The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was a camping, hiking and handicraft group with ambitions to bring world peace. It was the first of three movements in England associated with the charismatic artist and writer

John Hargrave John Gordon Hargrave (6 June 1894 – 21 November 1982), (woodcraft name 'White Fox'), was a prominent youth leader in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s, Head Man of the Kibbo Kift, described in his obituary as an 'author, cartoonist, inve ...

(1894–1982). The Kindred was founded in 1920. Some members continued into Hargrave's Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit, which was established in 1931–32, and which became in 1935 the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was wound up in 1951. Hargrave claimed all three organisations to be part of one mission, telling his followers after the last title-change: 'We are the Green Shirts – indeed we are the Kindred – calling ourselves the Social Credit Party of Great Britain officially, but knowing full well who and what we are. "''Whelm on me ye Resurrected Men!"'' – I give you that outcry of the Kin in 1927.' The mission was the belief that Kibbo Kift training would produce a core of healthy and creative individuals through whom the human race would evolve into a society without war, poverty and wasted lives. The Kibbo Kift held that individual character strengthened by mental discipline was the key to the future, not mass movements based on groups defined by class, race or nation states.

Origins

The Kindred was formed at a meeting held on 18 August 1920 at the offices of the Charity Organisation Society. Besides Hargrave, the movers were Mrs Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, a former suffragette and

Theosophist Theosophy is a religion established in the United States during the late 19th century. It was founded primarily by the Russian Helena Blavatsky and draws its teachings predominantly from Blavatsky's writings. Categorized by scholars of religion ...

-inclined pacifist; and Dr C. K. Cullen, socialist-inclined medical officer in East London and a youth leader at the Camelot Youth Club in Poplar. All three shared a broad vision of creating a new model for character–building youth groups, a progressive, co-educational and non-militaristic alternative to The Boy Scouts Association. However, there were differences. In the early years of the Kibbo Kift, there were ideological and personal wranglings over the new organisation, from which Hargrave emerged in 1924 as the 'Head Man'. Hargrave (aka 'White Fox'), artist, author and The Boy Scouts Association's Commissioner for

Woodcraft The term woodcraft — or woodlore — denotes bushcraft skills and experience in matters relating to living and thriving in the woods—such as hunting, fishing, and camping—whether on a short- or long-term basis. Traditionally, woodcraft per ...

and

Camping Camping is an outdoor activity involving overnight stays away from home, either without shelter or using basic shelter such as a tent, or a recreational vehicle. Typically, participants leave developed areas to spend time outdoors in more na ...

, had become disenchanted with the increasingly

militaristic Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...

tendency in The Boy Scouts Association after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Soon after the formation of the Kindred, Hargrave was expelled from The Boy Scouts Association by its chief,

Robert Baden-Powell Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, ( ; (Commonly pronounced by others as ) 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941) was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the wor ...

. According to Hargrave, Baden-Powell acted with extreme reluctance and only after some wealthy backers had threatened to withdraw funding from The Boy Scouts Association unless he was expelled. The Kibbo Kift did indeed offer an alternative to The Boy Scouts Association: it was open to both sexes and all ages. The ideas of

world peace World peace, or peace on Earth, is the concept of an ideal state of peace within and among all people and nations on Planet Earth. Different cultures, religions, philosophies, and organizations have varying concepts on how such a state would ...

and the regeneration of urban man through the open-air life replaced the

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...

and militarism Hargrave had detested in the post-

Boy Scouts Association. In its mixture of woodcraft, ritual and handicraft, it had much in common with the

Order of Woodcraft Chivalry The Order of Woodcraft Chivalry is a scouting-like movement operating in the United Kingdom, which was founded in 1916 by Ernest Westlake. It was inspired by Ernest Thompson Seton's Woodcraft Indians, and Seton was its honorary Grand Chieftain. Wh ...

and the British Camp Fire Girls, which Hargrave knew through his wife, Ruth Clark, who led a Camp Fire Girls group at the Garden School run by the Theosophical Educational Trust in St John's Wood. The school moved in 1920 to Ballinger Grange in Buckinghamshire where it became something of a Kibbo Kift centre.

