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Redskins in Epping Forest: John Hargrave, the Kibbo Kift and The REDSKINS IN EPPING FOREST: JOHN HARGRAVE, THE KIBBO KIFT AND THE WOODCRAFT EXPERIENCE BY JOSEF FRANCIS CHARLES CRAVEN M.Phil A thesis submitted to the University of London for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History University College London Gower Street London SEPTEMBER 1998 1 ABSTRACT This thesis attempts to locate and explore the world of the Kibbo Kift, a camping and handicraft organisation established in 1920, by John Hargrave. The Kibbo Kift proved to be the most controversial, complex and colourful component of the English Woodcraft movement. The aim of this thesis is three-fold. First, to explain what is meant by the term Woodcraft and to examine the varied cultural influences that lay behind its growth in Edwardian England. Second, to give a more balanced and detailed historical account of the development of the Kibbo Kift, its secession from the Boy Scouts and its transformation into the Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit. Finally, it will orientate the movement within the English pro-rural tradition. In doing so, I hope to develop the idea of there being a collection of diverse and often contradictory strands within this culture, with the Kibbo Kift occupying a so-called pastoral Liberal-Transcendentalist stance, in contrast to the more agrarian Tory- Organic wing of the movement. It will be argued that the Kibbo Kift was ‘progressive’, forward looking and essentially ‘modem’, representing, in effect, a suburban interest in the inter-war countryside. However, the ultimate failure of the Kibbo Kift’s Woodcraft strategy adds to the argument that the English rural revival of this period was not as hegemonic as once thought and that pro-ruralism was limited in its cultural scope and impact. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For his expert advice, guidance and assistance I am very grateful to Professor Martin Daunton who has been an excellent support; thanks also to Dr. Matthew Cragoe, Dr. Richard Weight, Dr. Abigail Beach and Bernhard Reiger for their ideas and suggestions. I would also like to thank the staff at the London School of Economics Library for their help in exploring the Youth Movement archives and also the staff at the British Library. Many thanks must go to Diana Hargrave and Chris Judge Smith at the Kibbo Kift Foundation who very kindly allowed me access to their own private papers and to Vera Chapman (‘Lavengri’), C.S. Dixon (‘Hawk’) Ashley Lewis (‘Fleetfoot’) and the late Bill Tacey (‘Will Scarlet’) for very graciously allowing me a glimpse into their extraordinary past lives. Thanks must also go to my family and friends for all their support and encouragement. The debt I owe to my wife Sam is immense. This work is dedicated to the memory of my father-in-law Jeremy Adams, (1943-1997). I hope it would have made him smile. 3 CONTENTS: Introduction 6 PART A 38 Chapter One: The Coming of Woodcraft 38 1. Woodcraft and the Industrial Age 38 2. The Open-Air Life and the Edwardian Imagination 59 Chapter Two: Baden Powell and the Open-Air Life 75 PARTS 108 Chapter One The Coming of the Kindred 108 L The Woodcraft of Black Wolf 108 2. The Woodcraft Rebellion 115 3. The Great War Brings It Home 130 Chapter Two: The Wav of the Kindred 156 1. Inside the Lodges 156 2. The Flowering o f the Kindred 172 3. Woodcraft and Social Credit 181 Chapter Three: The Eclipsing of the Kindred 204 1. Rolf the Ranger and the Kin 204 2. The Springhead Ring or Kin Garth? 222 Chapter Four: From Kinsman to Green Shirt 251 1. The First Green Shirts 251 2. The Triumph o f Social Credit 264 Conclusion 280 Bibliography 312 4 ‘“We believe that we are doing noble work,” said Northover warmly. “It has continually struck us that there is no element in modem life that is more lamentable than the fact that the modem man has to seek all artistic experience in a sedentary state. If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes to soar into heaven, he reads a book; if he wishes to slide down the banisters, he reads a book. We give him these visions, but we give him exercise at the same time, the necessity of leaping from wall to wall, of fighting strange gentlemen, of running down long streets from pursuers - all healthy and pleasant exercises. We give him a glimpse of that great morning world of Robin Hood or the Knights Errant, when one great game was played under the splendid sky. We give him back his childhood, that godlike time when we can act stories, be our own heroes, and at the same instant dance and dream.” GK Chesterton: ‘The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown’ inThe Club of