Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Crime, Ulsterisation and the Future of the UDRAuthor(s): Hugo ArnoldSource: Fortnight, No. 226 (Oct. 7 - 20, 1985), pp. 4-5Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25550575 .

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CRIME, ULSTERISATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE UDR

HUGO ARNOLD of the Irish Information Partnership analyses statistically the effectiveness of the Ulster Defence

Regiment and the evidence of criminality within it, and asks whether it can be restructured as a more fully integrated part of the regular army rather than disbanded totally.

THE ULSTER Defence Regiment, was set

up in 1970 following, four main recom mendations by the Hunt Committee: (a)

"A locally recruited part-time force, under

the command of the G. O. C., Northern Ire

land, should be raised as soon as possible for such duties as may be laid upon it. We consider that its strength need not be as

high as that of the Ulster Special Con

stabulary and suggest that 4,000 should be sufficient, (b) The nature, establish

ment and equipment... should be decided

by Her Majesty's Government at West

minster, in consultation with the Govern

ment of Northern Ireland, (c) The policy for the use of the force should be decided

by the G.O.C., Northern Ireland in close

consultation with Government of Nor

thern Ireland, (d) The new force, together with the police volunteer reserve, should

replace the Ulster Special Constabulary." The UDR's brief was to take over mili

tary-type operations previously carried

out by the RUC and the Ulster Special Constabulary (the 'B-Specials') in an ef

fort to bring the police force into line with structures being set up in the rest of the

United Kingdom. Up until this time the RUC had tended to operate a military style operation which was seen to be

counter to what a police force should be.

The restructuring of the RUC was also the result of the serious rioting that had taken

place in 1969 and the subsequent criti cisms^?one of which was a failure of

senior RUC officers to realise when they

did not have enough men to control cer

tain riot situations in 1969?that came out

in the Scarman tribunal.

The regiment took on an increasingly

pivotal role, together with the RUC, fol

lowing the 'Ulsterisation' of N. Ireland's

security forces after 1976. As the regular

army presence was scaled down (and with it the politically less acceptable level of English, Scottish and Welsh casual

ties), the number of UDR and RUC mem bers killed rose sharply. Since Protestants

made up over 95% of these forces, they

increasingly became the targets of the IRA and INLA. Northern Irish Protestants

understandably felt that such attacks were aimed specifically against their

community, and as a result the whole

politico-security problem became more

sectarian and politically intractable.

On 31 May 1985 the UDR had a total

strength of 6433, of whom 2691 were full-timers. This compares with a figure of

8762 (of which just under a thousand were full-timers) at its greatest strength at the end of 1972. One of the features of the regiment's make-up in recent years

has been the decline in the number of

part-timers?from 5,154 in May 1979 to

3,730 in May this year?and the parallel increase in the proportion of full-timers,

who now make up over 40% of the force.

The UDR is the largest infantry regi ment in the British Army and also con

tains its largest battalion, the 1360-strong

7/10 Belfast battalion. The UDR's nine

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battalions operate in 85% of Northern Ire land in support of the RUC. They do not

deal with crowd control or riot situations

and do not normally operate in four of the

strongest nationalist areas: West Belfast,

Derry west of the river Foyle, an area

south of Omagh in Co. Tyrone, and South

Armagh. The regiment does not operate outside

Northern Ireland and its soldiers live in their own homes, not in the safety of a

barracks, which has made them very vul

nerable to attack. This vulnerability is

shown in the fact that 149 of its soldiers have been killed since its inception, 121 of whom were off-duty at the time.

Why is the UDR seen by the nationalist

community to be sectarian? The first rea

son is factual and can be gauged statis

tically by the number of criminal offences committed by UDR soldiers mainly against members of that community. The

second has more to do with what the

UDR is perceived to be. Many people, for

example, see the UDR as the WB-Specials' in different clothing?approximately 50%

of the WB-Specials' are said to have joined the regiment when it came into operation in April 1970. Yet in a House of Commons answer in 1984, The Secretary of State for

Defence made the point that on grounds of age alone "some two-thirds of those

now serving in the regiment would have

been too young to serve in the B-Specials".

Only Seven Killings TO DEAL with the factual analysis first: while the UDR is constantly praised for the work it does in supporting the RUC, the statistics relating to its accuracy and effec

tiveness are less than encouraging. In the

fifteen and a half years of its existence the

UDR has been responsible for only seven deaths (0.2% of the total)?five of whom were civilians, one uncategorised and one a

member of the PIRA. This makes it second

only to the Loyalist paramilitaries among

armed organisations in Northern Ireland

in the percentage of civilian deaths it has inflicted (although of course the latter are

responsible for far more killings?25.7% of

the total). Although the number of killings by the

UDR is tiny, the fact that over 70% of them have been Catholics, together with the perception in the Catholic community that UDR harassment aimed against them is very high (although this of course is difficult to substantiate with statistics),

underlines their unaceptability to a size

able minority of Northern Ireland's popu

lation.

