Chapter 5 Militarism, education and youth

Youth and education

From their inception, both the Navy and Air Leagues devoted considerable energy to youth and education. Prior to the First World War, the Navy League produced handbooks on naval engagements aimed at the ‘British Schoolboy’ and ran essay competitions for children on topics including ‘The Command of the Sea’.¹⁴ The league lectured at public and preparatory schools and established a number of branches in public schools. As Fleming observes, the league’s focus on elite institutions reflected both its class composition and belief that it was reaching future leaders and policymakers.¹⁵ Local branches sought to reach a wider audience among children, engaging in educational activities at elementary schools. However, such efforts occasionally met with resistance from local school boards who objected to the martial nature of Navy League teachings.¹⁶

The Boys’ Naval Brigade (BNB) represented the Navy League’s other principal pre-war endeavour involving youth. Formed from a collection of disparate naval brigades and clubs in late 1910, it was not until the league’s involvement that such brigades had any discernible organisation. Even Navy League officials described the origins of the SCC – the BNB’s successor – as ‘little more than Boys Social Clubs with a salt atmosphere, some emphasis on sea interests, and later a uniform of “naval” character’.¹⁷ The BNB was founded with a view ‘to the establishment of a Central Organisation to deal with the various Companies of Boys’ Naval Brigades’. The BNB’s committee aimed to arrange competitions between brigades, organise meetings and excursions to naval ports alongside providing advice for brigades seeking to obtain uniforms, rifles, boats and instructional equipment.¹⁸ While the BNB was designed to improve discipline among the nation’s youth, this was not the sole motivation for its establishment. Through training boys in practical seamanship, it was hoped that many would join the Mercantile Marine and Royal Navy, which would thereby decrease the former’s dependence on the ‘foreign element’, with the league calling for ‘British Seamen for British Ships’.¹⁹

Drill, training in seamanship and quasi-military activities formed part of the BNB’s early activities. As such, the brigade’s leadership was conscious about its militaristic appearance, expressing particular concern over the War Office’s objection to ‘ “armed parties” marching through the streets’.²⁰ Although other youth organisations were reluctant to be associated with the War Office, the Navy League quickly attempted to formalise links with the Admiralty and applied for official recognition of its brigades in May 1913. While this was ultimately not granted until 1919, the league declared that the brigade ensured that ‘a constant stream of eligible boys pass[ed] into the Navy … no better means can be devised for the preparation of a better class of boys for sea service than that which is now afforded’ through the BNB.²¹

The BNB played an active role in the First World War, with units acting as messengers, signal boys and coastal watchers.²² Of course, many also applied for service in the Royal Navy. By the end of the conflict, 164 officers and instructors and 3,099 boys of the BNB joined the services.²³ While such figures are not particularly striking, the league took pride in its contribution and memorialised those who died during the conflict by creating a roll of honour.²⁴ For the Navy League, the BNB’s contribution suggested that when ‘the demand for “British boys for British ships” is remembered, it is obvious that the movement is one which deserves official recognition and public support as a practical national asset’.²⁵ The BNB was finally recognised by the Admiralty as a Central Association in January 1919, formally becoming the SCC.²⁶

As part of the Navy League’s post-war reconstruction, even greater emphasis was placed on education and youth. Addressing guests of the league’s Nelson Day dinner in 1919, the Duke of Somerset noted that ‘perhaps the strangest of all England’s peculiarities is the ignorance of English people generally on the subject of its Sea Services and their vital importance to the nation, their history, and their everyday work’.²⁷ The league aimed to ‘see that the youth of this country, those who guided the studies of the youth of this country, that those who were in a position of authority at universities and secondary schools, should all appreciate properly the value of the sea to this country’.²⁸ To achieve this, the league ran essay competitions for schoolchildren, lectured in public and elementary schools and arranged trips for schoolchildren to visit the ‘great Naval and Mercantile Marine centres’. It also extended its work to universities, holding essay prizes on naval history for university students and calling for the endowment of a chair of naval history at the University of London.²⁹

The inculcation of navalist principles in educational circles was not without opposition. In 1942, The Navy recalled with regret that the pre-war SCC was ‘denied every facility in the schools controlled by the London County Council, because they were supposed to represent a militaristic tendency’.³⁰ As there were fears that cadet corps in schools had a ‘militarising effect’ on children, this is perhaps unsurprising.³¹ The ILP was a critic of the Navy League’s general propaganda work in schools, while others charged the league with ‘spreading political notions of quite remarkable narrowness among preparatory schoolboys’.³² While the league considered such remarks ‘vitriolic’, it was nevertheless satisfied ‘as they showed our lectures were having some effect’.³³

Building upon its work in schools, the Navy League was present at public events aimed at children. One such event was the Schoolboys’ Exhibition in 1929 to 1930 and 1930 to 1931, with the Daily Mail promising that boys who visited the league’s display would be ‘thrilled with the might and majesty of British sea-power’.³⁴ A ‘great number of boys’ took the opportunity to look through a submarine periscope that formed part of the league’s stall, in order to ‘see the fleet and blow up an enemy ship!’³⁵ Not all observers were so enthusiastic. Commenting on the league’s film, Keep Watch, the Daily Herald wrote that it would be ‘unquestionably dangerous in [its] effects on the impressionable minds of the youngsters’ and should not only show boys as ‘fine strapping youths’ but should include those who had been affected by the First World War, particularly the ‘disfigured and mutilated’. Such exhibits were not mere ‘side shows’ or ‘amusements’, but for the Daily Herald were being used to influence the ‘potential cannon fodder of the next great war’.³⁶

Like the Navy League, the Air League went to considerable lengths to promote aviation in educational spheres. The league ran essay competitions, provided lectures at schools, colleges and universities, and proposed the formation of a national aeronautical college on several occasions. The WAL further contributed to such activities, establishing scholarships for engineering students wishing to specialise in aviation at the Imperial College of Science and Technology.³⁷ However, the shaping of young aerial minds extended well beyond educational circles. The Young Aerial League, inaugurated in 1910, represented one of the first organisations with the sole purpose of fostering an interest in aviation among British youth.³⁸ Formed under the auspices of the WAL, its object was to ‘educate and interest children in all matters of aviation’, with lectures, essay prizes, model-drawing and model-building competitions all forming part of its activities.³⁹ Young Aerial League activities were also closely connected to youth organisations such as the Boy Scouts. The Air League invited Scouts to flying meets and races, and persuaded the Scout Association to include articles on aviators and their exploits in its publications.⁴⁰ A Boy Scout Balloon Club was formed in 1910 and a scheme was placed before the Scouts to form a branch of the Young Aerial League to be named the Boy Scouts’ Division.⁴¹ This branch aimed to provide Scouts with basic aeronautical training ‘thus enabling them to be of immediate service to their country in case of invasion’.⁴² Like the Young Aerial League, the Boy Scouts’ Division was designed to be of value to the nation in any future conflict.

The Air League attempted to consolidate such work by initiating educational schemes in schools and universities after 1918. The league contacted headmasters at a range of public schools (including Eton, Harrow and Westminster), proposing to deliver lectures on aeronautical subjects.⁴³ It also spoke at the Cambridge Union Society, received letters of support from Oxford undergraduates and attempted to secure the backing of the University Air Squadrons at Oxford and Cambridge.⁴⁴ The league even considered establishing a public school for aviation, along the lines of Wellington College, which would have ‘an aviation bias, the same way that Wellington had a military bias’, although this was ultimately abandoned.⁴⁵

Despite its endeavours, the league’s educational activities were frustrated by certain authorities. For instance, when the London County Council (LCC) chose not to adopt Facts about Flying, the league thought that this rang of a ‘distorted mind … obsessed by the principles of pacifism’.⁴⁶ Facts about Flying was hardly devoid of ideological content, with the Air League noting that the ‘receptive mind of the younger generation … is a fertile and virgin soil, in which the germs of the great principles which dominate aeronautics should be planted forthwith’.⁴⁷ The Daily Herald similarly recognised the propagandistic nature of the publication, writing that although ‘it may be unfair to regard the Air League as already the successor of the Navy League’ which preached ‘the virtues of steel and gunpowder to young Britain’, the ‘real essence of militarism’ was ‘latent’ within the pamphlet.⁴⁸

Alongside attempts to interest public schools and universities in aviation, the Air League took part in a number of public exhibitions. The league attended the Aero Exhibition at Olympia in 1929 and, like the Navy League, was present at the Schoolboys’ Exhibition in 1927, 1929 to 1930, 1931, 1934, where its section reportedly aroused ‘the most interest’ of all those present, and again in 1936.⁴⁹ The Air League also had its own junior section from the mid-1930s, with a membership of 4,500 by 1936. However, with the exception of essay, scrapbook, drawing and photographic competitions, little of the league’s work was tailored directly towards its young members.⁵⁰ Nevertheless, it continued to work with other youth organisations and received numerous requests for lectures and the provision of model aeroplanes from the Boy Scouts and the Boys’ Brigades.⁵¹ Despite this, the league acknowledged that perhaps the most important method of promoting airmindedness among British youth was not in classrooms or lecture halls, but through offering experiences of flight. In 1934, Air Review bemoaned that ‘younger folk are ill-served’ to gain flying opportunities. The article continued, ‘[b]urning with an enthusiasm foreign to his elders, the boy who has outgrown his aeroplane toys asks nothing but to be allowed to fly’.⁵² To combat this, the league established the Young Pilots’ Fund in 1935.

