The Volunteer Training Corps was a voluntary home defence reserve force in the United Kingdom during World War I.
Early development
After war had been declared in August 1914, there was a popular demand for a means of service for those men who were over military age or those with business or family commitments which made it difficult for them to volunteer for the armed services. At this stage in the war, Britain relied entirely on a voluntary system of enlistment and many men still held to the Victorian principle that it was the task of professional troops to fight a war whilst the Militia, or Constitutional Force (which had converted from conscription to engaging volunteers for periods of service in the 1850s and was converted into the Special Reserve in 1908), Volunteer Force and Yeomanry (two volunteer forces, in which recruits did not engage for periods of service, that had amalgamated to form the Territorial Force in 1908, in which recruits voluntarily engaged for a period of service) provided for home defence, and civilian local defence groups began to spring up spontaneously as soon as war was declared.
The volunteer movement gained publicity from discourse in the press advocating civilian participation in home defence, with notable proponents being Arthur Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells. The first elements of central organisation were established by the formation of the London Volunteer Defence Force. Discussions about the nature and role of the movement ranged from simply drilling volunteers in preparation for their enlistment into the regular or home armies, through augmenting the home army's defence of vulnerable points, to providing a force that would actively oppose an invasion with guerrilla warfare. Concerned that such a body would undermine recruitment into the regular army and hinder more than help home defence, the War Office banned the movement.
Despite official antipathy, civilians continued to organise themselves, and Harold Tennant, Under-Secretary of State for War, realised that the government could do little to prevent them. Rather than allow the movement to grow unchecked, he decided in September to allow the Central Committee of the London Volunteer Defence Force to continue. Until the War Office had the time and resources to devote to the movement itself, the Central Committee, adopting the name Central Association of Volunteer Training Corps (VTC), became the body to which individual corps could affiliate, and was responsible for drawing up the rules and regulations on a national basis. Lord Desborough became the President of the Association and General Sir O'Moore Creagh VC was appointed the Military Advisor. In November, the association was officially recognised as the administrative body of the VTC and formally subjected to conditions which prevented interference with recruitment into the regular army, barred members from holding military rank or wearing uniforms other than an armband and denied any state funding.
Ex-military personnel of the National Reserve played a leading role in the growth of the VTC, providing many of its recruits and lending the nascent organisation an element of martial respectability. Among the many new corps formed were the United Arts Rifles – which numbered in its ranks the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges – a unit of deaf mutes which drilled by sign language, and a unit that went by the name of the Ju Jitsu VTC. In May 1915, corps began to be organised into county regiments. Some 2,000 individual corps had appeared by June 1915, numbering 590,000 volunteers. Units raised finances for the purchase of weapons by charging membership fees. Amid concerns that they would compete with the established forces for the limited amount of rifles then available – in October 1915, there were 570,600 in the country for the 1.3 million men who needed them – the government prohibited volunteers from buying service rifles and required any purchase to be first cleared with the local military authority. Those corps which could not afford weapons begged or borrowed wherever they could, and dummy rifles, air guns and weapons loaned by the Church Lads' Brigade were among those pressed into service by various units.