Crime Pays: The Connection Between Time in Prison and Future Criminal Earnings
Crime, Ulsterisation and the Future of the UDR
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Transcript of Crime, Ulsterisation and the Future of the UDR
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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