Beliefs

The words Kibbo Kift come from a Cheshire dialect term used to indicate 'proof of great strength', specifically lifting a heavy bag of grain (about 142 kg, or 325 lb) onto one's shoulders.Pollen, Annebella, 'The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians', Donlon Books, 2015. The group's initials have led some to assume a relationship to the Ku Klux Klan but this has no basis in fact (and Hargrave took great pains to correct this misapprehension in the popular press during the group's lifetime). Kibbo Kift had interests in regional geography and world culture that coexisted with passionate ideas about national identity. The group has been claimed to be 'the only genuine English national movement of modern times'. In 1920 Hargrave explained what the distinctive words meant: :Kibbo Kift is an old English expression meaning literally proof of great strength – or The Strong. So today, in the woodcraft camp we speak of: :KIBBO KIFT – meaning the Idea and Ideal of the Great Outdoor Trail and Open Air Education :THE KIBBO KIFT – meaning the Woodcraft Kindred, or the people who follow the great Woodcraft Trail :TO BE KIBBO KIFT – meaning to be a good camper and woodcrafter, to be a clean, strong, upright man (woman or child). The movement drew heavily on the woodcraft ideas of naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton (also a key part of the early Scout Movement). Hargrave also imported into the movement his fondness for 'symbology', art and ritual – drawing his ideas on art from Jane Ellen Harrison, and on education from G.Stanley Hall's then fashionable theory of 'recapitulation'. Kibbo Kift was also strongly influenced by ideas about myth and religion from James Frazer's popular anthropological study, '' The Golden Bough''. In the second half of the 1920s the Kindred's educational ideas tended to be swamped by Hargrave's enthusiasm for the economic theory of

Social Credit Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made them. To combat what he ...

, but the faith in ritual and ceremony remained strong. According to Hargrave in 1924: 'The Ceremonial System of the Kibbo Kift with all its Colour and Symbolism, has been, is, and must always remain vital to the expression of our ideals and to our method of propaganda. Other movements can go on with their everlasting, excessively dull and too often fruitless meetings, manifestos, reports and resolutions. They are not for us.' Inspiration for the more concealed of Kibbo Kift rituals came from a range of hermetic sources including the writings of

Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley (; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the pr ...

Activities

Those who joined the Kibbo Kift had to sign up to a lengthy covenant, which set out some great Utopian ideals. In many aspects it resembled American President Woodrow Wilson's fourteen-point blueprint for world peace at the close of the Great War. The establishment of a League of Nations Union as well as H. G. Wells's more far-reaching call for a World State were key touchstones for Kibbo Kift policies. A shorter, more personal, 'Declaration' abbreviated the covenant and was used especially for younger members: :I wish to be Kibbo Kift and to :#Camp out and keep fit :#Help others :#Learn how to make things :#Work for world peace and brotherhood'' Kinsmen and women were organised into 'Things' (districts), Clans (groups), Tribes (groups with children, such as scout patrols or classes from a school) and Lodges (groups of adults). There was also room for 'Lone Kinsmen', who kept up with the movement through newsletters: ''The Mark'' (1922–23), ''The Nomad'' (1923–25), and ''Broadsheet'' (1925–38). Each individual took a 'woodcraft name': thus Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence was 'Lotosa' (Look to the Stars'). The correct costume had to be hand-made by each individual or 'rooftree' (family group), according to designs laid down by Hargrave. The everyday 'habit' of Saxon hood, jerkin, shorts and long cloak must have seemed outlandish in the English countryside of the early 1920s. The popular press also drew attention to the group's skimpy exercise costumes; these included brassiere-type tops for women and gee-strings or breech-clouts for men. By the late 1920s the movement's ceremonial occasions required brilliantly coloured surcoats or silk-embroidered robes, worn by the various office-holders such as the Tallykeeper, Campswarden, Ritesmaster and Gleeman. Hargrave himself was 'Head Man'. Groups devised their own local activities, such as mumming plays, weekend camps, weekly meetings and excursions to museums. All groups came together for the annual Althings (assemblies), Spring hikes and Autumn Gleemotes (festivals). The Kibbo Kift's central activities, hiking and camping, were elevated to the level of a spiritual exercise: all marked by colourful and impressive ritual, couched in language reminiscent of Norse Sagas and rich in Saxon archaisms. Hikes could be turned into 'pilgrimages', as for example in 1924 when the Kibbo Kift made a pilgrimage to Piltdown in Sussex, in homage to ' Dawn Man', a supposed early humanoid whose skull had recently been unearthed (later found to be a hoax). At the site the Kindred performed a ceremony, complete with fire rituals, psalm singing, ritual chanting and a plaster cast replica of the skull. 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. The movement included several talented art and craft teachers, including Kathleen Milnes ('Blue Falcon'),

Winifred Tuckfield Winifred is a feminine given name, an anglicization of Welsh ''Gwenffrewi'', from ''gwen'', "fair", and ''ffrew'', "stillness". It may refer to: People * Saint Winifred * Winifred Atwell (1914–1983), a pianist who enjoyed great popularity in Bri ...

('Iarmailteach'), a co-founder of the

Knox Guild of Design and Crafts The Knox Guild of Arts and Crafts was formed in 1912 by a group of about twenty art students at Kingston School of Art, Surrey, England in honour of the Liberty designer Archibald Knox. Knox had resigned from his post as Head of Design at Kingsto ...