As flying was prohibitively expensive for many, the Young Pilots’ Fund was designed to subsidise half the costs for those who wanted to take their ‘A’ licence at a flying club and gain flying experience.⁵³ To raise funds, the league released an appeal in December 1934 which stressed that Britain’s ‘safety and progress demand that the rising generation should fly. They want to fly but cannot afford the cost … Other Governments are helping the new generation into the air; we must do the same.’⁵⁴ Air Review argued that it was not a ‘militaristic scheme’, although admitted ‘no one can deny that the ability to fly will be an asset to the country if war should be forced upon us’.⁵⁵ The fund received financial and moral support from notable figures including Lord Londonderry, in his capacity as secretary of state for air, the Prince of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of York, while the public response to the scheme was substantial.⁵⁶ Hundreds of applications were submitted by January 1935, leading Flight to declare that ‘aviation has captured the imagination of youth’.⁵⁷

To augment the work of the Young Pilots’ Fund, the Air League promoted aeroplane modelling, involving the Skybird League (created to oversee the growth of modelling clubs) in its junior section from 1935.⁵⁸ The league certainly valued the propagandistic elements of modelling, deeming it to be of ‘national importance, insomuch as it helps to spread an “air sense”’ and that it ‘is very often the means, especially in the younger generation, of producing the potential airman of the future’.⁵⁹ However, it was not until the ADCC that the Air League was able to appeal to British youth on a truly nationwide scale.

The Sea Cadet Corps and the Air Defence Cadet Corps

Addressing attendees at an SCC fundraising appeal at the Mansion House, London, Sir George Broadbridge, the lord mayor of London, declared

We must command the seas or perish as an Empire. It was vital that a constant supply of sea-minded young men should be coming forward generation by generation to take the place of those who had gone before. It was only by the Nelson tradition of patriotism, service, and self-sacrifice that the Empire could be maintained. The Navy League, through its cadet corps, would take a great part in ensuring that that tradition would be preserved.⁶⁰

Other prominent figures in attendance conceived of the corps in similar terms. Sir Thomas Inskip, the minister for co-ordination of defence, remarked that ‘I cannot imagine any more British institution than the Sea Cadet Corps … in spirit we are all sailors; we all love the sea; we all think of the sea as the element on which the Englishman lives and flourishes.’⁶¹ In elevating the navy into a distinct political symbol – based around the preservation of nation and empire – both speakers signalled that it was, for members of the SCC, something worth fighting for.

In many respects, the aims and activities of the SCC reflected such sentiments. The object of the corps was ‘to continue the training of boys just before and after school leaving age, in habits of discipline, duty and self-respect’, ‘to educate them to love the British Empire and its splendid sea traditions’ and to help boys ‘desirous of joining the Royal Navy and Mercantile Marine to attain their ambition’.⁶² The league hoped that SCC members would become ‘of practical use not only in time of peace but in time of war’ and that the training of boys in discipline, duty and self-respect was ‘essential for the welfare of the British race and for the continued prosperity of the great Empire which is bound together by the sea’.⁶³ Many within the Admiralty held similar views. By 1924, Beatty felt that the league had already succeeded in ‘instilling into the young generation the sea sense upon which the foundations of the Empire were built’.⁶⁴

In addition to offering moral and political support, the Admiralty assisted the SCC financially. Upon recognition of the SCC in 1919, the Admiralty provided a capitation grant of 2s (later 6s) per cadet which the Navy League considered to be of ‘immense help’ in maintaining the corps.⁶⁵ Official recognition meant that the Admiralty also loaned equipment such as boats, rifles and field guns to the SCC for training purposes. Officers and instructors were granted Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve honorary commissions and were allowed to wear the reserve’s uniform, while members of the corps were dressed in attire resembling the Royal Navy’s uniform. However, recognition was only granted on a number of conditions. Units had to be financially self-supporting; had to comply with any rules, regulations or orders issued from the Admiralty; had to have a minimum of thirty boys registered; and instructors had to be capable of ‘imparting elementary technical instruction to its members in an efficient manner’. Units then had to pass an Admiralty inspection and thereafter pass at least one inspection annually.⁶⁶

Despite the SCC’s value to both the Navy League and the Admiralty, the latter terminated capitation grants in 1924.⁶⁷ Although made in accordance with the War Office’s respective withdrawal of financial support to the Cadet Force in 1923, the Navy League urged the Admiralty to reconsider.⁶⁸ However, the decision ultimately lay with the Treasury. The Admiralty was certainly reluctant to terminate capitation grants, as many felt that SCC training ‘does much to strengthen the morals of those young lads, instils habits of obedience and discipline … and in many cases gives them a taste for a sea career’.⁶⁹ The Admiralty also argued that enthusiasm for the corps would be lost if ‘divested of its naval or military character’.⁷⁰ As the capitation grant was restored in 1927, albeit reduced to 3s 6d per cadet, this suggests that the Admiralty saw the value of the SCC in such terms.⁷¹

While the SCC was a nationwide scheme, units were primarily located in London and the south of England until the late 1930s. As the SCC’s official organ, The Sea Cadet, was not published until 1943, the corps’ activities were principally recorded in local and national newspapers and in The Navy. Each unit had to reach a standard of efficiency as laid out by the Admiralty, although activities varied based on location, funds, the size of units and the experience of local organisers. Despite such variations, drill, marching, seamanship, rifle training, field-gun training and physical exercise were part of most units’ activities.⁷² The SCC Executive Committee also deemed it prudent to provide units with silhouettes of British and foreign warships for identification purposes.⁷³ In addition to regular training, SCC members attended annual camps and training onboard ships such as HMS Impregnable, Implacable, Foudroyant and Ganges. Such activities combined adventure, leisure and entertainment with drill, military-style training and mock-combat scenarios.⁷⁴ Alongside this, lectures were delivered to boys on naval history and contemporary naval issues.

