Lest we forget: 100 years of the RBL

The Royal British Legion, formed after World War I, still provides essential support for service personnel today

- ELEANOR DOUGHTY

Last November, some colour was missing from our streets. The Royal British Legion’s poppy sellers, usually out in force at railway stations and on high streets across the country, were forced to stay home. But this autumn they’re making a return – and it’s just as well, for the Royal British Legion (RBL) is celebrating its centenary.

The RBL was founded in May 1921, the result of an amalgamation of several organisations that supported soldiers returning from war, including the British National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers and The Comrades of the Great War. Post-war, after soldiers rioted in protest against the way demobilisation was being handled, it became clear that someone, somewhere, needed to do something. The idea emerged to unite the various veterans’ organisations to form one body that would represent all ranks and branches of the armed forces and hold government to account. And so, on 15 May 1921, a group of former servicemen approached the Cenotaph on Whitehall. As Big Ben struck nine, they laid a wreath at its base, emblazoned with the badges of the four groups that would come together to form the British Legion. “The Legion is a body which will give to the individual ex-Serviceman, without regard to his war rank, an opportunity of serving his country in order that the victory of 1918 may have been worth the sacrifice,” wrote Fred Lister, the founding chairman and a former artilleryman. The Legion’s president was none other than Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the former commander of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, and the patron was the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII). What we now know of as the Royal British Legion was born – with the ‘Royal’ being added in 1971.