The Spirit of Robin Hood - The Kibbo Kift by Olivia Plender

The Spirit of Robin Hood (from the Kibbo Kift song book) The spirit of Robin Hood came down All clothed in Lincoln green And though he went o’er hill and town By no man was he seen. Through fell and dale, Through fog and smoke, No answering call to his awoke, For the good in man was turned to bad And the Spirit of Robin Hood was Sad. Where forest and heath erstwhile had stood He saw but grime and smoke; Weird clothes replaced good cloth and hood And then the spirit spoke: “Where are the men in all these towns Who follow the luring call of downs?” But a silence seemed to greet his call And the spirit was sad for each and all. Then swiftly an arrow passed o’er head And cleared the smoke in twain. “The Archers of my time” he said “are thriving here again”. With jerkin green and staff in hand They forced their way across the land And to make the tally sticks agree They worked ‘neath the greenwood tree. The spirit of Robin laughed aloud To see such men on earth. He knew these few would lead the crowd To clearness and rebirth. He saw a time, a coming day Where men should have time for work and play: So up he took their Archers song And hiked with the Kibbo Kift along. In August 1920 The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was established by a renegade group of boy scouts led by the charismatic John Hargrave. This now largely forgotten movement was short lived, laden with mysticism and bordered on being a religious cult for whom camping was a spiritual activity, but they defy categorisation having evolved in the 1930s into a uniformed paramilitary group (Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit) and later a political party (the Social Credit Party of Great Britain). At their inception, the Kibbo Kift were intended as a left wing alternative to Baden Powell’s conservative Boy Scouts, for a generation disillusioned by World War One and the machine age. The 26 year old John Hargrave, known as White Fox, joined forces with the Co-operative movement and veterans of the campaign for women’s suffrage (including Emmeline Pethick Lawrence), becoming ‘Head Man’ of this new society, which unusually admitted women as well as men. Early on they took an interest in traditional left wing pursuits such as naturism, vegetarianism and theosophy, however his leadership style was autocratic and in 1924 the co-operators left to establish the Woodcraft Folk along more democratic lines (and are still going today). Hargrave’s Kibbo Kift was intended as a vanguard that would show people the way out of the spiritual and physical inertia that resulted from modern urban living. They believed in open-air education for children, training in woodcraft as a means of gaining a healthy body and mind, disarmament of all nations as well as a number of obscure economic policies that would result in world peace. Along with most of the Kindred Hargrave had a day job, working as a commercial illustrator and artist during the week and heading off for the countryside each weekend clad in peculiar costume: Saxon style Jerkin, Green Hood and a series of futurist inspired colourful capes and smocks for ceremonial use. These surcoats or silk-embroidered robes were worn by the various office-holders such as the Tallykeeper, Campswarden, Ritesmaster and Gleeman, as well as Head Man. Each member took on a Native American Indian style Woodcraft name and yet stylistically their regalia hovers between the distopian future of the British science fiction film ‘Things to Come’ (1936) and Ruskin or William Morris’s arts and craft visions of a medieval utopia. The black and white photos that record these occasions show women and men (with the clipped moustaches and military style hair cuts of the 1920s) wearing outlandish geometric felt smocks, next to decorated teepees and clutching hand carved staffs. Appropriately Hargrave had spent some of the formative years of his childhood in the Lake District - his Quaker father was a moderately successful landscape painter - which is perhaps where he absorbed some of Ruskin’s peculiarly English Christian socialism, laden with nostalgia for a pre-industrial age. Throughout the 1920s the Kindred indulged in a variety of folk revivalist activities, from mumming plays to archery, at the ceremonial occasions, such as Gleemote and Althing, which marked the different times of year; but all this was abandoned when Hargrave announced the ‘great work’ that he had been preparing them for, influenced by the ideas of Major C.H. Douglas, who advocated a method of economic reform called ‘Social Credit’. This became their central tenet and they abandoned camping and took to the cities, taking part in the hunger marches and agitating for change wearing the new ‘Green Shirt’ uniform. Clashes with Oswold Moseley’s Black Shirts followed and the more notable incidents during this phase of the movement included the burning of an effigy of the governor of the bank of England outside the Royal exchange, as well as the actions of the appropriately named Ralph Green. On 29 Feb 1940 Green fired an arrow through the window of number 10 Downing Street with the words ‘Social Credit is Coming’ written on the shaft. When an act of parliament was passed banning political groups from wearing uniform in public places, the movement ran into trouble and numbers dwindled during the Second World War. Hargrave finally wound the organisation up in 1951 and retreated into mysticism, by becoming a faith healer. The legacy of this movement is as hard to pin down as their politics: Hargrave’s style of charismatic leadership was certainly dangerous and during the 1930s some of the Kibbo Kift practices were close to those of the Nazi youth movements in Germany. But generously Hargrave can be viewed as visionary whose Kibbo Kift contained the seeds of the green movement, clothes reform and the democratisation of the arts.

Comments

[steve wilson]

Very good article, but far from being "dangerously close" to the Nazis, it was the Woodcraft Folk who discussed uniting with the fascists at their national congress in 1930 - the motion was rejected, there only being two people in favour. Above all, the Kift were pacifist, hardly close to Nzaism!