A Brief History Of The UK Armed Forces
The British Armed Forces are made up of the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. They are the government sponsored defence units for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and it is their job to protect Britain and its overseas territories and Crown Dependencies and to provide help with international peacekeeping missions. They are managed by the Defence Council (the head of which is the Secretary of State for Defence). The head of the British Armed Forces is actually Her Majesty The Queen and it is to her that all members swear allegiance.
The British Armed Forces came into existence on 1st May 1707 when the armed forces of Scotland and England merged. This meant that the army and the navy of both countries became one. The seat of control was. This reform came about because of the Acts of Union - parliamentary acts in both countries which put into effect the terms of the 1706 Treaty of Union. The union was designed to bring together the two countries who were already sharing the same Monarch since King James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from Queen Elizabeth I.
The British Forces were deployed in America, Europe and Scotland from the late 17th century and as the British Empire expanded they also moved into the West Indies, North America and India. The first real world war though was the Seven Years’ War (1755-1763) where Britain’s main enemy was France. Battles were fought on both land and sea. Britain also took part in the American War of Independence (1775-1783), the Napoleonic Wars, and in later years the Boer War, Crimean War and the First World War.
The modern Royal Air Force was created on in 1918 on 1st April when an Act of Parliament was passed to merge the Royal Flying Corps (controlled by the British Army) and the Royal Naval Air Service (controlled by the Admiralty). The act also brought into being an Air Council.
Because of the outbreak of World War II in 1939, parliament passed the National Service (Armed Forces) Act which was designed to conscript all healthy men between the ages of 18 and 41. More than 1.5 million men were recruited by the end of the year with the largest proportion entering the British Army and the rest evenly spread between the air force and navy. Conscription ended in 1960.
These days armed forces redundancy is a prospect for thousands of members of the army, navy and air force. Britain has actually been scaling back since 1957 and the British Armed Forces are entering a new era. As a consequence, people are increasingly looking for specialist legal services for armed forces personnel to help them through such things as the redundancy process. However, the British Armed forces are still well respected across the globe and they will continue to protect and serve the interests of Britain.
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