Has the ATC outgrown the RAF?

Internally, it is a very powerful link which wasn’t there before. It contextualises what the Cadets do and makes it far easier for those who are not as close to the organisation to understand the link.

It does matter.

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Well yes really, change in resources of having to do more with less has been society wide for bout twenty years now.

DofE locally has fallen off a cliff, the AT opportunities are a lot less. The reduction in volunteers, These are non-public funded activites.

There is no obligation on the RAF to support the ATC.

A lot of regulations & bureaucracy has come in due complaints, accidents, one or two fatalities,

the biggest change was after the Kaylee McIntosh incident

This is what really started to shift the mindset & got the cadet forces looked at & it’s need to professionalise rather than some of the slap dash it has been in places.

Why it is the unwilling to change the makes it the AtC fault is because they have tried to keep doing the same thing in the same way rather than changing with the times.

Where this is the biggest issue is at wing & region level where the delivery expectation is the same but it’s no longer practical.

For example we haven’t had a wing greens camp for five years because the site has been reutilised by the home office. Rather than looking at other options there is an obsession on going back to that particular training area. There are other training areas & different times of years to do it but they want to do deliver the cadet experience which is what they did as a cadet - not try something new.

there is no innovation or willingness to change which mean that the HQ & wider RAF don’t get the right data leading to a lot of the friction.

The other cadet forces have been changing & adapting, likewise with a reduction in funding. So why are they succeeding where we are not?

Because they’ve adapted & innovated & changed a bit with the times - air cadet world has stagnated.

But remember this is only a volunteer role - if you think as an organisation we should no longer exist then just leave - it’s only volunteering & there’s no obligation for you to stay :slightly_smiling_face:

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The organisation was formed in 1941, on the 5th February. It was called the Air Training Corps. Before that, it was called the Air Defence Cadet Corps. Only recently did the RAFAC become a thing because of a re-branding exercise. The Royal Warrant is not for the RAFAC, the Royal Warrant is for the Air Training Corps.

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The RAFAC is the umbrella term for the ATC and CCF( RAF) and is a much better descriptor for what we actually are in my opinion and makes more sense to those outside of the organisation.

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Sorry, but no. The ATC was founded as you describe, but the CCF(RAF) has its own history and CCF Air sections predate the ADCC.

I thought @cab’s comment about the RAFAC branding being useful to him in ‘selling’ us to the RAF was interesting. We may think it’s irrelevant/unhelpful/pointless but if it helps him get us more support then it’s worth it.

I do think though that we need to be aware that where we used to live off ‘spare capacity’ there is no realistic likelihood of that capacity returning at any stage. Lots of people above are talking about starting an independent Air Cadet organisation with no MOD support, but that’s not how the SCC works. The SCC model would be worth looking at: independent yet with MOD support. That isn’t the same as the various splinter groups listed.

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I 100% agree with you on that, if you are completely leaving the MOD then what’s the point in pretending to have a military link.

The SCC model I think has a lot of merit, but might not work as we don’t own our own infrastructure in the same way that they do.

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I’m aware, but we are only just that still - prior we were the Air Cadet Organisation.

Someone did tell me once that one of the main motivations for the RAF to take over the ADCC & form the ATC was to exert more control & get it away from the British Union of Fascists & the January Club, the latter of which Chamier was a regular member & speaker.

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Interesting - any sources for this?

John Adrian Chamier - Wikipedia

while i accept not a robust source, it is mentioned he was a member…

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It was something I was told so not sure if was a bit of Speculation/over extrapolation regarding the RAFs motivation but Chamier was a member & speaker of the January Club according to Wikipedia & the cited references

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And yet we seemed to get far more out of the RAF before the name change…

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Post hoc but not, I think, propter hoc. The decline was already in train due to reduced RAF capacity. I thikn the name change (as @cab implies) was intended to help them resist the decline.

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If memory serves it was as also part of a mass corporate rebrand so everything became “RAF [ name ]” so it all has the same umbrella & common corporate image.

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Que? In English?

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc:

Something happened, then something else happened, therefore the first caused the second.

I think the latin also directly translates to “after it therefore because of it”, but it’s presented as a fallacy, because it’s almost never true.

So really it should be

Post hoc, sed non ergo propter hoc

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Romani iti domun! (x 100, or I’ll come back and…)

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Illegitimi non carborundum.

Pretty much the only (mock) Latin that I know and seemingly somewhat appropriate.