The Navy League’s Executive Committee was responsible for the SCC’s affairs and organisation generally, although the scheme was decentralised and local branches often handled the activities of units in their areas. The administration of the SCC continued in this manner until 1935 when the SCC Sub-Committee was formed, undoubtedly improving the efficiency of the corps’ organisation.⁷⁵ As well as funding provided by Admiralty capitation grants, the league depended upon donations, membership subscriptions, flag days and its own Nelson Day Fund. Fundraising schemes received support from members of the royal family on occasion, although the greatest single contribution came from Lord Nuffield, who donated £50,000 to the corps in 1937.⁷⁶ More potentially controversial sources included armament manufacturers and Lady Houston, the latter of whom donated £5,000 to the SCC, although such contributions seemingly elicited little opposition.⁷⁷

To facilitate training, the league produced the SCC pocket manual which contained information on the discipline expected to be maintained by members, seamanship, signalling, rifle exercises, physical drill, model making, first aid and various other topics. The manual also included the ‘Sea Cadet’s “Promise”’ that members of the corps were required to sign. This was a code of practice by which the cadet would live while serving in the corps. The cadet was required to declare loyalty to the king, officers, instructors and to his fellow cadets. The final ‘promise’ required the cadet to ‘try and follow the glorious example of Nelson and DO MY DUTY’. The league emphasised that while the SCC did not seek to ‘force boys into a Maritime career’, the manual would provide an ‘excellent grounding’ for those who wished to join the services.⁷⁸

While the Air League was active in a variety of schemes involving youth, the ADCC was not established until the late 1930s. The corps was initially proposed by Chamier to Sir Donald Banks, permanent secretary of the Air Ministry, in 1937. The aim was ‘to give the boys a uniform and discipline’ and ‘to instruct them in air matters’. Chamier, who felt that the scheme was ‘five years overdue’, argued that ‘volunteer cadets of this kind’ would be ‘an immense value to the country’.⁷⁹ Initially, the league received no official response from the Air Ministry. Accordingly, it set out the aims of the corps in more concrete terms, writing that the ‘main object of this organisation is to bring large numbers of young men between the ages of fourteen and eighteen who would otherwise be deprived of the opportunity into direct contact with aviation’. In doing so, these young men would ‘become to a great extent a reservoir of man-power for both Service and Civil aviation’.⁸⁰ From its inception, the military potential of the corps was recognised, with Chamier noting that it would make a ‘definite contribution to the security of the country’ and that ‘we could really aim for numbers of youngsters definitely trained to take an active part should war break out’.⁸¹

The corps quickly gained the backing of many senior politicians, military theorists and the Air Ministry itself. Lord Londonderry supported the ADCC, as did Lord Swinton, who thought the corps would bring ‘considerable numbers of young men into touch with aviation’.⁸² Kingsley Wood, Swinton’s successor as secretary of state for air, hoped that the corps would ‘make some of the present generation knights of the air as their forefathers were conquerors of the sea’.⁸³ This chivalric image of the aviator, and the promise of the excitement that flying could provide, were constant themes in discussions surrounding the corps. The ethos of the corps – which largely revolved around service, patriotism and duty – linked airmindedness, citizenship and a militarised masculinity among boys.

Like the SCC, the ADCC had squadrons across Britain ranging from Inverness to Land’s End.⁸⁴ There were two forms of squadrons: school squadrons, which were drawn from pupils and ‘old boys’, and open squadrons, which were recruited from local communities. Decentralisation was a key component of the scheme and so the country was divided into eight sections with an area organiser being appointed to each area. Organisers were responsible for visiting the main towns within their areas and contacting mayors, corporations, rotary clubs, chambers of commerce and local gentry to encourage them to establish squadrons.⁸⁵ The ADCC was financed by donations, an Air League central fund of £25,000 – of which £10,000 was donated by Lord Nuffield – and a capitation grant of 3s 6d from the Air Ministry.⁸⁶

The ADCC’s Executive Committee, much like the Air League itself, contained many notable political and military figures, as well as ex-servicemen, members of the press and aviation pioneers. Cadets were taught the elementary principles of aircraft engineering and maintenance, the handling of workshop tools and instruments, the general theory of flight, aeroplane identification, morse code, message carrying, meteorology, fire action, and model aeroplane making and flying. Cadets were additionally trained in ARP and given an insight into the working of the Observer Corps, Balloon Barrage companies, anti-aircraft gunnery, searchlight- and sound-locator operations, and other forms of ‘passive’ defence. Each squadron was also given instruction in drill, discipline and physical exercise. Members of the corps wore a uniform that consisted of a blue forage cap, a blue tunic (similar to that of the RAF), trousers, a black belt and chromium badges with the Air League’s logo superimposed.

Although the outward and visible signs of the corps were related to the military – drill, discipline, uniform and the organisation into squadrons and parades – this did little to dissuade boys from joining the ADCC. Cadets attended squadrons on Saturdays and at least one weeknight. That cadets devoted their leisure time to both the SCC and ADCC is important to note and suggests that, despite shifting leisure patterns and the increasing appeal of popular forms of entertainment such as cinema and dance halls, militaristic corps still had a place within the youth culture of the interwar years. Boys and young men, of course, had agency and for some this meant exercising it by voluntarily joining the SCC and ADCC. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the chance to fly that seemingly provided the greatest attraction for members of the ADCC.

In a letter to the Air League’s junior section, Chamier wrote that ‘I believe that many of you have got the idea that these Air Defence Cadets will all be pilots. I do not want to disappoint you, but it is not possible at this stage to make any definite promises like that.’ However, Chamier hoped that around 10,000 cadets would eventually have the opportunity to fly.⁸⁷ To facilitate this, boys were given gliding experience after the British Gliding Association (founded in 1929 to popularise the sport of gliding) allowed 700 ADCC members to fly at camps in the summer of 1939.⁸⁸ The corps’ leadership understood the importance of flying for boys, ‘because the interest of the Cadets would be likely to sag if they were fed entirely on books and lectures, and were denied opportunities of doing practical flying’. Camps also brought members of the ADCC together for the first time, giving them the opportunity of developing the ‘esprit de corps so necessary for a movement of this nature’.⁸⁹

The ADCC’s activities were recorded in Air Review. However, such was the popularity of the corps that the Air League created an official organ, Air Defence Cadet Corps Gazette, which published news and information of general interest to the corps. In addition, the league produced a training manual, which set out the organisation’s rules and regulations. The manual emphasised to cadets that they would not be accepted ‘unless they show themselves to be in possession of those physical and moral qualities which make them a credit to their country in aviation’.⁹⁰ Like the SCC, members of the ADCC were required to sign a code of practice declaring loyalty to their unit while also ‘honouring my King, my Country and its Flag’.⁹¹

Physical culture and masculinity

Discussions surrounding the purpose of the SCC and ADCC were frequently framed in terms of physical culture and masculinity. Speaking in 1937, Lord Lloyd observed that ‘it is now being recognised that both training and discipline are essential to the making of what used to be called in Elizabethan days a “proper man”’.⁹² Lloyd further emphasised that members of the SCC ‘were not only taught a high standard of discipline and physique but learned at the same time the noble uses to which their perfected bodies and disciplined minds could be put in the service of their fellow men and the land in which they lived’.⁹³ The Navy League had considered a girls’ SCC on several occasions, yet it ultimately rejected proposals on the grounds that the Admiralty only recognised Boys’ Naval Brigades and male cadet corps.⁹⁴

While the SCC and ADCC attempted to attract members from all classes, the leadership of the former stressed that it was ‘very harmful that the Navy League should give the impression that the type of boy they wanted for the Sea Cadet Corps was one off the street … only the very best type of boy is wanted.’⁹⁵ Nevertheless, once put in uniform, discipline was seen to follow. The Sphere described this process in the following terms: ‘In the course of a few months the average Sea Cadet is transformed from the raw material of unkempt urchin into a smart, alert, vigorous young seaman’.⁹⁶ While such transformations may have been exaggerated, life in the corps attempted to improve boys’ behaviour, with uniform playing an important part in this.

If the First World War compromised expectations of youthful and martial masculinity, this did not prevent bodies such as the SCC or ADCC from inculcating a military masculinity among boys. The Navy League wanted ‘real men of real value’ and argued that the corps was ‘the best means by which they may pave their way to manliness’.⁹⁷ Of course, as the SCC recruited boys aged twelve to eighteen and the ADCC boys aged fourteen to eighteen, masculinity and calls for ‘real men of real value’ would have meant different things to boys depending on their age. Unfortunately, there are few archival records relating to the age of either SCC or ADCC members. However, it is clear, based on photographs, newsreels, newspaper articles and reports in The Navy, Air Review and Air Defence Cadet Corps Gazette, that the age of cadets varied: each corps was a mixture of boys and young men.

