parent organisation and still exists . This was largely the result of the attempt by Ramsay Macdonald
's Labour Party to compel the Kibbo Kift to become their youth wing. When Hargrave refused, a Labour Party member, Leslie Paul
, led the breakaway movement.
As early as 1922, Hargrave had become interested in the ideas of Social Credit. These were first put forward as early as the First World War in The New Age
, a magazine which, under the radical leadership of A R Orage
, enjoyed an influence out of all proportion to its circulation. In the second half of the 1920s, Hargrave became progressively more preoccupied with the works of C.H. Douglas and his startling, iconoclastic, and radical economic theory of Social Credit
. In 1931, the Kibbo Kift transformed itself into a propaganda machine of a politico-economic movement and activity was now to be centred on the industrial cities. Again, the movement was split from top to bottom, but by 1932, the transformation was complete. Gone were the Anglo-Saxon costume, camping, hiking and woodcraft to be replaced by military uniform, marching and propagandising. Gone also was the name, replaced by the populist Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit, and later by the Social Credit Party of Great Britain.
However, other historical forces were at work. The Public Order Act 1936
, that banned the wearing of uniforms by political groups, was a great setback for a movement that relied on agit-prop, but it was World War II
that provided the deathblow. The world moved on, and the organisation was finally officially wound up in 1951. An attempt was made to relaunch it but the people of Britain preferred to adopt alternative economic remedies. Social Credit as an active movement is dead in Britain, though vestiges of its ideas have entered many mainstream British political parties, particularly the Liberal Democrats
and the Green Party
.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
from 1920 to 1951.
Origins
The organisation was founded by the charismatic Englishman John HargraveJohn Hargrave
John Gordon Hargrave , nicknamed 'White Fox', was one of the leading figures in the Social Credit movement in British politics.-Early life:...
(aka 'White Fox'), artist, author and Boy Scout
Scouting
Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement with the stated aim of supporting young people in their physical, mental and spiritual development, that they may play constructive roles in society....
Commissioner for Woodcraft
Woodcraft
Woodcraft is a recreational/educational program devised by Ernest Thompson Seton in 1902, for young people based on camping, outdoor skills and woodcrafts. Thompson Seton's Woodcraft ideas were incorporated into the early Scout movement, but also in many other organisations in many countries.In the...
and Camping
Camping
Camping is an outdoor recreational activity. The participants leave urban areas, their home region, or civilization and enjoy nature while spending one or several nights outdoors, usually at a campsite. Camping may involve the use of a tent, caravan, motorhome, cabin, a primitive structure, or no...
, who had become disenchanted with the increasingly militaristic tendency in the Scout movement after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
Hargrave was promptly expelled from the Scouts by Scout founder Robert Baden-Powell
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Bt, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB , also known as B-P or Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, and founder of the Scout Movement....
. With a small group of like-minded, dissident, anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
Scoutmasters and Scoutmistresses under his own direct leadership, he set about building an alternative and very different movement. Baden-Powell expelled Hargrave with extreme reluctance, and only after some wealthy backers had threatened to withdraw funding from the Scouts unless he was expelled.
The Kibbo Kift (archaic Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
ish dialect for 'proof of great strength') has been described as "The only genuine English national movement of modern times" and was certainly very different from Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts
Scouting
Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement with the stated aim of supporting young people in their physical, mental and spiritual development, that they may play constructive roles in society....
.
Based on the woodcraft principles of naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
Ernest Thompson Seton
Ernest Thompson Seton
Ernest Thompson Seton was a Scots-Canadian who became a noted author, wildlife artist, founder of the Woodcraft Indians, and one of the founding pioneers of the Boy Scouts of America . Seton also influenced Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting...
that had been a key part of the early Scout programme, the Kibbo Kift was to be not merely a youth organisation but was to involve all ages and, very daring for the times, it was open to both sexes. The ideas of world peace
World peace
World Peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. World peace is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The term is sometimes used to...
and the regeneration of urban man through the open-air life replaced the nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and militarism Hargrave had detested in the post-World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Scouts.
Activities
Kinsmen and women were organised in Clans, Tribes and Lodges. Each individual took a 'woodcraft name', inspired by their ideas of 'IndianIndigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
-style' names. The correct costume had to be hand-made by each individual or 'rooftree' (family group) and while the everyday 'habit' of Saxon
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
hood, jerkin, shorts and long cloak must have seemed outlandish enough in the English countryside of the early 1920s; for ceremonial occasions, brilliantly coloured surcoats or silk-embroidered robes were worn by the various office-holders such as the Tallykeeper, Campswarden, Ritesmaster and Gleeman. Hargrave himself was 'Head Man' and his leadership was dynamic, inspirational and frankly autocratic.
The Kibbo Kift's central activities of hiking and camping were refined and elevated to the level of a spiritual exercise. The weekend 'Tribal' Camps and the great annual 'Althing' were marked by colourful and impressive ritual, inspired by their ideas of what Native American ceremonies might be like, but couched in language reminiscent of the Norse Sagas and rich in Saxon archaisms. Kinsmen were not only required to make their own lightweight, one-man hiking tents (the first seen in England) but to decorate them with vivid, symbolic designs of their own devising. Influenced by Hargrave's own artistic taste, an ultra-modern 'futurist' style of design became general, and the robes, regalia, tents and other items of decorative art, often of an extremely high standard, represent an extraordinary 'democratisation' of the avant-garde art of the day.
Small in number, never more than a few hundred strong, the Kibbo Kift was nonetheless quite widely known and admired. Kinsmen and Kinswomen included the Suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
s Emmeline Pethick Lawrence
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Baroness Pethick-Lawrence was a Britishwomen's rights activist.Her father was a businessman...
