Rolf Gardiner: Folk, Nature, and Culture in Interwar Britain edited by Matthew Jefferies and Mike Tydelsley is a collection of essays discussing the varied practical, political, and performative projects undertaken by Rolf Gardiner, a controversial and influential participant in the folksong and dance revival and the rise of the organic farming movement in England. Though individually authored, the essays are deftly woven together by the editors, introducing historical and biographical information early on. The essays progress chronologically from discussions of Gardiner’s youthful ambitions, to his associations with folksong and German youth movements in the interwar years, and they finish with assessments of his complex political stances during the war years and his lifelong dedication to organic agriculture. As a study of a particularly charismatic, unique, and sometimes troubling individual, this volume is also able to unravel some of the more complex and troubling cultural issues of the earlier twentieth century, which are too often swept under the rug: the influence of fascism and Nazism in Europe and Britain and the legacies they have left for us today.
The authors, coming from the disciplines of folklore, history, political science, and sociology, are able to shed light on a single historical figure and his times with the varied specialties of their distinct disciplines. The folklorist will be particularly interested in the chapter by Geogina Boyes, “Potencies of the Earth: Rolf Gardiner and the English Folk Dance Revival,” which discusses Gardiner’s sometimes tumultuous relationship with the establishment figures of the English folk dance revival. The essay illustrates his unique vision of folk dance, one which imagined Morris and Sword dance as, “‘An ancient, magical, or priestly dance’ performed by a select group of initiates which needed to be restored to its historical purpose” (75). For Gardiner, the purpose of folk dance revival was not merely to encounter a fragment or an idea of English history and heritage, but to rekindle and cultivate the spiritual and ritual realities and relationships that the dances expressed. Boyes unflinchingly illustrates the dubious political paths which Gardiner’s approach to folklore and culture led him in his pursuit of this idea, paths which at times skirted dangerously close to the influence of the regime of National Socialist Volkskunde in Nazi Germany. She also explores his influence on the emergence of the Morris Ring and the development of Morris dancing as a particular kind of male sociability. Boyes’s historical analysis of these developments shed light on the evolution of folk dance revival beyond the polite intellectual circles where collection and accurate representation were paramount, into social groups where it became a vehicle for developing social bonds and meanings.
The authors of all the essays assiduously delve into these problematic aspects of Gardiner’s projects and politics, illustrating how his endeavors in youth movements, folk dance, and organic farming embraced both inspiring actions and troubling essentialisms. By considering these tensions within the context of Gardiner’s own life, the authors have also introduced (perhaps unintentionally) an implicit critique of our approach to these movements today, which remain culturally influential but usually politically unproblematic. Dan Stone’s chapter, “Rolf Gardiner: An Honorary Nazi?”, tells us that “Those who seek to decouple a belief in health and environmental benefits of organic farming from a broader ‘blood and soil’ philosophy can do so successfully today.” However, Matthew Jefferies and Mike Tyldesley also go on to say that some of Gardiner’s contributions to the green movement still retain popular currency in contemporary times, if different meanings. Quoting David Matless’s book Landscape and Englishness, they describe how Gardiner’s “holistic and organic” approach to green issues, distinctive in his own time, is now almost iconic: “a concern for wholefood, folk culture and the mutual constitution of living organisms through organic cycles is perhaps more familiar today than a faith in the capacity of the state to generate a modern beautiful landscape” (175).[1] This comparison suggests that current popular formulations of green worldviews take part in the legacy of Rolf Gardiner’s unique and complex historical outlook.
Though the authors do not raise the issue explicitly, these comments suggest to the folklorist, historian, or social scientist interested in contemporary environmental issues how important it remains to critically consider the rhetorics employed by contemporary green movements and the conscious and unconscious motivations behind them. Though it might seem a foregone conclusion to assume that Gardiner’s right wing political agenda has not percolated into the contemporary green movement, it is worth examining the essentialisms that underlie these surviving popular associations with green living. If there is one thing that this book should suggest to the contemporary reader, it is a reminder that the relationships between folklore, nature, and culture have had deep, complex, and sometimes dark historical interconnections, and that they could have so again. Green movements, and folk movements, do not always belong to the left, and as this volume has done, it is worth examining in detail how the back-to-the-land response to modernity and industrialization could take on right-wing political agendas in Rolf Gardiner’s time, and how it could in our own.
[1] Matless, David. Landscape and Englishness. Reaktion Books, Limited., 1998
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[Review length: 850 words • Review posted on August 29, 2013]