Ulster Defence Regiment

The UDR was a locally recruited regiment of the British Army and became operational on 1 April 1970. The UDR was merged with the Royal Irish Rangers in July 1992. The UDR was founded following recommendations in the Hunt Report which recommended the replacing of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC; or 'B-Specials') with a regiment attached to the British Army. However, many of the members of the new regiment were former 'B-Specials' and while the UDR did initially attract Catholic membership of 18 per cent this figure soon fell. At the time of its merger the UDR had an almost exclusively Protestant membership with only 3 per cent Catholics. During its existence there were many allegations of links with Loyalist paramilitary groups and a number of UDR soldiers were convicted of the murder of Catholics and other crimes. Following the Stevens inquiry into collusion between the security forces and Loyalist paramilitary groups, 10 members of the UDR were charged with having information likely to be of use to terrorists. During its existence the UDR lost 197 serving members and 47 former members who where killed mainly by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The UDR killed 2 members of the IRA and 6 Catholic civilians.