, Mary Neal
Mary Neal
Mary Neal CBE , born Clara Sophia Neal, was an English social worker and collector of English folk dances....
and May Billinghurst
Rosa May Billinghurst
Rosa May Billinghurst, a suffragette, was born in Lewisham, London, in 1875.As a child she suffered total paralysis which left her disabled throughout her adult life. However, this did not prevent her becoming active in social work in a Greenwich workhouse, teaching in a Sunday School and joining...
, the journalist Henry Nevinson
Henry Nevinson
Henry Woodd Nevinson was a British campaigning journalist. He was known for his reporting on the Second Boer War, and slavery in Angola in 1904-1905....
, the photographer Angus McBean
Angus McBean
Angus McBean , was a Welsh photographer, associated with surrealism.-Biography:Angus McBean was born in South Wales in June 1904. Despite the surname and the family's claim to be head of the sub-clan McBean, they had been Welsh for generations. Clem McBean was a surveyor in the mines and the family...
, and Ruth Clark
Ruth Clark
Ruth Clark was the author of the first woodcraft book for girls and co-founder of the Kibbo Kift....
. The Advisory Committee included such names as Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis , was a British physician and psychologist, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and...
, Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
, the Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
i poet Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
, H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
and Professor Julian Huxley
Julian Huxley
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis...
. D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
took an interest in the Kindred and it has been suggested that Mellors in Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
is based on an archetypal Kinsman.
The growth of the Kibbo Kift was not without its setbacks. In 1924, the South London co-operative lodges challenged Hargrave's leadership, and seceded from the movement. They went on to establish their own organisation, The Woodcraft Folk
The Woodcraft Folk
The Woodcraft Folk is a UK-based educational movement for children and young people, and registered charity no. 1073665. The constitutional object of this youth organisation is "to educate and empower young people to be able to participate actively in society, improving their lives and others'...
, which outlived its parent organisation and still exists . This was largely the result of the attempt by Ramsay Macdonald
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS was a British politician who was the first ever Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority government for two terms....
's Labour Party to compel the Kibbo Kift to become their youth wing. When Hargrave refused, a Labour Party member, Leslie Paul
Leslie Paul
Leslie Allen Paul was an Anglo-Irish writer and founder of the Woodcraft Folk.-Life:Born in Dublin in April 1905, Leslie Paul grew up in South East London...
, led the breakaway movement.
As early as 1922, Hargrave had become interested in the ideas of Social Credit. These were first put forward as early as the First World War in The New Age
The New Age
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...
, a magazine which, under the radical leadership of A R Orage
Alfred Richard Orage
Alfred Richard Orage was a British intellectual, now best known for editing the magazine The New Age. While working as a schoolteacher in Leeds, he pursued various interests, including Plato, the Independent Labour Party, and theosophy...
, enjoyed an influence out of all proportion to its circulation. In the second half of the 1920s, Hargrave became progressively more preoccupied with the works of C.H. Douglas and his startling, iconoclastic, and radical economic theory of Social Credit
Social Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
. In 1931, the Kibbo Kift transformed itself into a propaganda machine of a politico-economic movement and activity was now to be centred on the industrial cities. Again, the movement was split from top to bottom, but by 1932, the transformation was complete. Gone were the Anglo-Saxon costume, camping, hiking and woodcraft to be replaced by military uniform, marching and propagandising. Gone also was the name, replaced by the populist Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit, and later by the Social Credit Party of Great Britain.
However, other historical forces were at work. The Public Order Act 1936
Public Order Act 1936
The Public Order Act 1936 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed to control extremist political movements in the 1930s such as the British Union of Fascists ....
, that banned the wearing of uniforms by political groups, was a great setback for a movement that relied on agit-prop, but it was World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
that provided the deathblow. The world moved on, and the organisation was finally officially wound up in 1951. An attempt was made to relaunch it but the people of Britain preferred to adopt alternative economic remedies. Social Credit as an active movement is dead in Britain, though vestiges of its ideas have entered many mainstream British political parties, particularly the Liberal Democrats
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
and the Green Party
Green Party of England and Wales
The Green Party of England and Wales is a political party in England and Wales which follows the traditions of Green politics and maintains a strong commitment to social progressivism. It is the largest Green party in the United Kingdom, containing within it various regional divisions including...
.
See also
- Cultural appropriationCultural appropriationCultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of...
- Order of Woodcraft ChivalryOrder of Woodcraft ChivalryThe Order of Woodcraft Chivalry is a Scouting-like movement operating in the United Kingdom, which was founded in 1916 by Ernest Westlake. Like Scouting, it was inspired by Ernest Seton's Seton Indians, and Seton was its honourary Grand Chieftain...
- Plastic ShamanPlastic shamanPlastic shaman is a pejorative colloquialism applied to individuals who are attempting to pass themselves off as shamans, holy people, or other traditional spiritual leaders, but who have no genuine connection to the traditions or cultures they claim to represent...
- WoodcraftWoodcraftWoodcraft is a recreational/educational program devised by Ernest Thompson Seton in 1902, for young people based on camping, outdoor skills and woodcrafts. Thompson Seton's Woodcraft ideas were incorporated into the early Scout movement, but also in many other organisations in many countries.In the...
- The Woodcraft FolkThe Woodcraft FolkThe Woodcraft Folk is a UK-based educational movement for children and young people, and registered charity no. 1073665. The constitutional object of this youth organisation is "to educate and empower young people to be able to participate actively in society, improving their lives and others'...
External links
- Kibbo Kift Foundation website
- Catalogue of the papers of the Kibbo Kift Kindred at the Archives Division of the London School of EconomicsLondon School of EconomicsThe London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
.