Name/Title
Sussex Police male Volunteer Cadet Corps cap 1987Entry/Object ID
2219Description
Blue wool cap with purple cotton webbing hat band, plastic chin strap and fitted with a round voided Queen's crown "EIIR" Sussex Police cap badge. Marked "Grantham Made in England 57 7 1/8"Use
For use by a male Volunteer Police Cadet in Sussex PoliceContext
The original police cadet system was first established in 1948 in the Metropolitan Police with youngsters being employed full time from the age of 16 to 19, in a uniform support role and given the option of becoming full time constables when they were old enough. The scheme was introduced in an attempt to increase levels of recruitment to the regular force, by attracting school leavers who were not yet old enough to become constables. Similar schemes operated with some changes in many other police forces until the 1980s when the paid schemes were discontinued.
From the late 1980s the paid police cadet schemes were discontinued. Volunteer schemes were retained or begun for younger children, operating purely as youth organisations on similar lines to those run by the military. These schemes now fall under the national Volunteer Police Cadet programme and are organised on a local territorial police force basis.
Paid schemes were run in Sussex before and after the 1968 amalgamation, and cadets have always had similar headwear to that used used by full time officers but not helmets, with the exception that they have blue hat bands instead of either black or chequered ones.
Sussex Constabulary, whilst having a paid scheme, also introduced a volunteer cadet scheme in January 1969, aimed at younger children and run along the same lines as the scouts and military cadets. To begin with the volunteer cadets wore a version of the old paid cadet uniform from the 1950s, consisting of a blouson style jacket and berets for headwear. When the berets were replaced with caps, the volunteer cadets had purple hat bands to distinguish them from the paid cadets who had blue cap bands. When the paid scheme was discontinued in the late 1980s, initially purple bands were retained for use by the volunteer cadets, though eventually they changed to blue bands in line with the national scheme.
This particular cap is fitted with a Sussex Police "other ranks" badge that dates from 1974 to 1995, after which the force adopted a coat of arms on its badges and introduced a special VCC badge without a crown. It is known to have been issued to a Sussex Police volunteer cadet in 1987.