British
TERRITORIALS AND VOLUNTEERS

An Introductory Overview

Britain has had a long history of reliance on amateur, part-time soldiers to supplement the standing Regular full-time forces for defence of the realm. These forces were often assembled as needed for defence against invasion or for maintaining domestic order. Their history and constitution is complex since terms of service and liability for call-up varied greatly. For a full picture of all classes of amateurs, see the Militia, Volunteers, and Home Guard. Sometimes mistaken as part-time auxiliaries, the "Fencibles" of the American and French Revolutionary periods were actually regular army battalions recruited for home service only.

A French invasion scare in 1794 led the government to pass a bill inviting the county Lord Lieutenants to raise troops of volunteer cavalry composed of gentlemen and yeomanry. The latter were tenant farmers and freeholders. By 1798 every county had raised several such troops, and one (the Castlemartin Yeomanry Cavalry, later the Pembrokeshire Yeomanry) had actually earned a unique battle honour for repelling the last invasion of Great Britain -- at Fishguard on the Welsh coast. This was also the only battle honour ever awarded to the British Army for an action in Britain.

In 1816 all Volunteer units were disbanded, and the yeomanry were reduced, many serving for years without pay. The yeomanry continued to play an important role in the maintenance of law and order until the establishment of local police forces.

The major reorganization of 1908 which saw the abolition of the Militia also witnessed the consolidation of the yeomanry and volunteers into the Territorial Force. The yeomanry regiments kept their titles, but most of the infantry battalions were renumbered consecutively after the regular battalions (1st and 2nd) and Special Reserve (3rd and sometimes 4th). Thus the 1st VB of The East Yorkshire Regiment became its 4th Battalion. A notable exception was the all-Territorial London Regiment, which at its peak consisted of 34 battalions. (The 1st through 28th were so designated in 1908, and the remainder were short-lived units during the First World War.) In 1916 the London battalions affiliated with regular regiments while retaining their titles, and by 1939 the London Regiment had ceased to exist. The Territorial Force did not originally extend to Ireland or the UK dependencies of the Isle of Man and Channel Islands, but in 1947 TA units were formed in Northern Ireland from war-raised battalions.

The Territorial Force was mobilised in August 1914, whereupon its units became full-time combattants on a par with the regular army. Territorial Force units were disembodied during demobilisation in 1918 and reconstituted in 1920 as the part-time Territorial Army.

As war clouds loomed, Britain belatedly began to reorganize its army reserves for conflict. In 1938 many Territorial Army infantry battalions converted to a search light role, and in 1940 all such units transferred to the Royal Artillery. The government decided in early 1939 to double the size of the Territorial Army, and on 31 March 1939 the War Office authorized the "duplication" of all units. Thus The East Yorkshire Regiment, which had only one T.A. battalion, the 4th, began to form a 5th Battalion as its duplicate. (Other forms of notation were less common; for example the duplicate of the 6th Bn, The Queen's Royal Regt was the 2/6th Battalion.) The Territorial Army mobilised on 1 September 1939, its units embodied and lost all independent distinction from the regular army for the duration of the war. When the army demobilised in 1946, its former T.A. units were temporarily suspended.

The Territorial Army was reconstituted on 1 January 1947 as a part-time reservist force largely in the same form as had existed in early 1939. Duplicate units were either formally disbanded or merged with their parent unit. In some instances when a duplicate unit had particularly distinguished itself in the war, its title was preserved after 1947. Thus the 5th Bn of The Buffs, duplicate of the 4th, merged with its parent to become the 4th/5th Battalion. A few units emerged in new roles, such as The Artists Rifles, which in 1939 had been a battalion of The Rifle Brigade, and after the war became the 21st Special Air Service Regiment.

The T.A.V.R in 1967

In the yeomanry, where there had once been more than sixty regiments, a single new "Volunteer" regiment was created, preserving at the squadron level the traditions and badges of four historic regiments. The remainder regouped into fifteen "Territorial" regiments in an infantry Home Defence role. Some yeomanry identities were preserved in the artillery, engineers and signals.

In the infantry, brigade groupings of regular regiments had been substituted for the regiments in 1951 as the "corps" basis for recruitment, training and cross-posting. These brigades became the structure for the formation of new volunteer battalions, one per brigade. Thus, all the T.A. battalions of the regiments of the Lancastrian Brigade formed companies of the single-battalion "Lancastrian Volunteers". For example, the 5th Bn of The King's Regt became D Company (King's) of the Lancastrian Volunteers. In some instances the regular battalions of a brigade had been reorganising during the period 1964-68 into a single "large" regiment of up to five battalions, whereupon the new volunteer unit became a numbered battalion of the new regiment. For example, all the former T.A. battalions of the Home Counties Brigade became companies of 5th (Volunteer) Battalion, The Queen's Regiment.

Due to general outcry against the loss of the historic Territorial Army, the government reluctantly conceded the creation of a "TAVR III" class of reserves called "Territorials" which vaguely perpetuated the titles of T.A. units. But all of these were effectively disbanded on 1 January 1969. Cadres of these units (an officer and a few men) were kept on the Army List in order to perpetuate regimental names and traditions, and serve as a possible framework for future expansion.

Subsequent expansions of the reserves (which formally reverted to the designation "Territorial Army" in 1982), notably in 1975 and 1986, led to a gradual shuffling of companies within battalions. These companies which preserved pre-1967 regimental identities, managed to sort themselves back into traditional regimental groupings. For example, the Yorkshire Volunteers, which in 1992 consisted of three battalions, broke up and redesignated its units as volunteer battalions of the three regular Yorkshire regiments. The reorganisations of the early 1990s also witnessed the first T.A. use of the "2nd Battalion" designator, previously reserved for regulars. Thirty years after the emasculation of 1967 the regimental system had almost totally re-asserted itself. Going somewhat against this trend was the re-creation of the all-volunteer London Regiment. While the original had as many as 34 battalions, in its resurrected form it consisted only of four companies (including, for example, The London Scottish, which had been in the 51st Highland Volunteers).