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Social Movements and Their Supporters: The Green Shirts in England

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Mark Drakeford's book on the Kibbo Kift and the Green shirts is a book that should have be written many years ago. It helps us understand the complex nature of solutions advanced in the 30's toward depression and mass unemployment. The period is remembered for Cable Street, the National Unemployed Workers Movement, fascism, and the Spanish Civil War. The response of radical capitalism has rarely been addressed by the left or the right. Social Credit did not want to abolish capitalism, but recognised the weaknesses of that particular economic system. The study traces the development of the Green Shirts from the Kibbo Kift Kindred. As a historian I felt a certain ambiguity toward the sociological slant of this work, however one must recognise the excellent narrative and use of oral history techniques to deal with the inner life of both movements. The weakness of the book comes from a lack of in depth knowledge of the woodcraft movement that developed independently from Scouting. The realtionship between the Westlakes and Hargrave is not mentioned, nor is the link between eugenics, recapitulation theory and woodcraft in its early ideological form. Another weakness must be the simple chronological narrative Drakeford opts for. He must have gathered plenty of information on Hargrave, yet his intensely complex character is only hinted at. The elitism of the Kibbo Kift passes without too much comment, and the merger talks with the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry get no mention. This is a shame as it casts a particular light on the KKK and Hargrave. The strength of the book lies in subject. The Green shirts were the militant wing of social credit, and Drakeford has raised this fringe group before the eyes of readers of history. Drakeford has accomplished for them what CP Hill achieved for the radicals of the English revolution ie a hearing. Sociological study it may be, but it also important history.

The history of the Kibbo Kift and the Green Shirts is well documented in the book Social Movements and their Supporters - The Green Shirts in England by Mark Drakeford, Lecturer in Social Studies and Applied Social Studies at University of Wales College of Cardiff. While the first chapter is devoted to a discussion of social science methodologies, virtually impenetrable to the layman, the rest of the book is eminently readable and contains many first-hand recollections of former Kindred and Green Shirts. Published in 1997 by MacMillan Press, it can be ordered online at Amazon.