Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 - Implementation of The Act

Implementation of The Act

The formation of County Associations proceeded smoothly; on 21 August, two weeks after the Act received royal assent, it was reported that Associations were being formed in Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. The War Office issued a model scheme for their constitutions in September, along with advisory notes, which were sent to the lords lieutenant of all counties. The first appointments were made to the divisional commands on 29 October.

The Territorial Force formally came into existence on 1 April 1908, at which date the existing Volunteer force ceased to exist. Under an Order in Council of 19 March, all existing units of the Yeomanry and Volunteers had been transferred to the Territorial Force, with a small number of exceptions. The transferred units were reorganised and amalgamated to produce a force of the anticipated size; with the exception of a small number of Royal Horse Artillery batteries, every new Territorial Force unit could trace its lineage to a Volunteer or Yeomanry unit.

The Territorial Force now constituted 204 infantry battalions (ten of which were organised as bicycle infantry) and 56 Yeomanry regiments, organised into fourteen divisions and fourteen cavalry brigades, along with associated support troops. A new all-Territorial regiment, the London Regiment, was formed to encompass twenty-seven battalions which had previously been associated with various regular regiments. The divisional troops were raised and administered by the County Associations, whilst the divisions themselves were operationally commanded by regular staff officers. Outside of the divisional structure, a Territorial Medical Corps was created, followed by a Territorial Association Nursing Service.

Once the units had been transferred, their members had to decide whether they would re-enlist in the Territorial Force; the threshold for recognition was given as 30% of the establishment strength. By 5 May, the War Office had recognised 85% of the Yeomanry, 78% of the Artillery, 59% of the Engineers and 84% of the Infantry units; the total enlistment was 28% of establishment. By 1 June, the total enlistment was 48% of establishment, and the first summer camp was organised. By the end of 1908, the Territorial Force stood at 68% of establishment strength, and a popular recruiting campaign in the following spring led by the Daily Mail brought it up to 88%. In the summer of 1909, a new Territorial reserve force, the "Veteran Reserve", was announced; it began recruiting in 1910, and by the beginning of 1913 contained almost 200,000 men.

The Militia remained legally in existence, with 23 battalions which were surplus to requirements disbanded. The 101 battalions which were planned to be transferred to the Reserves trained as Militia in 1908, but amalgamated thereafter with the regular regiments, forming Special Reserve battalions (usually the 3rd Battalion); 74 were assigned to line regiments, and 27 as duplicate "Extra Special Reserve" battalions. By the end of the year, the Special Reserve as at 84% of its nominal strength; those officers and men who had not chosen to transfer remained enrolled in the Militia, serving out their six-year enlistments. By January 1913, only 700 of them remained, and this vestige quickly disappeared. All the battalions which transferred from the Militia were infantry units (with the exception of two Irish artillery units).

A group of anomalous units, as mentioned above, had not been transferred into the new system; these were the two Irish Yeomanry regiments and the Volunteers of Bermuda and the Isle of Man. The decision had been taken to have no Territorial Force units in Ireland—there had been no Volunteers there before—and so the two yeomanry regiments were disbanded and reconstituted in the Special Reserve as the North Irish Horse and South Irish Horse. The Isle of Man Volunteers and Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps remained organised as Volunteers; whilst the new legislation did extend to the Isle of Man, the force was not reorganised there partly due to the difficulty of changing to annual training. Bermuda, the Channel Islands and Malta were not encompassed by the scope of the legislation, and so the Militia there continued to operate under the old system.