page_title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)
section_title: Increasing pressure on Government to form a home defence force
hierarchical_section_title: Home Guard (United Kingdom) / Establishing a home defence force / Increasing pressure on Government to form a home defence force
caption_attribution_description: Photographs by Welsh photo journalist Geoff Charles Llandyssil Home Guard, Montgomeryshire, after a Church Parade at Llandyssil Parish Church
context_page_description: The Home Guard was an armed citizen militia supporting the British Army during the Second World War. Operational from 1940 to 1944, the Home Guard had 1.5 million local volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service, such as those who were too young or too old to join the regular armed services or those in reserved occupations. Excluding those already in the armed services, the civilian police or civil defence, approximately one in five men were volunteers. Their role was to act as a secondary defence force in case of invasion by the forces of Nazi Germany and other Axis powers.
  The Home Guard were to try to slow down the advance of the enemy even by a few hours to give the regular troops time to regroup. They were also to defend key communication points and factories in rear areas against possible capture by paratroops or fifth columnists. A key purpose was to maintain control of the civilian population in the event of an invasion, to forestall panic and to prevent communication routes from being blocked by refugees to free the regular forces to fight the Germans.
context_section_description: The government soon found itself under increasing pressure to extend the internment of suspect aliens to prevent the formation of a fifth column and to allow the population to take up arms to defend themselves against an invasion. Calls for some form of home defence force soon began to be heard from the press and from private individuals. The press baron Lord Kemsley privately proposed to the War Office that rifle clubs form the nucleus of a home defence force, and Josiah Wedgwood, a Labour MP, wrote to the prime minister asking that the entire adult population be trained in the use of arms and given weapons to defend themselves. Similar calls appeared in newspaper columns; in the 12 May issue of the Sunday Express, a brigadier called on the government to issue free arms licences and permits to buy ammunition to men possessing small arms, and the same day, the Sunday Pictorial asked if the government had considered training golfers in rifle shooting to eliminate stray parachutists.
  The calls alarmed government and senior military officials, who worried about the prospect of the population forming private defence forces that the army would not be able to control, and in mid-May, the Home Office issued a press release on the matter. It was the task of the army to deal with enemy parachutists, as any civilians who carried weapons and fired on German troops were likely to be executed if captured. Moreover, any lone parachutist descending from the skies in the summer of 1940 was far more likely to be a downed RAF airman than a German Fallschirmjäger.
  Nevertheless, private defence forces soon began to be formed throughout the country, often sponsored by employers seeking to bolster defence of their factories, and placed the government in an awkward position. The private forces, which the army might not be able to control, could well inhibit efforts of the army during an invasion, but to ignore the calls for a home defence force to be set up would be politically problematic. An officially-sponsored home defence force would allow the government greater control and also allow for greater security around vulnerable areas such as munitions factories and airfields, but there was some confusion over who would form and control the force, with separate plans drawn up by the War Office and General Headquarters Home Forces under General Kirke.
  The government and senior military officials rapidly compared plans and, by 13 May 1940, worked out an improvised plan for a home defence force, to be called the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). The rush to complete a plan and announce it to the public had led to a number of administrative and logistical problems, such as how the volunteers in the new force would be armed, which caused problems as the force evolved. On the evening of 14 May 1940, Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden, gave a radio broadcast announcing the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) and calling for volunteers to join the force: "You will not be paid, but you will receive a uniform and will be armed".
caption: A member of a Montgomeryshire Home Guard unit in 1941
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