Queer Trades (London: 1905; this edn. London: Penguin 1984), p.26 “Have you ever seen the buffaloes roaming in Kensington Gardens...? Can’t you see the smoke rising from the Sioux lodges under the shadows of the Albert Memorial.” Robert Baden-Powell “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at.” Oscar Wilde 5 INTRODUCTION In 1979 an extraordinary and unique document was deposited within the archives of the Museum of London: theKinlog, or Great Log of the Kibbo Kift; the Woodcraft Kindred. Weighing some 401bs and sitting in its own carved box, the Great Log is a hand written chronicle laid down on six hundred vellum pages between two ornate pigskin covers. Yet this chronicle is of no ancient pedigree, despite its perfectly executed Ancient Briton-style calligraphy and its Anglo-Saxon metre composition: the book was actually begun in 1927. It is perhaps the one remaining and abiding memorial to a movement which once claimed that it would ‘sweep all before it’, but is rarely heard of today. So who or what was the Kibbo Kift? ‘Kibbo Kift’ comes from an Old English dialect and is reputed to mean ‘Great Strength’ or ‘Proof of Great Strength’. The name was given by one John Hargrave, the founder and leader of the Kibbo Kift. Hargrave was the inspiration behind one of the most colourful and exotic politico-cultural movements ever to have existed in Britain. Owing to the unusual nature of the Kibbo Kift and its leader, numerous myths and legends grew up around it, many of them home-grown, such as Hargrave’s apocryphal autobiographical tale of the 'spiritual' genesis of the Kibbo Kift: In my one-man tent at Lonecraft camp, on the hill top fringe of what was a splendidly majestic Buckinghamshire beechwood high above Latimer village, I made myself a jerkin and hood of Lincoln green cloth. When Will, the plowman from Black Farm caught sight of me in my outlandish outfit, leaping helter-skelter down the steep hillside from one humpy rabbit warren to the next at break-neck speed, like some long distance lung-gom-pa lama of Tibet in a desperate hurry, he brought old Blossom to a halt with a quiet ‘Woo then, woo lass’ and shouted over to his boy: ‘Cor lummy - charlie! - ‘Ere comes Robin - bloody - Hood!1 6 The next fifteen years or so were to see even stranger sights, not only in the villages around Latimer but all over the Home Counties and beyond, into Dorset, Devon and north up into the Midlands, the Peak District and the North- West in Lancashire and Manchester. ‘Robin ‘Ood’ was gradually to find his ‘Merry Men’ and together they set off on a great ‘Crusade’ of Hiking and Camping, in the name of Health, World Government, and International Peace. Wearing medieval-style costumes, hoisting beautifully crafted banners, flags and standards, they struck the onlooker as being a highly organised and technically very proficient body of hikers, who were making hiking and camping into an art-form. Disciplined to an inordinate degree by strict ritual, both the men and women of the Kibbo Kift could be seen congregating at railway stations on a Friday evening, or a Saturday morning, before donning rucksacks and trekking off into the surrounding countryside for the weekend. Some hikes would be more strenuous than others: a ‘social hike’ would be designed to appeal to and cater for, friends, families and interested observers. Songs and shouts would often accompany them on their ten to twelve mile hikes. Other more arduous exercises were designed to test strength, endurance and initiative and could last anything up to seventy two hours, covering some twenty to thirty miles a day. Even at the dead of night, one might have caught a glimpse of strange lights signalling in the darkness, as hooded figures in green, silently slipped through woods and fields. Hargrave gathered about him a loyal and dedicated band of young men, women, adolescents and children, who forsook their everyday names and were instead invested with a special ‘Woodcraft’ name, often ‘Red-Indian’ in derivation, which underlined the comradeship of the group. (Remembering their days with the Kibbo Kift, many old members recalled that, in many instances one never got to know the ‘real’ names of even close friends until after the end of the Kibbo Kift.) Hargrave also had the ability to enthuse older people who chose to lend non-active support. As shall be seen, he garnered a healthy collection of distinguished patrons. Hargrave was known to all as ‘White Fox’: it was a name that preceded the Kibbo Kift and, as we shall see, it was a name already familiar to the first generation of boys who had joined Robert Baden-Powell’s ‘Boy Scouts’ in the years before the Great War.
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