Our Stories — Our Times: Youth Cadets
Last updated: 3 October 2024
Locally the Red Cross Youth Cadets were highly successful and many of our former volunteers remember their youth work fondly.
Youth Cadet branches worked closely with counterparts in the Irish Red Cross to foster mutual understanding of humanity and university across our movement.
In 1960, Princess Alexandra visited Belfast to inspect its youngest members. They stood proudly, filling the grounds of both Queen’s University and the Botanic Gardens on a dull Belfast Day.
Princess Alexandra greets Red Cross Junior members in Botanic Gardens, Belfast
Dromore Youth Cadets cap
By the 1990s, Red Cross Youth in Northern Ireland would include specifically mixed groups and work closely with the Irish Red Cross to practical illustrate the principles of humanity, universality, neutrality, and unity.
Youth Cadets and Red Cross Junior were former initiatives of the British Red Cross. In Northern Ireland these groups were especially strong around Belfast and Co. Down. Not only did they provide support for families, useful skills and education for young people, and a necessary distraction from the realities of the conflict but they also provided key opportunities at cross-community work.
Local youth and union members worked closely with Irish Red Cross Branches in Drogheda and Dundalk. Cross-border events and competitions were established and maintained in the 1980s and 1990s which fostered closer ties between the island’s respective Red Cross Societies.
Irish Red Cross badge from the collection of Maura McPhillips
Award presented to Dromore Youth Cadets by Louth Branch of the Irish Red Cross, 1991
Joan and Billy Nicholson at Buckingham Palace
Billy and Joan Nicholson never had children of their own, but dedicated much of their volunteering work with the British Red Cross to supporting Belfast’s children.
Some lived with disability, others were members of the Youth Cadets. Billy and Joan oversaw trips for children at Ballyholme near Portrush and supported cross community work in North Belfast.
Joan was interviewed for the project and remembered their work volunteering.
The Nicholsons worked closely with Maura McPhillips, and together they established the first explicitly cross-community branch of the Junior Red Cross in Northern Ireland.
In an unexpected parallel, this cross-community experiment took place in North Belfast where the Belfast Branch of the Red Cross was originally established.
Red Cross Youth badge from the collection of Billy Nicholson
Isobell Wilsdon with Romanian doctors and nurses in the mid-1990s
Isobell Wilsdon OBE who joined the Red Cross in 1968 says:
My life in the Red Cross started after I witnessed my fifth child knocked down by a car outside my house. I had no first aid skills – did everything wrong … it was a Red Cross ambulance and crew that came. My son had a fractured skull – broken arm. I asked someone I knew, how do you go about joining the Red Cross?
Isobell was a volunteer with, and eventually Director of, the Co. Down Branch. Isobell passed before the commencement of the project but she wrote a testimony of her time with the Red Cross including the view of the significance of the work with young people.
We had an excellent, large youth and junior groups running. Bangor groups were not the only area covered … the adults did lots of first aid duties and the youth groups learnt from them. For the youth group they had a parents’ night to show what they had learned.Isobell Wilsdon OBE
Isobell also recalled attending Long Kesh, to teach first aid to prisoners within its infamous H-blocks, and travelling to Romania and Moldova after the collapse of the Soviet Union, ‘training nurses, ambulance crews, and updating their skills'.
Volunteers throughout the project recalled their commitment to passing on skills and the fundamental principles to young people. Many lamented the loss of Youth Cadets and the Junior Red Cross.
Carryduff Red Cross Youth Cadets around, 1960
Nicholson Youth Award
The Our Stories – Our Times project was made possible by a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Transcriptions and recordings of the interviews will be deposited with the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.
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