The question used to be asked from time to time.
One reason is that it would have been unfair to CAFFUK veterans to have their core pension grievance inevitably receiving less attention than the many urgent issues involving service personnel in the 21st century, such as support for the wounded, single and family accommodation, compensation, manning control, pay and allowances, electoral participation, inquests and inquiries, safety of former local staff, ECHR controversies and so much else.
Note: direct and indirect references in this article to 'BAFF' relate to the former BAFF (2006) Ltd, but are retained here for archival purposes.
CAFFUK was formed specifically to campaign for pensions for a group of veterans who left the service before April 1975 without completing a full career. Although CAFF subsequently widened their constitutional remit, in fairness we never saw much evidence of their engagement in issues affecting current personnel or recent veterans.
BAFF cordially offered to support CAFFUK's pre-1975 service pension campaign if they wanted, but CAFFUK responded by sending dire threats of legal action, which they also made public on their two websites. These threats were based on a trademark which CAFFUK claimed to have registered. (In reality they had only applied for registration.)
At one stage during the ensuing trademark dispute, CAFFUK, while rejecting out of hand an approach from BAFF about settling the dispute, offered a merger instead. The BAFF Executive Council agreed to at least hear what they had to say.
While conceding that 'all ranks' could be permitted to join, CAFFUK stressed the paramount importance of reserving all elected positions in any merged association to those 'of and below' the ranks of Lieutenant Commander (RN), Lieutenant Colonel (RM or Army) and Squadron Leader (RAF), as set out in the CAFFUK constitution.
Although no BAFF Executive Council member actually held a current or former service rank above those levels, the ranks quoted by CAFFUK aren’t equivalent across the services. Applying CAFFUK's rank restriction differently to different branches of the armed forces would have been patently unfair, and would also have appeared odd to potential members and others.
We tried to clarify this but the CAFFUK correspondent continued to insist that the quoted ranks were equivalent – and that his information was MOD-sourced, which was obviously not the case.
It was clear from this, and from similar examples, that the problem went deeper than a one-off misunderstanding of the service rank structure. Any question of a merger ended there.
BAFF's earlier offer to support CAFFUK's pension campaign had included a proposal to help publicise their parliamentary representations, which were understood to be in preparation at that time:
If appropriate BAFF might, by prior arrangement with you, be able to issue a wholly supportive statement which would at the same time avoid any confusion between the two organisations. This has been your campaign and it is you and your colleagues who deserve the credit. *
When CAFF's parliamentary representations were distributed the following year under the title The Armed Forces Expect That Every English Government Will Do Its Duty, and shown to us by an unimpressed Member of Parliament, it was clear that BAFF could not have endorsed the document in that form.
CAFFUK treatment of information about the service rank table did not bode well for successful cooperation over more complex matters, such as drawing up those parliamentary representations, or continuing BAFF's own media and parliamentary engagement with CAFFUK in the loop.
Notes
* The letter containing the offer of support was produced in evidence in the trademark proceedings, and quoted in the official Intellectual Property Office decision.
† The MP's actual words were "I'm surprised at Colin Challen", Mr Challen being a fellow MP who was supportive of the Armed Forces Pension Group's campaign about the same pre-1975 pension grievance. In this case we were able to explain that AFPG were not responsible for the document in question.