SCC and ADCC training focused on physical efficiency and on preparing boys to contribute to national defence, even if the leadership of each corps emphasised the educational and character-building nature of such training. Emphasis on the quality of boys points to the importance of military efficiency, with SCC units occasionally being rejected for low standards of fitness and training.⁹⁸ Debates surrounding the physical culture of the SCC were, moreover, often imbued with military terminology. Speaking at the East Cowes Unit, Lord Jellicoe, first sea lord of the Admiralty from 1916 to 1918, told his audience that ‘if all boys in the country had the same opportunities for improving their physique, that C3 business would vanish and everyone would in time be A1’.⁹⁹

The ethos of the ADCC was similarly tied to concerns regarding the physical condition of the nation’s youth. As Peter Adey suggests, ‘young people were the susceptible figure upon which a new kind of aerial being could be stamped, and where a new form of aerial and political community could be grown’.¹⁰⁰ Adey describes the training of youth groups involved in aviation as a process involving the inculcation of the air ‘through sets of associated practices of the mobile body which had their own benefits in the training of character and importantly the “capacities” desirable for their militaristic use’.¹⁰¹ In many respects, the corps represented a ‘character factory’ of the airminded and was an important vehicle through which the Air League inculcated forms of aerial militarism.¹⁰² Young people, of course, had agency and did not passively take part in the ADCC, while the corps itself was a voluntary organisation. However, the Air Ministry certainly valued the corps for its potential to create useful, airminded and masculine citizens of the nation.

While Alison Light charted a feminised and domesticated masculinity in response to the First World War in Britain, George Mosse emphasised continuity, particularly in relation to masculinity and militarism.¹⁰³ Rather than a feminised or domesticated masculinity, the masculinity of the SCC and ADCC more closely resembled Sonya Rose’s notion of ‘temperate masculinity’. The leadership of the two corps attempted to engender a masculinity that displayed martial characteristics such as bravery and heroism, although such masculinity had to avoid the hypermasculinity of fascist youth organisations.¹⁰⁴ Despite this, comparisons were often made between each corps and youth organisations in the dictatorship countries. Reflecting on the efficiency of youth training in Germany and Italy, Lloyd remarked that ‘When I go to those countries and see what marvellous things are being done for every boy and girl under dictatorship, I envy at least that fruit – if no other – of the dictatorships of Europe’. Considering the voluntary system for recruitment in Britain, Lloyd believed that the nation would not

exist as a people very long unless we can train and do for our boys and girls what other countries have done for theirs … if they are properly trained, I promise you that you shall see growing up – without the ‘million bayonets’ of Mussolini – as fine a body of young men as will make proud the people of this country.¹⁰⁵

Increasing international tension in the 1930s brought anxieties about the physical condition of Britain’s youth to the fore and, in many respects, resembled questions of national efficiency prior to the First World War. As The Navy noted, both Germany and Italy trained ‘all their youth from the very earliest years in the use of arms, in the perfection of their bodily vigour, and in the pursuit of patriotic and exceedingly nationalistic ideals. We must do something of the same or go down to defeat in the event of war.’¹⁰⁶ Such links were also made by sections of the Air Ministry in relation to the ADCC: ‘the phenomenal success of the Air Defence Cadet Corps shows … that there is a real demand for a popular youth movement which would emulate the good side of the Hitler Youth and young Fascists’, although it was careful to stress that the corps should avoid ‘the pernicious ideology of those totalitarian bodies’.¹⁰⁷

Opening ADCC squadrons in Watford in late 1938, Sir John Salmond, retired marshal of the RAF and ADCC chairman, remarked that

The totalitarian countries have the advantage of only having to press a button and the whole nation sprang to arms, organised and equipped to the last degree. In countries like our own, where freedom of the individual has been so precious to us, the transition from peace to war is a much slower and more hesitating movement … The Air Defence Cadet Corps will train you while you are still young to make good this time-lag and to be ready and equipped at a moment’s call.¹⁰⁸

By emphasising the voluntary nature of each corps, the leadership of the SCC and ADCC attempted to avoid associations with continental and German forms of militarism – particularly conscription, national service, political repression and state authoritarianism – something disliked by both liberals and many on the political right.¹⁰⁹ As Edgerton notes, ‘military service was not seen as a civic duty but an unjust impost on youth, and a danger to freedom’.¹¹⁰ While conscription was antithetical to the development of the warfare state, and to Britain as a liberal democracy, militarism and military service were never far from debates surrounding the SCC or ADCC.

Militarism

Perhaps the most visible connection between the SCC, ADCC and the military was the wearing of military uniform by members of each corps. Uniform was able, or at least intended, to cultivate a military masculinity among boys. As Commander J. Irving, who carried out much work on behalf of the SCC, remarked ‘we dress the boy in the uniform of one of his Majesty’s seamen, which immediately makes the boy want to play the part of the man’.¹¹¹ While uniform was not necessarily able to ‘dupe unruly youths into submission’, the symbolic nature of uniform was evident to many.¹¹² As Beverley Nichols warned parents: ‘It is essential that you should realize the tremendous importance of the uniform as a war force. You will be falling into a grave error if you regard it as a mere harmless detail.’¹¹³ Uniform contributed to the ‘spectacle of military display’ in the interwar years and formed part of the ‘paradigm of how the military body is envisaged within modern warfare’.¹¹⁴ Although military uniform may have constituted a ‘soft’ form of militarism, it also undoubtedly represented an emblem of ‘patriotic’ militarism. The wearing of military uniform by members of each corps visually signalled the preparation of young bodies for military service.¹¹⁵

Navy League leaders emphasised to boys that, through the wearing of uniform, they were part of an important tradition. Speaking to the SCC’s Slough Unit, Sir Roger Keyes told boys

they were really part of the Royal Navy. The uniforms you are wearing are those of the Service … That is indeed something that should be a source of pride to you all … you are learning the meaning of good comradeship, the meaning of the Service, the tradition of the sea, and that should greatly influence your lives.¹¹⁶

Inspecting the SCC’s London Divisions, Chatfield likewise remarked that ‘by wearing the treasured uniform of the Royal Navy, you have formed a definite connection with that great Service. No uniform occupies a higher place or commands a greater respect and affection among your countrymen.’¹¹⁷ As both Keyes and Chatfield’s speeches indicate, uniform was used to inculcate principles of duty, discipline and a sense of collective identity among members of the SCC.

The ADCC’s uniform was similarly used to foster a sense of belonging and identity among members and associated its wearers with the modernity of the RAF. In his study of the flyer during the Second World War, Martin Francis describes how the distinctive blue RAF uniform provided a ‘beguiling emblem of the flyer’s allure’, associated with bravery, heroism and glamour.¹¹⁸ As Adey notes, such an emphasis was placed on the symbolic value of the ADCC’s uniform which was linked to ‘prestige and bravery’ owing to its likeness to the RAF’s uniform.¹¹⁹ Although the class composition of the two corps is difficult to measure, the cost of uniform would have been prohibitively expensive for some. One former ADCC member recalled, many decades later, that the cost of his uniform was the equivalent of two weeks’ wages and not all would have been willing to pay this.¹²⁰ While there was the potential for the SCC and ADCC to attract criticism for wearing uniform – particularly in working-class areas where the Scouts and Boys’ Brigade met with hostility on occasion – the numerous applications to the SCC and ADCC committees for uniform grants from distressed areas indicates that there was certainly a desire among working-class boys to be part of each corps.¹²¹

The aims, objectives and values of the SCC and ADCC were naturally shaped by the Navy and Air Leagues’ wider goals and so, from their inception, both corps had a distinctly militaristic character. In debates about militarism and the Scout movement, Springhall argues that ‘when Baden-Powell organized his Scout movement he did so with one primary motive – to prepare the next generation of British soldiers for war and the defence of the Empire’.¹²² In many respects, the same can be said of the SCC and ADCC. As Earl Howe, deputy president of the Navy League, remarked, many thought that by forming the SCC the ‘Navy League was doing all it could to encourage militarism. But surely everybody in this country must feel it a duty to try and fit himself to play a useful part if ever the need should arise. That was the finest ambition that as an Englishman one could have.’¹²³

The role of the SCC and ADCC in numerous forms of military pageants, parades and tattoos further points to connections between each corps and the military. The SCC attended important state occasions such as the silver jubilee in 1935 and the coronation of King George VI in 1937. The corps also frequently took part in popular celebrations of the navy including Trafalgar Day, Navy Weeks, the Greenwich Night Pageant, fleet reviews and warship launches.¹²⁴ While such occasions may not have necessarily elicited ‘vision[s] of duty and a sense of usefulness to the state’ among all boys as organisers hoped, they nevertheless provided many with the ‘thrill which comes with military movement’.¹²⁵ Such events offered important opportunities for the Navy League to link youth publicly to the monarchy, nation and navy. As H.T. Bishop, general secretary of the SCC, declared, the parts played by the corps ‘on many purely military and naval occasions, have shown their substance in Lord Lloyd’s claim that these boys are Britain’s answer and the boys’ own answer to the Hitler Youth Movement and the Italian Balilla’.¹²⁶ Although such occasions were unlikely to have acted as any particular deterrent to potential aggressors, the corps’ leadership clearly saw the SCC as an important instrument of propaganda.