, and C.W. Paul Jones ('Old Mole'). Consequently, the robes, regalia, tents, totems and artefacts can display an extremely high standard of craftsmanship. Hargrave designed most of the movement's official visual symbols, including the striking banners and the 'sigils' (symbols) which were made into embroidered badges by Ruth Clark for the coloured surcoats of mandated officials. His designs for Kibbo Kift banners from the late 1920s are stronger and more graphic, probably a consequence of his work as a freelance advertising artist and copywriter, principally for Lever Brothers and Carlton Studios. The direct influence of commercial designers such as Edward McKnight Kauffer and Ashley Havinden is evident in Hargrave's style.

Members

The Kibbo Kift were never more than a few hundred strong at any one time but over a thousand members signed a covenant in total. Kinsmen and Kinswomen included former suffragettes

Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Baroness Pethick-Lawrence (; 21 October 1867 – 11 March 1954) was a British women's rights activist and suffragette. Early life Pethick-Lawrence was born in Bristol as Emmeline Pethick. Her father, Henry Pethick, ...

, Mary Neal and May Billinghurst, Evelyn Sharp (her husband, the journalist

Henry Nevinson Henry Woodd Nevinson (11 October 1856 – 9 November 1941) was an English war correspondent during the Second Boer War and World War I, a campaigning journalist exposing slavery in western Africa, political commentator and suffragist."Nevinson ...

, was a passive supporter), the photographer Angus McBean, Ruth Clark, the mountaineer Mabel Barker (

Patrick Geddes Sir Patrick Geddes (2 October 1854 – 17 April 1932) was a British biologist, sociologist, Comtean positivist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning ...

' god-daughter, through whom the Kindred became involved in Regional Survey work), the explorer Millican Dalton, Roland Berrill – later a founder of Mensa, and Rolf Gardiner – a folk-dance revivalist. Many teachers and art teachers were attracted by the movement's educational aspirations. Kibbo-Kift friendly schools included Matlock Modern School in Derbyshire and the King Alfred School in North London. A major Kibbo Kift Educational Exhibition was held at Whitechapel Gallery in 1929. The 'Advisory Committee' named on the Kindred's stationery did little more than lend their names to the organisation: they included

Havelock Ellis Henry Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality i ...

Maurice Maeterlinck Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in ...

, the

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

i poet

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...

, H. G. Wells and Professor Julian Huxley.

was the exception in taking a more active interest in the group. D. H. Lawrence followed the progress of the Kindred via the letters of Rolf Gardiner, and it has been suggested that Mellors in '' Lady Chatterley's Lover'' is based on an archetypal Kinsman.

T.E. Lawrence Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–191 ...

is also said to have allowed Kinsmen to camp on his land. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Rolf Gardiner tried to link the Kindred with European youth groups (arranging for Hargrave's woodcraft books to be translated and published in Germany in the early 1920s). Although international Kibbo Kift groups appeared sporadically (the White Fang Tribe in Russia, for example) the only lasting European group was in Belgium, the Lawerce Lodge in Antwerp.

Changes

The growth of the Kibbo Kift had setbacks. In 1924, the South London co-operative lodges seceded from the movement. This was the culmination of a growing dissatisfaction with Hargrave's top-down decision-making structure and his tendency to make outlandish public claims for the organisation that deviated from the covenant and risked ridicule. in June 1924, a group of 32 signatories produced a circular leaflet stating 'That the administration of Kibbo Kift during recent months has been profoundly unsatisfactory'. At the 1924 Althing, Dr. Cullen, Gordon Ellis, and Joseph Reeves from the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society, which had supported the Kindred financially, led the formal walk out. One of the departing members, Leslie Paul, formed

The Woodcraft Folk Woodcraft Folk is a UK-based educational movement for children and young people. Founded in 1925 and grown by volunteers, it has been a registered charity since 1965 Registered Charity since 2013. and a registered company limited by guarantee s ...

, which outlived its parent organisation and still exists . In 1924, Hargrave was introduced to the theory of

. The theory was first put forward by C.H. Douglas, as early as the First World War. It was taken up by '' The New Age'' magazine which, under the radical leadership of A R Orage, enjoyed an influence out of proportion to its circulation. In the second half of the 1920s, Hargrave became progressively more preoccupied with Social Credit, seeing the Kindred as the megaphone, through which these esoteric ideas could reach the general public. By 1931, the Kibbo Kift was well on the way towards becoming a political movement with a single-minded mission: focussing on the state of the British nation and spreading the Social Credit Gospel to the unemployed ('surplus labour' in Hargrave's terms) in Britain's industrial cities. Again, the movement was split from top to bottom, but by 1932, the transformation was complete, and Kibbo Kift was no more. The Anglo-Saxon costume, camping, hiking and woodcraft were replaced by military uniform, marching and propagandising. The name was changed to the

Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...

