Altcar Training Camp

The ACF can trace its beginnings to 1859 when there was a threat of invasion by the French. The British Army was still heavily involved abroad after the Indian mutinies, and therefore had very few units in this country. The Volunteers were formed to repel the possible invasion. History was to repeat itself in 1940 during the Second World War when the Home Guard was formed to help counter a threatened invasion by the German Army. Immediately following the formation of the Volunteers came the start of the Cadets. In 1860 at least eight schools had formed Volunteer companies for their senior boys and masters, and a number of volunteer units had started their own cadet companies. Typical of these were the Queen’s Westminster’s who placed their 35 Cadets at their head when they marched past Queen Victoria at her Hyde Park Review of the Volunteers in 1860. As in 1940, the 1859 invasion did not materialise. The cadet movement continued, however, because many social workers and teachers saw in it great value as an organisation for the benefit of boys, particularly bearing in mind the appalling conditions in which so many of them lived. Among these pioneer workers was Miss Octavia Hill who had done a great deal to establish the National Trust. She was certainly not a militarist. She formed the Southwark Cadet Company in order to introduce the boys of the slums of that area to the virtues of order, cleanliness, teamwork and self-reliance. The present conception of the Army Cadet Force as a voluntary youth organisation, helped and inspired by the Army, really stems from that time and has continued throughout the ACF’s history.