John Hargrave

British social credit leader

John Gordon Hargrave (6 June 1894 – 21 November 1982), (woodcraft name 'White Fox'), was a prominent youth leader in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s, Head Man of the Kibbo Kift, described in his obituary as an 'author, cartoonist, inventor, lexicographer, artist and psychic healer'. He was a Utopian thinker, a believer in both science and magic, and a figure head for the Social Credit movement in British politics.

Born in Midhurst, Sussex, into an itinerant Quaker family, Hargrave was the son of painter Gordon Hargrave and his wife Babette Bing, of Jewish Hungarian descent. A bohemian childhood, spent partly in the Lake District, left him with a passion for Nature and a fierce propensity for self education through reading books and observing the world around him. In 1908, the family moved to Latimer where in 1909 Hargrave joined the First Chorleywood Scouts, a group of Baden Powell's Boy Scouts. and it attracted support from a number of progressive thinkers, including: Patrick Geddes, Evelyn Sharp, H. G. Wells, and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence. During the late 1920s and 1930s, he worked as a freelance commercial artist in the advertising industry, producing layouts for Lever Brothers, whose advertising manager Colin Hurry was a friend; and for Carlton Studios, where he worked on campaigns for Watney's and Boot's the Chemist among others.

In 1924 Hargrave was introduced to the economic theory of Social Credit, the creation of C. H. Douglas. Hargrave took up the creed with fervour, attracted by its seemingly scientific 'truth' and its sense of mission. Social Credit changed Hargrave's belief in the reformed individual as the key to a better society: the key was actually, he now believed, a reformed economic system. By the late 1920s he had re purposed the Kindred to be a 'megaphone' for social credit, bringing the esoteric economic theory to the public at large. The remaining Kibbo Kift members were transformed into a fighting force, still disciplined and healthy but now engaged in 'unarmed military technique'. He also introduced a strong element of theatricality into the Green Shirts' political protest, with ritual marches round the Bank of England, drumming, 'street chalking' and publicity stunts such as throwing a green brick into 11 Downing Street. Initially staying out of parliamentary politics, Hargrave changed his mind in 1935, re branding the Green Shirt movement as the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for the purposes of fighting the 1935 General Election. He was also impressed by the success of the Social Credit Party of Alberta (Canada). resulting eventually in a Public Enquiry. Hargrave insisted he was only asking for recognition, rather than any financial recompense, but the Public Enquiry found against him. In the 1950s Hargrave earned a living as a cartoonist, working under the name of 'Spiv' or sometimes just 'H'. His work appeared in Cavalcade, The Sketch and Time and Tide. He was commissioned to write the entry on Paracelsus for the Encyclopædia Britannica (Hargrave had published The Life and Soul of Paracelsus in 1951). He submitted a stream of manuscripts, radio plays and film scripts to producers and publishers, always searching for opportunities to realise his ideas: he continued to believe that Social Credit was the solution to the world's economic problems. John Hargrave died on 21 November 1982, aged 88 at his home in Branch Hill Lodge, Hampstead.

Hargrave married Ruth Clark, the daughter of the engineer William Clark on 28 November 1919. Their marriage produced one son although the couple were divorced in 1952. He remarried in 1968, his new wife being the actress Gwendoline Florence Gray. John Hargrave's personal papers, including his diaries and unpublished mss., are held at the British Library of Political and Economic Science. His artwork, including designs for the Kibbo Kift, work as a commercial artist and family photographs are held in the Museum of London (the Kibbo Kift Collection). Model III of Hargrave's Automatic Navigator is held in the Science Museum.