RMC Annual Review 2020-21 digital (1) - Flipbook - Page 16
A Brief History of the Royal Marines Association
As the Second World War drew
to a close 77,000 Royal Marines
were stationed around the globe
Some 64,000 of these were “Hostilities Only” men,
and women, who had enlisted for the duration of
the war, the Corps was determined to do better for
these men than their fathers after WW1. In the very
first issue of the Globe and Laurel from 1892, the
need to ‘undertake the formation of an Association
for obtaining civil employment for discharged
Marines’ was suggested by one correspondent.
them temporary commissions, recognised the
need to act quickly, something had to be done.
In November 1945, the Commandant General
called a conference and from this, official
sanction was obtained; two days later a fledging
organisation was born, called the Royal Marines
Association; ‘Its original aims were to help these
former Marines to find jobs, resettle and enable
them to maintain contact with the Corps’.
By 1908, a group of veterans got together and
formed the Royal Marines Old Comrades
Association (RMOCA). Based in London its
aim was to ‘To provide a Meeting Place for ExMarines resident in London, for social intercourse
and in other ways to help one another’.
By June 1946, ten branches had formed, after
a year this had grown to 86 and membership
was 30,000. The Association had received
requests for assistance from 1500 former
Marines and its advice bureau assisted each on
its own merits, often sign posting members to
the support from charities and the government
that they were entitled to. Employment had
been found for 1500 men, by any measure
the first year was a resounding success.
Over the next thirty years, autonomous RMOCA
branches were formed around the country and
overseas and quickly developed a particular
emphasis on camaraderie. In the 1920s, the need
for an organisation to assist Royal Marines being
discharged due to the reduction of the Corps was
recognised and the RM Corps Association was
created. H.M. King George V was its Royal Patron
and over the next decade they placed 650 former
Royal Marines directly into new jobs and assisted
many more to find employment. By the 1930s,
the National Association for the Employment
of Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen (NAESSA) had
formed and the RMCA amalgamated with them.
However, as men found employment, so their
needs and those of the Corps changed and
very quickly the new organisation discovered
that it would need to evolve to ‘understand,
adapt, respond and overcome’ (today referred
to as the Commando Mindset). Over the past
75 years the RMA has proven its ability to
understand, to adapt and respond. This brief
history gives a flavour of those 75 years.
The mass de-mobilisation at the end of WW2
presented new challenges. Within a few years
the Corps was to shrink back to its pre-war
strength of around 10,000. The RMOCA had
no central structure, its membership was
largely long service men and its independent
branches focused on the social welfare of these
long service veterans. The NAESSA mandate
was only for regular forces; veterans with less
than five years’ service were not eligible. A new
generation of Royal Marines veterans faced
new challenges and a group of officers, many of
“The new organisation
discovered that it
would need to evolve
to understand, adapt,
respond and overcome.”
www.rma-trmc.org
Colonel B W de Courcy-Ireland was well placed
to record the early history of the RMA. In the
autumn of 1945 he was part-time Secretary of
the ‘Paine Committee’ and twenty years later
served on the RMA Council, from 1966—1969
as Chairman of the Executive Committee;
appointed Colonel Paine to be Chairman
of a Committee to be drawn from all strata
of the Corps, and including the RM Old
Comrades Association which would look into
the problems and make recommendations.
The ‘Paine Committee’ divided the country
into areas and each member was allotted an
area in which to spread the word around to
sound out reactions to the ideas. Colonel Paine
took the London and Portsmouth areas. At
Greenwich he visited the branch of the RM
Old Comrades Association and at Portsmouth
he gave an address to a crowded audience
in the Globe Theatre at Eastney Barracks.
At the end of World War Two there were about
77,000 Royal Marines dispersed around the
world. Most of them (over 64,000) were on
‘Hostilities Only’ engagements. The method of
demobilising the Forces had been planned on
an ‘age and length of service’ scale of marking,
in order to avoid a flood of ex-servicemen to
civilian employment which had resulted in
high unemployment after World War One.
Between the two World Wars the Portsmouth
Division RM had established the Royal
Marines Corps Association (RMCA). It
endeavoured to meet all ranks before their
retirement and try to find jobs if they had none
to go to. Colonel Paine had previously been
involved with the good work of the RMCA and
this experience considerably influenced his
thinking about the possible new organisation.
In fact, the RMCA can be described as the
fore-runner of the RM Association.
There was a great need for an organisation
within the aegis of the Corps to help this
large number of Hostilities Only ‘Royals’ to
resettle and find jobs; and to enable them
to maintain contact with the Corps. There
were several Officers, mostly those with
Temporary Commissions, who appreciated
the problem — the foremost of them, and
the originator of the idea of an Association
which would have employment and advisory
bureaux, and would help to maintain contact
with all who had served in the Corps, was
Colonel Nicol Gray. He had commanded 45
RM Commando from Normandy to the Baltic,
and subsequently the Officers Cadet Training
Unit at Thurlestone, South Devon. Whilst
at Thurlestone he worked hard behind the
scenes trying to get the backing of long-service
and recently retired senior officers — many
of the former being fully occupied with the
reconstruction of the Corps for the future.
The Committee remained in being for some
weeks; and during that time carried enquiries
even deeper than the original brief. Ultimately
it submitted a report to the CGRM indicating
that the formation of the Association was
the overwhelming desire of a very large part
of the Corps. It further reported that such
an Association was a practical proposition,
that it would fill a long felt want and that it
would be a great help to the Corps in the future
as regards recruiting, reserves and other
problems. In the report it also put forward
a proposed organisation for the Association
together with suggested solutions to many
of the initial problems. The first step was a
careful enquiry into the RMOCA for it was
felt that this long established Association
might well provide the answer if it received
more support. However, it was found that it
had a very limited membership, in most cases
consisting of ex CS ranks with twenty-one
years’ service behind them; many branches
had few if any HO members and their total
memberships were disappointingly low.
His efforts were rewarded when the Major
General Administration (MG ‘A’) at the
Royal Marines Office (RH Campbell)
convened a meeting which was attended
by Lt. Gen Sir Robert Sturges (recently
retired), Major Generals AN Williams
and A E Reading, Lt Col R F Cornwall and
Colonels S G B Paine and W N Gray.
This meeting agreed that an organisation
as outlined by Colonel Gray was needed,
and in the early autumn of 1945 the
Commandant General (Sir Thomas Hunton)
Previous page illustration: A Cartoon from the Globe and Laurel, Feb/Mar 1959.
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