The Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was a political party in the United Kingdom. It grew out of the Kibbo Kift, which was established in 1920 as a more craft-based alternative for youth to the Boy Scouts.

Development

The organisation was led by John Hargrave, who gradually turned the movement into a paramilitary movement for social credit. With its supporters wearing a political uniform of green shirts, in 1932 it became known as the Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit and in 1935 it took its final name, the Social Credit Party. The leadership stated that they had formed the party after a series of independent candidates, espousing various forms of Social Credit, had sought election and they feared that this proliferation of interpretations could lead to the ideological message being confused and weakened.

The party stood a single candidate in the 1935 general election, Wilfred Townend, who polled 11% of the vote in Leeds South. There were an additional two Independent candidates who stood advocating a National Dividend; Reginald Kenney in Bradford North and H.C. Bell in Birmingham Erdington.

The party began to decline when political uniforms were banned by the Public Order Act 1936. This short-lived group was based in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where it was active in local politics. and Sir Oswald Mosley, in 1928-30 a member of the Labour Government but later the leader of the British Union of Fascists. Rolf Gardiner had published articles by both Hargrave and Douglas in his journal Youth although this was during the 1920s and he had no formal links to the Social Credit Party.

References

  • Catalogue of the Youth Movement Archive (including the papers of the Social Credit Party at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.
  • Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit Archives