A Mass Movement

Abstract

C.A. Tacey was one of those leading Green Shirts who grew to prominence and power from his involvement as a junior member of the Kibbo Kift. He first learned of the Kindred through a warning delivered by his local Scoutmaster in Putney against a movement which was ‘subversive, unChristian and unpatriotic’. Never one to pass up the chance of excitement, the warning motivated him to follow up a contact address for the Kibbo Kift in a magazine of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry. Impressed by the encouraging response received, he cycled from Putney to the 1927 Youth Exhibition at Crystal Palace and took away a copy of The Great War Brings It Home. The picture of ‘a civilisation on the wrong track, with a more natural life needed to prevent degeneration of the stock’ appealed to him immediately. Within the local Tribe which he then joined, the most enduring impression was of the camaraderie of the Kindred and their belief in themselves — ‘They were to be a seminal force in the new society, the spearhead of a new movement, steering society in a new direction. The whole movement regarded itself as an elite with a secret it wished to make public.’

‘We need a well directed revolutionary fury. …’

(John Hargrave, 1933 General Assembly)