Why didn't the BAFF founders join CAFFUK instead? That question has been asked from time to time.
One reason is that it would have been unfair to CAFFUK veterans to have their core pension grievance unavoidably submerged, in the many current 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, and so much else.
During their doomed trademark dispute, CAFFUK did offer to merge BAFF's registered nonprofit Company Limited by Guarantee into their unincorporated club or association. The BAFF Executive Council agreed to at least hear what they had to say.
CAFFUK proceeded to stress the importance of reserving all elected positions 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 in practice no BAFF Executive Council members had a current or former service rank above those levels, the ranks quoted by CAFFUK aren’t equivalent across the services. Applying CAFFUK's restriction differently to different branches of the armed forces would have been unfair, and would have appeared ignorant to future potential members.
When we tried to clarify that factual point before considering the principle, the CAFFUK correspondent was adamant 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 other examples of the same mindset, that the problem went deeper than a simple one-off misunderstanding of the service rank structure. Time-critical aspects of our work would have been impossible with CAFFUK in the loop, so the correspondence ended there.