Member

Secondly, this proposal will sever the historic and constitutional links between the lord-lieutenant and the cadet forces and the Reserve Forces in each county. Currently, each RFCA is bound, county by county, across the whole nation to the office of the lord-lieutenant, who, by long custom, presides over or patronises the association in his or her area. The lord-lieutenant is the sovereign’s representative in the county, the office having been created by King Henry VIII. Through that office, the cadet forces and the Reserve Forces of these islands are connected directly to the Crown itself. A cadet parading at a county event, the reservist inspected by the lord-lieutenant and a cap badge being presented at a passing-out parade with a lieutenancy in attendance—this is the living thread that ties a 15 year-old cadet in Kent, or the Borders for that matter, to centuries of continuous military tradition and to the Crown under which that tradition sits.