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History |
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The
Army Cadet Force is one of the oldest youth organisation’s
in the country, dating back to 1859-60.
The cadet movement is generally held to have started in the
general alarm caused in 1859 by the expectation that
France
would invade this country. The British Army was in disarray
in the aftermath of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny,
and the Government launched the Volunteer Force with a call
for 100,000 recruits to be raised and organised on a
territorial basis.
The poet
Laureate took up his pen and called the volunteers into
being with the famous poem “Riflemen Form”. The effect
was dramatic. Within a month one hundred thousand men had
joined the new Volunteers and armed by the Government
started to train. The Cadets followed shortly afterwards. In
1860 at least eight schools had formed volunteer companies
for their senior boys/masters and a few volunteer units had
started their own Cadet companies. Typical of these were the
Queen’s
Westminster
’s who placed their company of thirty five Cadets at the
head of the parade when they marched past Queen
Victoria
at the review of her Volunteer at
Hyde Park
in 1860.
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passed and with it the threat of invasion but the Cadets
continued. Many social reformers, who had the welfare of
children at heart, saw the Cadet movement as a means of
rescuing boys from the appalling conditions in which so many
of them lived. Among the most famous of these pioneers was
Miss Octavia Hill. She realised that Cadet training was
important for character building and was a valuable
instrument in the general upbringing of boys. |
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