The one on the left is for the Special Constabulary, which he joined in the 1960s. Special Constables are volunteers who have the same powers and uniform as full-time officers but they don't get paid beyond their expenses. My dad would help out the regular police officers for events in the town such as the carnival, or at busy holiday weekends. He occasionally went to Hull to give a hand to police officers there, too. He did it because he liked the idea of helping out the community and he knew a lot of people locally because his regular job was working for the Gas Board as a gasfitter.
Being a special constable did actually come in useful once, when my mother was well one weekend. He risked taking the car to the laundrette at a time when it was overdue on vehicle tax; a police officer spotted it and gave him a ticket. My dad went to the police station about it and persuaded the desk sergeant to drop the charge, which had it been pressed might have had severe implications for his day job. He got a strong telling-off instead. That wouldn't have been possible today because it's all automated; then again, today he'd have had a washing-machine.
The other cap badge is from when my dad was an army cadet. This was at a time when young men still had to do national service. My dad joined the Army Cadets in his teens and loved it. He rose to the rank of quartermaster sergeant and couldn't wait to turn 17 and be called up. Unfortunately for him, national service ended the very year he was due to go, and his mother wouldn't let him enlist as a career because she (not unreasonably) didn't want him getting killed. He joined the Gas Board instead, where his father worked. That's where he met my mum.
Interestingly, I have a photograph of my mother's grandfather in army uniform, and his cap badge is the same as my dad's. Given that he was Scottish and didn't even move to Yorkshire until circa 1910 (when he was in his 40s), I can only imagine he was some kind of reservist.
It may have been that because my dad liked the Army Cadets, this is what prompted him to try the Special Constabulary. He later used his experience as a special constable to get a weekend job as a security officer, which did pay money but meant he was away a lot of the time; he stopped after a few years because it was boring and he missed his family.
Interestingly, being a quartermaster sergeant gave him logistics skills that he was later able to parlay into a promotion at the Gas Board to Planning Superintendant. It was he who decided which fitters were going to do what work where each day. His position was eventually replaced by a computer system and the Gas Board had to pay him redundancy money. This is why he was able to retire at 55 yet I'm still working at 64.
My father died a year ago today.