Il Kibbo Kift: la “prova di vigore” di uno scout modello e ribelle

di Francesca Bottin
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 25 (2007), p. 15

The Kibbo Kift was an English youth organisation founded in 1920 by John Hargrave, a charismatic ex Scout Commissioner. Expelled from Baden-Powell’s movement because of his pacifist and non-conformist tendencies, he created with a small group of anti-war Scoutmasters, an alternative and very different group, where ideas of world peace and regeneration of urban man replaced nationalism and militarism. Based on the woodcraft principles of the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, and recognized as the only youth association able to give equal opportunities to female members in that era, the Kibbo Kift developed as a woodcraft movement, against the Scout’s world, until 1931. Then its leader transformed it into a propaganda machine for the Social Credit party. The organisation was officially wound up in 1951.