The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was formed on 18 August 1920. It was an offshoot of the Boy Scout movement and led by former Scout John Hargrave 'White Fox'.
His new group was inspired by the woodcraft ideas of Ernest Thompson Seton, but Hargrave took bits and pieces from many other progressive or esoteric ideas current at the time. His philosophy incorporated new education, theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and the theories of authors such as Patrick Geddes and H.G. Wells.
The movement was co-educaitonal and was initially supported by former Suffragettes and the Labour Movement, particularly the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society, but the Co-operators left in 1924 to form their own rival group, the Woodcraft Folk. The Kibbo Kift had close but uneasy links with the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry.
In 1923 Hargrave discovered the economic theories of 'Social Credit' invented by Major C.H. Douglas. This became an all-consuming creed for him, believing that social credit would literally save Britain and the world from impending disaster. From the late 1920s the Kibbo Kift were gradually reshaped to become the militant 'storm-troppers' of the Social Credit movement. As such the group acquired a new militaristic aesthetic and changed their title to the 'Social Credit Party of Great Britain, aka 'the Greenshirts'.
However the woodcraft name Kibbo Kift survived and Hargrave always saw his various organisations as different evolutionary stages of the same body, led by him. The Social Credit Party party was dissolved in 1951 after Hargrave had unsuccessfully tried to revive it after the Second World War. the Kibbo Kift's legacy of papers and artefacts passed to the Kibbo Kift Foundation