According to the available statistics it would appear that serious charges (i.e.

murder, manslaughter and other off

ences involving the use of firearms and

assault involving the use of firearms and

assault) have been laid against the equiva lent of 2.6% of the average annual

strength (since 1969) of the British Army and the UDR compared to 1.7% of RUC and RUC Reserve members and 0.7% of the civilian population of N. Ireland.*

4 Fortnight 7th October 1985

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An Ulster Defence Regiment platoon on parade.

Similarly there is evidence to suggest that convictions for murder, man

slaughter and assault against members of

the UDR (1.39f of the force's average annual strength since 1970) are substanti

ally higher than for the Northern Ireland

population as a whole (0.6r/f ).* It should be stressed that these figures

are tentative due to the paltry data avail

able. The British Government regularly re

fuses detailed information on the classi

fication and outcome of trials concerning British Army members serving in Nor

thern Ireland, including UDR soldiers. Our data has been computed from informa

tion obtained through the Solicitor Gen eral, Partnership monitoring of court

cases, other Partnership research and

answers to parliamentary questions. This data would seem to suggest that

members of the UDR form a high propor tion of security force members charged and convicted of scheduled (i.e. terrorist

type) and other serious offences in N.

Ireland. Up to the end of 1984, eight soldiers serving with the UDR had been convicted of murder, six with man

slaughter and eighty with assault. In addi

tion there are currently six UDR men

facing murder charges and 11 facing lesser charges of kidnapping, possession

of arms, UVF membership and with

holding information.

The second reason for nationalist an

tipathy towards the regiment is due to its

perceived behaviour towards members

of the minority community. This is obvi

ously very difficult to analyse statistically. However despite the fact that it is gener

ally recognised that the UDR is a more

disciplined body than its predecessor, the

*B-Specials\ the regiment is still seen by most Nationalists as being less disci

plined than its regular British Army coun

terparts. This is particularly so with its

part-time members. Nationalists see the

UDR as an overwhelmingly Protestant

force (only 2-5% have declared their re

ligion as Catholic, the Secretary of State

for Defence said last year) who abuse

their position by alleged harasment and

intimidation of many Catholics. Alleged harassment only becomes measurable

when it manifests itself in the form of a

chargeable offence. In many cases how

ever, alleged harassment may be the only accurate way to describe some of the

incidents which take place.

Calls for Disbandment THE UDR is currently facing calls for dis bandment, perhaps as part of moves

towards a new Anglo-Irish understanding on Northern Ireland. However there is a

contrary view which sugests that instead of

disbanding the regiment there is still time to reform it so that it is able to do its job better and with the support of many in the

minority community who now distrust

it. Such a view argues that to disband the

UDR?quite apart from the Unionist fury that would provoke?would be to repeat the mistake made in disbanding the B

Specials', i.e. having to form another

locally recruited military force to take on

its work, and seing many of its ex-mem

bers become involved in Loyalist para

military activity. For the Unionist community, naturally

enough tends to view the UDR as an im

portant part of the security forces' cam

paign against the Provisional IRA and INLA. Within Northern Ireland there are

basically two diametrically opposed posi tions on the UDR?total disbandment or

keeping it in its present form. Thus the debate on the future of the regiment is

typical of most political or security prob lems here, in that it inevitably hardens

into unionist and nationalist extremes and

squeezes out any possibility of a success

ful middle road.

In the case of the UDR, if the British Government decides to ignore the ex

tremes of opinion within N. Ireland and

take a middle road, a nmber of steps would need to be taken. The regiment would need to be more fully integrated with the British Army, undertaking duties and responsibilities outside Northern Ire

land. Secondly it would need a larger

complement of full-time regular soldiers

seconded from the British Army (at the moment it contains only 34 regular army officers and 67 regular soldiers).

Thirdly it would need to institute a new

high-profile campaign to make itself more

acceptable to N. Ireland's Catholics by 1)

phasing out its part-time members, who

are perceived by that community as being most antagonistic to them and 2) in

creasing its Catholic recruitment. That

said, such a policy obviously faces enor

mous historical obstacles, compounded of the the origins of the regiment as a

substitute for the 'B-Specials'; the polaris ation of political views in Northern Ire

land; the UDR's symbolic value to the

Protestant community; and the long established antipathy towards the UDR

among Catholics, which provides the per

fect climate for the IRA's continuing cam

paign of attacks against them.

* The figures for average annual strengths used

to compute these percentages were 19,100 for

the British Army and UDR together, 8,300 for

the RUC/RUC Reserve, 7,000 for the UDR

alone, and 1.57 million for the civilian popula tion. Such a comparison between the civilian

population and the security forces suffers from

the shortcoming that whereas the size and com

position of the former is relatively static, the

latter has seen a considerable turnover in num

bers and agencies since 1969. The figures for

civilian and security force charges and convic tions cannot be made completely comparable because offences involving weapons or assault

involving civilians are all categorised as

'scheduled' offences, whereas this is not 100%

the case for similar offences by security force members.

Fortnight 7th October 1985 5

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