The Territorial Army in Aid of the Civil Power in Britain, 1919-1926

Abstract

Hostilities in the Great War had barely ended when the British War Office began the task of converting the country's military forces from a war-time to a peace-time footing. One of the most difficult problems with which it had to deal was the future of the Territorial Army,' which Richard Burdon Haldane, Secretary of State for War from 1905 to 1912, had created in 1907 by amalgamating the Volunteers and the Yeomanry and establishing a system of decentralized, county-based administration. The Territorials did not fit easily into the post-war military situation. There seemed little likelihood of any serious invasion threat to Britain in the foreseeable future, while as part-time volunteers the Territorials were hardly suitable for the provision of long-term garrisons for the Empire. The War Office did see a role for the Territorials in medium-scale wars in which there would be a need for troops in addition to the Regular Army; that is, on a scale that would not warrant general conscription, but this was adamantly opposed by Territorial spokesmen. Kitchener's contemptuous treatment of the Territorials in the war had made them wary of undertaking any obligations without careful safeguards, while the well-founded belief that the military members of the War Office looked upon them as a mere pool of semi-trained men available to fill gaps in regular units made them all the more insistent on prising out of the War Office firm guarantees protecting the integrity of Territorial units. The refusal of the Territorials to accept a foreign service obligation severely restricted their usefulness in the eyes of the War Office, which was reluctant to spend increasingly scarce funds on a