Colonel in Chief and an earlier Rifles connection

The Royal British Legion Celebrates Centenary Year

In 2021 the Royal British Legion is celebrating its 100th Anniversary with a special programme of events throughout the year, leading up to a Centenary themed Poppy Appeal. The Nation’s largest military charity is calling on everyone in the Armed Forces community to get involved in the RBL 100 celebrations.

The RBL’s official birthday falls on 15 May. On this day in 1921, four men representing the national organisations of ex-Serviceman laid a wreath at the base of the Cenotaph in Whitehall. This symbolic act marked the moment the four organisations joined together to create the British Legion. The charity’s founding mission was to fight for the rights of those who had given so much and come back to so little after the First World War.

Between the two world wars, the RBL lobbied the government to provide for those who had been injured, disabled, widowed or orphaned as a result of active Service. As the nation's biggest Armed Forces charity, the RBL still has this role today, providing the same care and support to all members of the British Armed Forces past and present and their families.

In its centenary year, the RBL is celebrating the people and communities who have contributed so much to its proud history. The RBL has stood alongside the Armed Forces community for a century and in turn the community has played a vital role at the heart of the charity and its work.

Alexander Owen, Army veteran and the RBL’s Head of Armed Forces Engagement, said: “The military community has built and shaped the RBL over the last 100 years into the charity it is today. The passion and dedication that serving personnel, ex-serving people and their families have shown in supporting the RBL is key to helping build legacies that provide better futures for the whole Armed Forces community.” Since 1921 the Royal British Legion has created positive lasting legacies for the Armed Forces community as well as the wider national, and even international, community. These legacies come in many forms and continue to benefit us today; from ground-breaking government policy changes, to building comradeship in the community, innovative welfare services and pioneering scientific research. Indeed, national Remembrance – the form, the act and the sentiment – has been developed over one hundred years and woven into our national fabric by the RBL.

The RBL has shaped Remembrance from the adoption of Madame Guérin’s red poppy in 1921, through to the move in the 1970s to make Remembrance more inclusive of all those who have served. The shift from remembering ‘dead of two world wars’ to ‘all who have died in service to their country’ took the government six years to ratify but now defines a modern form of Remembrance. Without it, servicemen and women killed in Korea, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan might not receive the same recognition in the national consciousness.

There are many legacies continuing to shape the lives of living members of our community. Forged, as the Royal British Legion was, to campaign for the fair treatment of those risking their all for their country, the successes of these campaigns are written into law and legislation from the Second World War onwards. In 1944, with the Great War fresh in minds and huge numbers of servicemen suffering life changing injuries in the Second World War, the RBL was influential in achieving the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act. This was the first time in our nation’s history that the Government moved to support disabled people into work. It set the foundations for improving the lives of millions of people, including the wider general public, and will continue to do so in the future.

The power of the Legion, its membership and its supporters, has always been to ensure the voices of the Armed Forces community are heard. From the Tudor period an ‘unspoken pact’ existed between the state and its veterans, that they should never be failed by the nation they served. But in 2011 the RBL campaign ‘Honour the Covenant’ made sure it became a spoken pact; written into legislation and holding the Government to account. Ten years on the Armed Forces Covenant continues to benefit the community at all levels and is being reviewed this year as the 2021 Armed Forces Bill makes elements of it into law. The Royal British Legion turned rhetoric into action. Some of the RBL’s earliest interventions, services and initiatives did much to set the tone for the charity’s work today. Tuberculosis, rheumatism and arthritis were widespread among veterans of the First World War so, in an age before the NHS, the Legion created or took over a number of specialist treatment facilities. Ninety years later, when young men and women were being brutally maimed by Improvised Explosive Devices in the poppy fields of Helmand Province, the Legion stepped in again and funded the RBL Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College, London. The former became building blocks of the new National Health Service in 1948. The latter created a legacy of scientific understanding, equipment development, and treatments that are helping wounded veterans today and will go on to help those yet to join up; from armoured vehicle seating positions to stump skincare and advances in treating hearing loss. Some of those injured in service recently have found purpose and confidence by competing in the Invictus Games. The Royal British Legion became an early partner in these Games, supporting the families of competitors and including them in the recovery journey. But this was not a new initiative for RBL. In 1948 the Legion heavily supported the development of the Stoke Mandeville Games for wheelchair users at the nation’s foremost Spinal Injuries Unit. By 1960 these games had evolved into the Paralympic Games. Today ex-serving Paralympians represent their country at both summer and winter Games.

Perhaps the most far-reaching RBL legacy, however, is the contribution of ten decades of grant giving. The success of the annual Poppy Appeal has allowed the RBL to support thousands of individuals and organisations working locally to