, and later to the

Social Credit Party of Great Britain Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

. As the Green Shirts, the Social Credit Party played a role in the political street culture of the 1930s: marching, meeting and often clashing with the Black Shirts and the Red Shirts. The

Public Order Act 1936 The Public Order Act 1936 (1 Edw. 8 & 1 Geo. 6 c. 6) 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 (BUF). Largely the work of Home Office ci ...

, which banned the wearing of uniforms by political groups, was a great setback for a movement that relied on

agit-prop Agitprop (; from rus, агитпроп, r=agitpróp, portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in Soviet Russia where it referred to ...

, but it was

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

that provided the deathblow. The organisation was wound up in 1951.

Legacy

In 1976 ''The Kibbo Kift'' a rock musical, was put on at the

Traverse Theatre The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1963 by John Calder, John Malcolm, Jim Haynes and Richard Demarco. The Traverse Theatre company commissions and develops new plays or adaptations from contemporary p ...

for the

Edinburgh Festival __NOTOC__ This is a list of arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland. The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fe ...

. The musical, created by

Judge Smith Christopher John Judge Smith (born 1 July 1948), is an English songwriter, author, composer and performer, and a founder member of progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Initially working under the name Chris Judge Smith, he has been kn ...

and

Maxwell Hutchinson John Maxwell Hutchinson (born 3 December 1948) is an English architect, broadcaster, and Anglican deacon. He is a former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Early life and education Hutchinson was born in Grantham, Li ...

, transferred to Sheffield's

Crucible Theatre The Crucible Theatre (often referred to simply as "The Crucible") is a theatre in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England which opened in 1971. Although it hosts regular theatrical performances, it is best known for hosting professional snooker's ...

, where, produced by Mel Smith, it played to great acclaim. This flurry of interest led to the formation of the Kibbo Kift Foundation, dedicated to preserving the documentary and material archive of the movement. The surviving artefacts, costume and regalia were lent to the National Trust Museum of Childhood at

Sudbury Hall Sudbury Hall is a country house in Sudbury, Derbyshire, England. One of the country's finest Restoration mansions, it has Grade I listed building status. The National Trust Museum of Childhood is housed in the 19th-century servants' wing of Sud ...

in Derbyshire, but in 1982 they were deposited with the Museum of London. The documentary archive went first to the University of Cardiff and then the

British Library of Political and Economic Science The British Library of Political and Economic Science, commonly referred to as "LSE Library", is the main library of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It is one of the largest libraries in the world devoted to the eco ...

. In 2015 over 300 items from the Museum of London's collection were made accessible online through the museum's website. The collection features strongly in ''Designing Utopia: John Hargrave and the Kibbo Kift'' by Cathy Ross and Oliver Bennett, published by the museum in 2015. An exhibition, "Intellectual Barbarians: The Kibbo Kift Kindred", exploring the group's artistic output, ran at Whitechapel Gallery, London from October 2015 to March 2016, co-curated by Annebella Pollen and Nayia Yiakoumaki. The exhibition showcased original garments, sculptures, furniture, paintings, photographs and ephemera from public and private collections, and was accompanied by a series of public events. The exhibition coincided with the first full-length book to examine the organisation's visual style and occult beliefs. Featuring over a hundred images, ''The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians,'' written by Annebella Pollen, designed by Roland Brauchli, and published by Donlon Books, won a Most Beautiful Swiss Books award in 2015. A new generation of creative practitioners have found inspiration in Kibbo Kift. Artists and designers including Olivia Plender,

Steven Claydon Steven Claydon (born 1969) is a sculptor and musician based in London. Claydon was born in London. He has performed and shown work internationally in exhibitions at Tate Modern in London, Art Basel in Switzerland, in Düsseldorf and Portikus in ...

and Liam Hodges, as well as novelists ( Matthew De Abaitua, Kate Atkinson) and musicians (Ganser), have used Kibbo Kift ideas and imagery in their work.

References

External links

The Kibbo Kift Foundation current websiteKibbo Kift Foundation original websiteCatalogue of the papers of the Kibbo Kift Kindred
at th

of the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

.
Annebella Pollen (2016), "The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift"
''

Fortean Times ''Fortean Times'' is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. Previously published by John Brown Publishing (from 1991 to 2001), I Feel Good Publishing (2001 to 2005), Dennis Publishing (2005 to 2 ...

: The Journal of Strange Phenomena'', Issue 336, January, pp. 34–9.
Annebella Pollen (2016) "The Strange Tale of the Kibbo Kift Kindred"
''

History Today ''History Today'' is an illustrated history magazine. Published monthly in London since January 1951, it presents serious and authoritative history to as wide a public as possible. The magazine covers all periods and geographical regions and pub ...

'', 66:3, pp. 48–54 {{Authority control Non-aligned Scouting organizations Youth organisations based in England British social crediters Youth organizations established in 1920 Organizations disestablished in 1951 Intentional communities in the United Kingdom Political organisations based in England