As the ADCC was not formed until 1938, members did not feature in such a broad array of military rituals. They did, however, take part in military parades and marches in towns and cities throughout Britain.¹²⁷ They also contributed to the Air League’s celebration of Empire Air Day, selling programmes, drilling, parading and patrolling boundaries.¹²⁸ As Chapter 7 demonstrates, the presence of children and the broader militarisation of youth that formed a part of Empire Air Day led to much criticism.

The militaristic nature of both the SCC and ADCC was evident to many contemporaries. Letters to local newspapers reveal opposition towards the militaristic practices of the SCC, with one considering ‘Navy League boys blaring forth martial airs’ as a ‘menace to peace’.¹²⁹ As we have seen, the Navy League and the LNU clashed on a number of occasions; the education – and potential militarisation – of youth provided a further point of conflict. As Lloyd bemoaned in 1932, wherever the Navy League went ‘we find the League of Nations Union opposed to the ordinary doctrine of patriotism’. Referring to the SCC, Lloyd felt that it was the

only organization that is not ashamed of teaching boys to defend their country and to be proud of it … There has been for some time past a silly, sentimental idea that there is something to be ashamed of in knowing how to handle a rifle or a gun. You may call it militarism if you like. I call it the cultivation of that national spirit without which every Empire has failed.¹³⁰

This address, described by The Daily Telegraph as a ‘vigorous protest against a “sentimental” aspect of anti-militarism’, also attracted the attention of Norman Angell.¹³¹ Angell objected to Lloyd’s suggestion that the LNU ‘teaches indifference to national defence or security’. As an alternative to the competitive building of armaments, Angell instead stressed that the union relied upon international law and collective security and that it was ‘simple distortion to imply that it is the repudiation of national defence’. He concluded by stating that the ‘world has come near to destroying itself through being guided by a certain type of “national spirit”. If it is to save itself, if the nation is to be saved, it must discover by disciplined thought where that spirit has gone wrong.’¹³²

The LNU and its leading members were not alone in referring to the militarism of bodies such as the SCC, with prominent literary figures, including George Orwell, noting that the training of youth for war was a long-standing feature of patriotic organisations. Writing in 1940, Orwell reflected that

Most of the English middle class are trained for war from the cradle onwards, not technically but morally. The earliest political slogan I can remember is ‘We want eight (eight dreadnoughts) and we won’t wait.’ At seven years old I was a member of the Navy League and wore a sailor suit with ‘H.M.S. Invincible’ on my cap … On and off, I have been toting a rifle ever since I was ten.¹³³

Such views were not confined to provincial newspaper columns, associational groups or literary figures, but were also held by certain government officials. One member of the Treasury considered the SCC part of a number of ‘vile bodies which inculcated militarism in the young’ and suggested that ‘navalism is as reprehensible as militarism’.¹³⁴ The corps’ leadership was certainly conscious of accusations of militarism, insisting that the SCC was ‘not at all militaristic, in the sense particularly opposed by pacifists’ although admitted ‘they do fit boys for the service of the sea in peace or war’.¹³⁵ To assuage such criticism, the Navy League enacted measures including temporarily cancelling field-gun competitions, feeling it was ‘inadvisable to flaunt the militarism of the Sea Cadet Corps in the faces of the moderate pacifists’.¹³⁶

The ADCC committee was similarly cautious, stating that ‘care should be taken not to antagonise parents by stressing the military aspect of the scheme … The Corps was a measure of passive defence against a common danger, and should be presented as such.’¹³⁷ In attempting to distance the corps from associations with militarism, Salmond stated that

When the question of aviation cropped up it was generally the parents who stood in the way. They were nervous for fear their sons would go into a dangerous career … It must not be thought that because these boys were trained in a Cadet Corps they were any more liable to military service than boys who had not joined such a corps.¹³⁸

A history of the Air Training Corps (ATC), the ADCC’s successor, also felt that the inclusion of the word ‘defence’ in the title of the ADCC helped to ‘disarm possible criticism that it was a militant or aggressive body’.¹³⁹ However, while one of the declared aims of the league was to ‘interest these boys [in aviation]; not to militarise them’, the corps struggled to distance itself from associations with militarism.¹⁴⁰

The activities of the ADCC did little to assuage growing fears of a militarisation of the country’s youth or that the Air League was attempting to inculcate principles of discipline and militarism within schools. In 1939, for instance, the LCC’s Education Committee refused to give permission to the Air League to form a squadron within one of its secondary schools. This was based on an Education Committee resolution passed in 1935 that cadet corps would not be permitted in secondary schools.¹⁴¹ While most committee members did not disagree with the objects of the ADCC, they felt that their job was to ‘educate the children, and not turn them into soldiers’.¹⁴² However, there was opposition from within the committee regarding the decision. John Hare, an alderman of the LCC, suggested that ‘recent changes in the international situation make it most undesirable that this Committee should hamper our air defences’. Hare went further by remarking that ‘such views as those which the Socialist majority held in 1935 – that Cadet Corps in schools would make youths militaristic – were held only now by “eccentric old women and cranks”’.¹⁴³ The LCC did not rescind its decision, although opposition to the resolution clearly reflected a growing concern about the nation’s security.

Recruitment

As international tensions increased in the late 1930s, questions surrounding the function and purpose of each corps took on renewed urgency. Following the Munich Conference in September 1938, the SCC’s Executive Committee turned its focus to the role of the corps in the event of war. Shortly after the conference, Bishop reported that various SCC units had enquired how they could best be utilised during any potential conflict. After liaising with Admiralty officials, it was agreed that a roster of cadets aged seventeen and over would be ‘made available to the Admiralty who would be glad to accept such cadets for the Sea Service’.¹⁴⁴ Lord Lloyd also ensured that cadets would undertake compulsory service in the Royal Navy, noting that the SCC ‘besides supplying a regular stream of recruits for the Sea Services, provides, for the service of the Crown, a body of partially trained young men, available in any emergency’.¹⁴⁵

Duty, loyalty and service were key themes in discussions surrounding the SCC in the late 1930s. An advert published in The Times in October 1938 stressed that the ‘recent [Munich] crisis has made clear the gaps in our defences. These must be filled … it is the purpose of the Navy League Sea Cadet Corps to equip boys for these vital Services; to train them to uphold the age-old traditions of loyalty and duty.’ The SCC, the article continued, ‘is moulding Britain’s sons to be Britain’s strength and safety’.¹⁴⁶ There was undoubtedly enthusiasm amongst SCC members to serve the country during periods of emergency.¹⁴⁷ Following Munich, Lloyd described a ‘stampede of all our boys who wanted to go and serve the country anywhere during the crisis’.¹⁴⁸ The Navy also noted that a large proportion of older SCC members ‘at once volunteered for active service’.¹⁴⁹ Many local units volunteered for ARP activities and acted as messengers under the guidance of ARP wardens.

