page_title: Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes
section_title: NAAFI established
hierarchical_section_title: Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes / NAAFI established
caption_attribution_description: English: British and other European personnel being photographed next to the NAAFI canteen of Kamaran Island (Red Sea), in 1927. After it was evacuated by the Turks in 1915, Kamaran was to be administered by the British as a dependency of Aden. From the second half of the 19th century, Kamaran served as a quarantine station for Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca from India and other areas of the Indian Ocean. The island was never formally annexed by Great Britain.
context_page_description: The Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes is a company created by the British government on 9 December 1920 to run recreational establishments needed by the British Armed Forces, and to sell goods to servicemen and their families. It runs clubs, bars, shops, supermarkets, launderettes, restaurants, cafés and other facilities on most British military bases and also canteens on board Royal Navy ships. Commissioned officers are not usually supposed to use the NAAFI clubs and bars, since their messes provide these facilities and their entry, except on official business, is considered to be an intrusion into junior ranks' private lives.
  NAAFI personnel serving aboard ship are part of the Naval Canteen Service, wear naval uniform and have action stations, but remain ordinary civilians. NAAFI personnel can also join the Expeditionary Force Institutes, which provides NAAFI facilities in war zones. EFI personnel are members of the Territorial Army serving on special engagements, bear ranks and wear uniform. NCS personnel can similarly volunteer to join the Royal Navy when it goes on active service.
context_section_description: After the First World War the Expeditionary Force Canteens (EFC) and the Navy and Army Canteen Board (NACB) did not return to the gratitude of the Nation. This was because EFC had made a large amount of profit from the sales of goods to the troops and opinion was divided as to what should be done with the money.
  In March 1920 Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, set up a committee to advise on the kind of organisation which would be needed for the Armed Forces in the future. The findings were unanimous; there should be one organisation to serve all three Services, it should be permanent and it should be able to rapidly expand or contract at times of war or peace. The Navy, Army, Air Force Institutes was therefore established on 6 December 1920 and started trading as NAAFI in 1921.
  As a not for profit organisation, with no shareholders to reward, NAAFI was asked to run the catering and recreational establishments needed by the armed forces. It had to make a profit for the good of the NAAFI customers - the men and women of the British Armed Forces- and so in addition it undertook to sell goods to servicemen and their families over and above those that were initially provided by the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC). The servicemen would benefit directly by getting cash rebates and discounts on purchases and indirectly through surpluses given back as a whole from each year's trading.
  For the first time the troops overseas were able to buy the same things in the canteen abroad as they could at home. NAAFI first saw overseas service in Ireland in 1922. Six years later NAAFI would have a presence in Bermuda, Ceylon, Germany, Gibraltar, Iraq, China, Jamaica, Malta, and the Middle East.
caption: European personnel outside Kamaran Island's NAAFI canteen in 1927
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "120", "Image YResolution": "120", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "PhotoScape", "Image ExifOffset": "2198", "Image XPComment": "[80, 0, 114, 0, 111, 0, 99, 0, 101, 0, 115, 0, 115, 0, 101, 0, 100, 0, 32, 0, ... ]", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "730", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "475", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}