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 (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-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 The Scout Association is the largest organisation in the Scout Movement in the Scouting in the United Kingdom, United Kingdom. Following the rapid development of the Scouting, Scout Movement from 1907, The Scout Association was formed in 1910 ...

. 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 and

Camping Camping is a form of outdoor recreation or outdoor education involving overnight stays with a basic temporary shelter such as a tent. Camping can also include a recreational vehicle, sheltered cabins, a permanent tent, a shelter such as a Bivy bag ...

, had become disenchanted with the increasingly militaristic tendency in The Boy Scouts Association after

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. Soon after the formation of the Kindred, Hargrave was expelled from The Boy Scouts Association by its chief, Robert Baden-Powell. 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 is the concept of an ideal state of peace within and among all people and nations on Earth. Different cultures, religions, philosophies, and organizations have varying concepts on how such a state would come about. Various relig ...

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

nationalism Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Theory, I ...

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 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 The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...

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 Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

Ernest Thompson Seton Ernest Thompson Seton (born Ernest Evan Thompson; August 14, 1860 – October 23, 1946) was a Canadian and American author, wildlife artist, founder of the Woodcraft Indians in 1902 (renamed Woodcraft League of America), and one of the foun ...

(also a key part of the early

Scout Movement Scouting or the Scout Movement is a youth movement which became popularly established in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the Scout method of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities, including ...

). Hargrave also imported into the movement his fondness for 'symbology', art and ritual – drawing his ideas on art from

Jane Ellen Harrison Jane Ellen Harrison (9 September 1850 – 15 April 1928) was a British classical scholar and linguist. With Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, Harrison is one of the founders of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. She ...

, 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 ''The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion'' (retitled ''The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion'' in its second edition) is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir ...

''. 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 in the 1920s and 1930s by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made t ...

, 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, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. 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 Points The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress ...

, a blueprint for world peace at the close of the Great War. The establishment of a

League of Nations Union The League of Nations Union (LNU) was an organization formed in October 1918 in Great Britain to promote international justice, collective security and a permanent peace between nations based upon the ideals of the League of Nations. The League o ...

as well as

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...

'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 The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

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 ('Iarmailteach'), a co-founder of the Knox Guild of Design and Crafts, 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, Mary Neal and May Billinghurst, Evelyn Sharp (her husband, the journalist Henry 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 Scottish biologist, sociologist, Comtean positivist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban plannin ...

' 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, Progressivism, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on h ...

Maurice Maeterlinck Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count/Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in ...

, the

Bengal Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...

i poet

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...

and Professor

Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and Internationalism (politics), internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentiet ...

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 ''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' is the final novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Florence, Italy, and in 1929, in Paris, France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Ki ...

'' is based on an archetypal Kinsman. T. E. Lawrence 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, which outlived its parent organisation and still exists . In 1924, Hargrave was introduced to the theory of

social credit Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed in the 1920s and 1930s by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made t ...

. The theory was first put forward by

C. H. Douglas Major (rank), Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, MIMechE, Institution of Electrical Engineers, MIEE (20 January 1879 – 29 September 1952), was a British engineer, economist and pioneer of the social credit economi ...

, as early as the First World War. It was taken up by ''

The New Age ''The New Age'' was a British weekly magazine (1894–1938),credited as a major influence on literature and the arts during its heyday from 1907 to 1922, when it was edited by Alfred Richard Orage. It published work by many of the chief politi ...

'' 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 social credit ideas among 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, and later to the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 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, which 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 or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

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 for the

Edinburgh Festival __NOTOC__ This is a list of Arts festival, 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 ...

. The musical, created by Judge Smith and Maxwell Hutchinson, transferred to Sheffield's Crucible Theatre, 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 in Derbyshire, but in 1982 they were deposited with the

Museum of London London Museum (known from 1976 to 2024 as the Museum of London) is a museum in London, covering the history of the city from prehistoric to modern times, with a particular focus on social history. The Museum of London was formed in 1976 by ama ...

. The documentary archive went first to the University of Cardiff and then the British Library of Political and Economic Science. 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 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), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

.
Annebella Pollen (2016), "The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift"
'' Fortean Times: 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 a history magazine. Published monthly in London since January 1951, it presents authoritative history to as wide a public as possible. The magazine covers all periods and geographical regions and publishes articles of tradit ...

'', 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