In response to concerns surrounding national defence, the SCC rapidly expanded. In 1938, units more than doubled, with branches spread throughout the country. While over half of SCC units in 1931 were based in London, only a quarter of total units were located in the nation’s capital by mid-1938 with that proportion ‘diminishing as the movement grows’.¹⁵⁰ By June 1939, the corps had increased to 100 units. In fact, the rate of growth was so high that the Navy League decided to limit its expansion from June onwards to alleviate administrative pressure.¹⁵¹ Such expansion received the Admiralty’s support, with Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse assuring the league that the members of the Admiralty ‘view its activity with the greatest sympathy and will do everything they can to help it’ and that the SCC ‘is worthy of the support of the whole country’.¹⁵²

Like the Navy League and the SCC, the Air League viewed the ADCC as integral to the preservation of nation. As a leaflet issued by the corps outlined:

In its eighteen months of existence the Corps has taken about 20,000 youths, inspired them with the ideals of the great flying pioneers, with the spirit of patriotism, of service, and of mental endeavour that is vital to the continuance of our nation … The Air Defence Cadet Corps is the visible expression of Britain’s determination to continue its greatness, and of the realisation of the fact that its greatness depends on the mastery of the air by the whole of its young manhood.¹⁵³

Following the Munich Conference, Air Review warned ‘We can no longer put any faith in princes, proletariats, pacts or pacifists. We must have more aeroplanes, more men to make them and more men to man them.’ The appeal concluded by citing the importance of the ADCC, declaring that ‘We cannot get peace by wishing for it, or even by praying for it. We must be prepared, and well prepared, to fight for it.’¹⁵⁴ The function and purpose of the ADCC, especially in terms of recruitment, was a constant feature in the rhetoric and discourse surrounding the corps. Unsurprisingly, one of the Air Ministry’s primary concerns with the corps was recruitment, as was made clear in a meeting to consider Air Ministry cooperation: ‘it has to be borne in mind that our main interest in the Corps, although it has other virtues, is the recruiting aspect’.¹⁵⁵ Similarly, one of the main arguments which persuaded Treasury support was that ‘the Corps would instil air-mindedness into the youth of the country, and so stimulate a flow of recruits into the R.A.F.’¹⁵⁶ There was little doubt that the Air League intended the corps to make a direct military contribution to the nation. The league suggested that the corps was of ‘incalculable value to the whole foundations of aviation and to the whole idea of patriotic service to the State’ and would become a ‘powerful agent in ensuring an eventual superiority in the air’.¹⁵⁷

While the ambitions of the Air League and Air Ministry in the creation of the ADCC were clear, this does little to give a sense of the lived experience of life in the corps or motivations for joining such an organisation. For instance, did members of the corps see themselves as ‘aerial subjects whose destiny it would be to secure and defend the nation’?¹⁵⁸ While there is little trace of SCC members recording their experiences, a series of letters to Air Review – alongside interviews conducted by the Imperial War Museum with former cadets in the late 1990s and early 2000s – gives some indication as to why boys joined the ADCC.

Many letters and interviews expressed an interest in model making, drill and engineering, although the desire to fly was a common theme. Also striking are notions of duty, patriotism and sacrifice. Writing in April 1939, one boy recorded that his reason for joining was that ‘last September we were threatened with war. At once I realised that I knew nothing, could do nothing to defend other people or myself. Here came a chance to learn how to defend other people, myself, to serve my King and country.’ Another wrote that he wanted to become ‘a useful and worthy member of the Royal Air Force’, while yet another declared that ‘when we are all trained as pilots we’ll challenge any air force in the world’.¹⁵⁹

When asked why they joined the ADCC, one former cadet recalled that he was ‘always interested in flying’, while another remarked that ‘aircraft were the beginning and end of everything for me’.¹⁶⁰ A further interviewee stated that, after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, it ‘was obvious that things were going to get tougher … all the youth of the country started to join things. Since I was interested in aeroplanes, I joined the Air Defence Cadet Corps.’¹⁶¹ If there were concerns that the ADCC represented a militarisation of the country’s youth, then evidently many boys themselves did not object to the more militaristic aspects of the corps.

Of course, the popularity of each corps, and recruitment for the Royal Navy and RAF more broadly, also relied upon more unofficial sources. Interest in the Royal Navy and RAF was fuelled by a ‘pleasure culture’ of war, particularly through popular juvenile fiction, magazines and films.¹⁶² While literature may not have been the sole – or even most effective – vector of fostering an enthusiasm for the Royal Navy or RAF, there was still interest surrounding fictional depictions of life at sea and in the air. As Michael Paris notes, that ‘young men could still view war as exciting and glamorous was due to the heroic and romantic images of war and violence which had been so much a part of juvenile fiction throughout the inter-war period’.¹⁶³ Those serving in the SCC and ADCC did not have to wait long to experience war.

On Trafalgar Day in 1939, little more than a month after the declaration of the Second World War, Lord Lloyd sent a letter to The Times, writing that ‘each single member of the Sea Cadet Corps is fully aware of the responsibility which rests now upon him as an individual and upon the corps as a unit for proving that the traditions of the British Navy stand as firm to-day as when Nelson won his great victories’.¹⁶⁴ The purpose of the ADCC in wartime was set out in a letter from the corps’ leadership to squadron commanders in August 1939: ‘In view of the tension existing at the present time, we would remind Squadron Commanders of the desirability of placing the services of such Cadets as are available and willing at the disposal of the country’. The letter continued, ‘we have now over 17,000 organised and disciplined boys and it would seem obvious that some use should be made of them in time of need’.¹⁶⁵ The league further stressed that should the ‘Air Ministry have in mind any specific use for Air Defence Cadets in time of emergency, every endeavour will be made by the Air League to supply them’.¹⁶⁶

Conclusion

Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, the SCC had 9,000 cadets in over 100 units ‘in training for the service of their country on the high seas’.¹⁶⁷ However, considerable difficulty was faced in bringing the SCC onto a ‘war basis’. Large numbers of officers and instructors were called into service, drill halls were ‘commandeered’ by military authorities and evacuations and blackouts caused further issues for units. While several units closed, most carried on and continued to hold meetings and training exercises. ‘[M]any thousands’ of ex-cadets were already serving in the Royal Navy or Merchant Navy, while many who were of age within the corps volunteered to serve in the conflict. Boys from SCC units in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia were also serving in dominion naval and mercantile marine services.¹⁶⁸ Those not old enough to join the services carried out extensive work at coastal naval bases and in various activities relating to civil defence.

By September 1939, meanwhile, the ADCC comprised 172 squadrons. Many cadets were employed at RAF aerodromes, unpaid and largely without authority, and were engaged in a number of tasks designed to protect the nation.¹⁶⁹ This included filling sandbags, message carrying, ambulance work, filling machine-gun belts and taking part in ARP activities. Cadets also helped children at local train stations who were being evacuated.¹⁷⁰ While the military preparedness of corps such as the SCC and ADCC may have varied, the character of boys was less doubtful and many exposed themselves to danger throughout the Second World War.

Militarism was a central feature of both the SCC and ADCC – from the aims and rhetoric of each organisation to the practices and policies of both corps. The leadership of each corps emphasised the defensive and passive elements of the two movements and the centrality of education, citizenship and character-building, yet associations with militarism were inescapable. The SCC and ADCC were closely linked with a number of key military figures, and their leadership had a strongly military complexion. The lack of organised opposition to both the SCC and ADCC suggests that, if sections of society were not entirely enthusiastic, most parts of British society were willing to accept the need for the country’s youth to be trained in all things related to the sea and air. Both organisations occupied an important position in the youth culture of the late 1930s and, as this chapter has demonstrated, this points to the ongoing resonance of military masculinity, patriotism and militarism. Both the SCC and ADCC represented a militarisation of sections of British youth which continued, and indeed only intensified, throughout the Second World War.

Notes

1. John O. Springhall, ‘The Boy Scouts, Class and Militarism in Relation to Youth Movements 1908–1930’, International Review of Social History, 16 (1971): 128.

2. Melanie Tebbutt, Being Boys: Youth, Leisure and Identity in the Inter-War Years (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014 ed.), 70.

3. Scott Johnston, ‘Courting Public Favour: The Boy Scout Movement and the Accident of Internationalism, 1907–29’, Historical Research, 88 (2015): 508. Cf. Tammy M. Proctor, On My Honour: Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society Press, 2002), 86.

4. Johnston, ‘Courting Public Favour’, 508.

5. David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 55–6.

6. Johnston, ‘Courting Public Favour’, 509.

7. Melanie Tebbutt, Making Youth: A History of Youth in Modern Britain (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 90–91; Sian Edwards, Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside: Creating Good Citizens, 1930–1960 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

8. Air League Bulletin, December 1926, 5.

9. The Navy, January 1936, 25.

10. RAF Museum, X002-6909, Air Defence Cadet Corps: Rules and Regulations (London: Air League of the British Empire, 1938), 5; The Times, 6 December 1939, 6.

11. Tomás Irish and Susannah Wright, ‘Children, Young People and the League of Nations in Interwar Britain’, Historical Research, 98 (2025): 426.

12. Johnston, ‘Courting Public Favour’, 508. Cf. Paul Wilkinson, ‘English Youth Movements, 1908–30’, Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (1969): 7.

13. John Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society: British Youth Movements, 1883–1940 (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 13.

14. W. Mark Hamilton, The Nation and the Navy: Methods and Organization of British Navalist Propaganda, 1889–1914 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), 149.

15. N.C. Fleming, ‘The Navy League, the Rising Generation and the First World War’, in Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War, ed. Maggie Andrews, N.C. Fleming and Marcus Morris (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 102.

16. Fleming, ‘The Navy League’, 103–4.

17. CAC, Lloyd Papers, GLLD 17/59, Report on Sea Cadet Corps, 1940, 2.

18. NMM, MSY/6/3/5/1, Minutes of the Boys’ Naval Brigade Central Committee (BNB Minute Book), 1910–1915, The Navy League, Boys’ Naval Brigades, undated, 1–2.

19. Fleming, ‘The Navy League’, 104; N.C. Fleming, ‘Navalism and Masculinity Before the First World War’, in Negotiating Masculinities and Modernity in the Maritime World, 1815–1940, ed. Karen Downing, Johnathan Thayer and Joanne Begiato (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 256–7. See also Mary Conley, From Jack Tar to Union Jack: Representing Naval Manhood in the British Empire, 1870–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 135–41.

20. NMM, MSY/6/3/5/1, BNB Minute Book, Meeting of the BNB Sub-Committee, 14 March 1911, 2.

21. TNA, ADM 1/8384/187, Volunteer Cadet Corps and Sea Scout Associations. Letter from P.J. Hannon to the Admiralty, 21 May 1913, 1; NMM, MSY/6/3/5/1, BNB Minute Book, Meeting of the BNB Sub-Committee, 9 June 1913, 3.

22. The Navy, March 1916, 94.

23. The Navy, February 1919, 15.

24. The Naval & Military Record and Royal Dockyards Gazette, 8 March 1922, 154.

25. The Navy, October 1918, 98.

26. NMM, MSY/6/3/5/2, BNB Minute Book, 1916–1921, Meeting of the BNB Sub-Committee, 3 February 1919, 1.

27. The Navy, December 1919, 164.

28. The Navy, April 1920, 46.

29. The Navy, April 1920, 46; Parliamentary Archives, Hannon Papers, HNN/3/2, The Navy League: Future Policy, 1 May 1920, 2.

30. The Navy, December 1942, 322.

31. BLPES, NPC/4/1, National Peace Council, NPC Annual Reports, 1914–36, National Council for Prevention of War, Annual Report 1925–6, 2.

32. Nottingham Journal, 23 April 1930, 7; L.B. Pekin, Public Schools: Their Failure and Their Reform (London: The Hogarth Press, 1932), 101.

33. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 3 March 1932, 2.

34. Daily Mail, 16 December 1930, 4.

35. The Navy, February 1931, 64.

36. Daily Herald, 4 January 1929, 4–5.

37. Imperial College Archives, Imperial College of Science and Technology Annual Reports, 1908–1917, Third Annual Report, 1910, 9–10. By permission of the Archives Imperial College London.

38. The Aerial Observer, 1 October 1910, 7; Peter Adey, ‘ “Ten Thousand Lads with Shining Eyes Are Dreaming and Their Dreams Are Wings”: Affect, Airmindedness and the Birth of the Aerial Subject’, Cultural Geographies, 18 (2011): 67.

39. Northern Daily Telegraph, 13 April 1910, 2.

40. Adey, ‘Ten Thousand Lads’, 67.

41. The Daily Telegraph, 6 August 1910, 14.

42. Flight, 2 December 1911, 1040.

43. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 23 April 1925, 4.

44. Air, April 1930, 179; AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 10 February 1932, 3; 8 December 1931, 4.

45. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 6 October 1936, 2.

46. Air League Bulletin, June 1924, 32.

47. Air League Bulletin, January 1923, 113.

48. Daily Herald, 29 March 1923, 1.

49. Air, July 1929, 313; Air League Bulletin, February 1927, 5–8; Air, January 1930, 24; February 1931, 62–3; Flight, 4 January 1934, 18; The Aero-Modeller, December 1935, 58.

50. Air Review, August 1936, 17; The Aero-Modeller, February 1937, 91; June 1937, 218.

51. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 26 May 1925, 2; 12 October 1925, 5.

52. Air Review, May 1934, 36.

53. From May 1919, the Air Ministry granted ‘A’ licences to private flyers and ‘B’ licences to commercial pilots.

54. RAF Museum, Brabazon Papers, AC 71/3, Box 75, 22, Air League Young Pilots’ Fund Appeal.

55. Air Review, January 1935, 12.

56. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 26 March 1935, 1; RA, PPTO/PP/GV/MAIN2/24000/D/153, King’s Silver Jubilee, Letter from J.A. Chamier to Sir Frederick Ponsonby, 19 March 1935, 1; EVIIIPWH/PS/MAIN/2161, Air League of the British Empire, Letter from Sir Lionel Halsey to the Air League, 14 March 1935, 1.

57. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 25 January 1935, 1; Flight, 10 January 1935, 29.

58. The Skybird, October 1935, 1.

59. Air League Bulletin, July 1926, 16.

60. The Times, 20 October 1937, 8.

61. The Navy, April 1937, 103.

62. NMM, MSY/6/6/1/3, Navy League Pamphlets, ‘Navy League’, 1936, 2.

63. Navy League, Pocket Manual for the Navy League Naval Units and Sea Cadet Corps (London: The Navy League, 1939 ed.), 49; NMM, MSY/6/2/5, NLAR 1920, 15.

64. The Times, 23 May 1924, 12.

65. The Navy, July 1927, 189.

66. TNA, ADM 120/214, Memorandum Relating to the Official Recognition by the Admiralty of the Sea Cadet Corps, 3 October 1918, 2. For a sense of such inspections, see City of Westminster Archives Centre (CWAC), London, 2825/58, St Clement Danes’ Sea Cadet Corps Log Book, 1934–9, 24 June 1935.

67. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/26, NL Minute Book, MEC, 6 March 1924, 2.

68. The Times, 2 January 1923, 10.

69. TNA, ADM 1/8633/179, Sea Cadet Corps. Recognition of New Units, Minute Sheet, 1 August 1922, 1.

70. TNA, T 161/1212, Fighting Services. Navy: Sea Cadet Corps. Volunteer Cadet Corps Attached to Royal Navy Establishments; Assistance to be given to Recognised Units, 1920–1925, Letter from the Secretary of the Admiralty, 5 May 1920, 1.

71. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/26, NL Minute Book, MEC, 7 April 1927, 3.

72. For a sense of such activities on a local level, see CWAC, 2825/58, St Clement Danes’ Sea Cadet Corps Log Book.

73. NMM, MSY/6/3/6/1, Navy League Sea Cadet Corps Minute Book (NLSCC Minute Book), 1935–43, MEC, 26 April 1939, 1.

74. See, for example, The Navy, August 1922, 231; September 1938, 288 and November 1932, 342.

75. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 6 June 1935, 2.

76. The Naval & Military Record and Royal Dockyards Gazette, 1 March 1922, 138; The Navy, November 1937, 332; Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Papers of Lord Nuffield, Box 47, LN Donation Book.

77. The Navy, June 1933, 172.

78. Navy League, Pocket Manual for the Sea Cadet Corps, 42; 49; 2. Emphasis in original.

79. AL, ADCC Minute Book, Report of a Meeting to Consider a Proposed Scheme for an Air Defence Cadet Corps on a National Basis, 7 April 1938, 1–2; TNA, AIR 2/2716, Proposed Formation of Air Cadets Corps and Boy Scouts Air Patrols, Letter from Chamier to Sir Donald Banks, 19 November 1937, 1.

80. TNA, AIR 2/2716, Letter from Chamier to the Air Ministry, 7 January 1938, 1.

81. TNA, AIR 2/2716, Letter from Chamier to the Air Ministry, 7 January 1938, 1; TNA, AIR 2/2716, Chamier to Banks, 21 December 1937, 1.

82. Parliamentary Archives, Papers of the Association of Lord-Lieutenants of Counties, ALC/1/17, Annual General Meeting of the Association of Lieutenants of Counties, 8 February 1939, 4; AL, ADCC Minute Book, Report, 7 April 1938, 1.

83. Daily Mail, 27 October 1938, 5.

84. TNA, AIR 2/3168, Employment of Air Defence Cadet Corps in Emergency, Letter from Chamier to the Air Ministry, 11 September 1939, 1.

85. Air Review, September 1938, 11.

86. TNA, AIR 19/45, Lord Nuffield: Gift to Central Fund of Air Defence Cadet Corps; Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Papers of Lord Nuffield, Box 47, LN Donation Book.

87. Air Review, June 1938, 44.

88. Hansard, HC, 5th series, vol. 334, cc. 1242–3 (1 March 1939).

89. Air Review, October 1939, 23.

90. RAF Museum, X002-6909, ADCC: Rules and Regulations, 5.

91. International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive, Air Defence Cadet Corps Membership Card: Alan North.

92. The Navy, April 1937, 106.

93. The Times, 12 November 1937, 4.

94. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/26, NL Minute Book, MEC, 8 December 1927, 3.

95. NMM, MSY/6/3/6/1, NLSCC Minute Book, MEC, 10 November 1938, 1.

96. The Sphere, 10 April 1937, 78.

97. The Western Morning News, 24 May 1938, 7; The Navy, December 1917, 161.

98. See, for example, NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 24 November 1932, 3.

99. The Navy, August 1933, 247. This categorisation was based on the War Office’s instructions in 1916 for medical examinations to be conducted on an A-B-C system of fitness for military service. ‘A’ recruits were deemed fit for general service, while ‘C’ recruits were considered suitable for domestic service only. J.M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 ed.), 50.

100. Adey, ‘Ten Thousand Lads’, 67.

101. Adey, ‘Ten Thousand Lads’, 66.

102. Peter Adey, Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 26.

103. Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars (London: Routledge, 1991); George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 107–9. For a discussion, see Michael Roper, ‘Between Manliness and Masculinity: The “War Generation” and the Psychology of Fear in Britain, 1914–1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005): 343–62.

104. Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 181; 195.

105. The Navy, April 1937, 106–7.

106. The Navy, July 1937, 193.

107. TNA, AIR 2/2716, Proposed Increased Contribution to Air Defence Cadet Corps – Note on Air League Proposals, 14 July 1939, 2.

108. The Nottingham Evening Post, 17 October 1938, 5.

109. Matthew Johnson, Militarism and the British Left, 1902–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 103.

110. David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History (London: Allen Lane, 2018), 46.

111. L.J. Collins, Cadets: The Impact of War on the Cadet Movement (Oldham: Jade Publishing Ltd, 2001), 56.

112. Stephen Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth, 1889–1939 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1981), 134.

113. Beverley Nichols, Cry Havoc! (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933), 224.

114. Jane Tynan, British Army Uniform and the First World War: Men in Khaki (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 11.

115. Jane Tynan, ‘A Visual and Material Culture Approach to Researching War and Conflict’, in The Routledge Companion to Military Research Methods, ed. Alison J. Williams, K. Neil Jenkings, Matthew F. Rech and Rachel Woodward (London: Routledge, 2016), 305; Tynan, British Army Uniform, 159.

116. The Navy, March 1939, 100.

117. The Navy, August 1921, 258.

118. Martin Francis, The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force, 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 23.

119. Adey, ‘Ten Thousand Lads’, 71.

120. Imperial War Museum (IWM), London, Sound Archive, Acc. No. 17822, Reel 1, Francis John Cretchley May; Acc. No. 10199, Reel 1, Paul Vincent Bartley Longthorp.

121. Tebbutt, Making Youth, 85. See, for example, NMM, MSY/6/3/6/1, NLSCC Minute Book, MEC, 22 April 1936, 1; 25 February 1937, 3; 18 November 1937, 2–3; AL, ADCC Minute Book, MEC, 5 January 1939, 2.

122. An argument initially advanced by Samuel Hynes, Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (London: Pimlico, 1968), 27; John Springhall, ‘Baden-Powell and the Scout Movement Before 1920: Citizen Training or Soldiers of the Future?’, The English Historical Review, 102 (1987): 935.

123. The Navy, July 1938, 208.

124. CWAC, 2825/58, St Clement Danes’ Sea Cadet Corps Log Book, A Brief History of the Corps.

125. The Navy, March 1939, 66; November 1936, 326.

126. Hull Daily Mail, 27 May 1939, 4.

127. See, for example, Air Defence Cadet Corps Gazette, August 1939, 5.

128. Air Defence Cadet Corps Gazette, July 1939, 5.

129. Liverpool Echo, 27 June 1930, 15.

130. The Naval & Military Record and Royal Dockyards Gazette, 11 May 1932, 298.

131. The Daily Telegraph, 4 May 1932, 15.

132. BSUASC, Angell Papers, Who are the Sentimentalists?, 105–6.

133. George Orwell, ‘My Country Right or Left’, Folios of New Writing, 2 (Autumn, 1940): 39.

134. TNA, T 161/1212, Fighting Services. Navy: Sea Cadet Corps. Volunteer Cadet Corps Attached to Royal Navy Establishments; Assistance to be given to Recognised Units, 1926–1942, Letter from F.P. Robinson to A.P. Waterfield, 27 January 1931, 1.

135. The Navy, July 1937, 193.

136. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 1 May 1930, 4.

137. AL, ADCC Minute Book, MEC, 27 April 1938, 1.

138. The Times, 17 October 1938, 11.

139. Leonard Taylor, ed., The Story of the Air Training Corps (London: Air League of the British Empire, 1946), 27.

140. Air Review, December 1937, 8.

141. TLA, LCC/MIN/2935, London County Council, Education Committee Minutes, 1939, Meeting of the Education Committee, 3 May 1939, 192–4; LCC/MIN/2931, London County Council, Education Committee Minutes, 1935, Meeting of the Education Committee, 13 March 1935, 146.

142. The Times, 4 May 1939, 10.

143. The Daily Telegraph, 4 May 1939, 11.

144. NMM, MSY/6/3/6/1, NLSCC Minute Book, MEC, 6 October 1938, 3.

145. The Navy, July 1939, 238.

146. The Times, 21 October 1938, 10.

147. For example, see the report of the St Clement Danes’ SCC. CWAC, 2825/58, St Clement Danes’ Sea Cadet Corps Log Book, 28 September 1938.

148. The Navy, November 1938, 336.

149. The Navy, December 1938, 364.

150. NMM, MSY/6/3/4/6, FGP Minute Book, MFGPSC, 22 March 1939, 2; NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 7 April 1938, 2.

151. NMM, MSY/6/3/4/6, FGP Minute Book, MFGPSC, 26 June 1939, 1; 12 July 1939, 3.

152. The Navy, November 1938, 341.

153. RAF Museum, 014145, Pamphlet, ‘Who are these Air Defence Cadets?’, 1940, 12.

154. Air Review, October 1938, 7.

155. TNA, AIR 2/2716, Meeting to Consider RAF Co-operation in Formation of Air Defence Cadet Corps, 17 February 1938, 2.

156. TNA, AIR 2/3168, The Position of the Air Defence Cadet Corps in War Time, 17 September 1939, 1.

157. TNA, AIR 2/2716, Letter from Chamier to Sir Edward Campbell, 22 May 1939, 1–2; Letter from Chamier to Kingsley Wood, 3 July 1939, 1.

158. Adey, ‘Ten Thousand Lads’, 64.

159. Air Review, April 1939, 37; May 1938, 23.

160. IWM Sound Archive, Acc. No. 17822, Reel 1, Francis John Cretchley May; Acc. No. 10199, Reel 1, Paul Vincent Bartley Longthorp.

161. IWM, Sound Archive, Acc. No. 27255, Reel 1, Douglas Robert Fry.

162. Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850–2000 (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 26.

163. Paris, Warrior Nation, 185.

164. The Times, 21 October 1939, 7.

165. TNA, AIR 2/3168, Letter from the Air League to all Squadrons of the Air Defence Cadet Corps, 24 August 1939, 1.

166. TNA, AIR 2/3168, Letter from the Air League to the Air Ministry, 24 August 1939, 1.

167. The Sea Cadet, September 1943, 2.

168. NMM, MSY/6/2/7, NLAR 1939, 5–6.

169. TNA, AIR 2/3168, Letter from Chamier to the Air Ministry, 12 September 1939, 1.

170. Kent & Sussex Courier, 8 September 1939, 6.