UDR: Declassified by Micheál Smith

Author:Micheál Smith [Smith, Micheál]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Ireland, Military, General, Great Britain, Strategy
ISBN: 9781785374289
Google: MjJkEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B09VH5G339
Publisher: Merrion Press
Published: 2022-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Criminality in the UDR

Between 1985 and 1989, UDR members were twice as likely to commit a crime as the general public. The UDR crime rate was ten times that of the RUC and about four times the British army rate. By the early 1990s, around 120 members/ex-members of the regiment were serving prison sentences for serious crimes, and seventeen had been convicted of murder.1

These are shocking figures. Yet there has been public anxiety about the extent, and tolerance, of criminality within the ranks of the UDR almost since its inception. As mentioned previously, by October 1972 such was the ‘disturbing rise in the number of cases involving UDR men in the courts’ that Fortnight magazine warned that the UDR could shortly become ‘discredited’.2 In 1976, Hibernia magazine catalogued the regiment’s ‘Roll-Call of Disgrace’, a list of more than 100 UDR men charged with crimes since the regiment’s formation. The list prompted calls from the SDLP for disbandment of the regiment.3

Staff at the PFC have amassed a large volume of evidence, from press reports of court appearances alone, which shows that these concerns were valid. As Ryder states, ‘The true extent of subversion and criminal indiscipline with the UDR is a carefully protected official secret … Ever since the formation of the UDR and the emergence of the first concerns about Loyalist infiltration, the army, the Ministry of Defence and the government itself have gone to considerable lengths to shield the Regiment from embarrassment.’4

Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the material that the PFC uncovered revealing a series of highly secret meetings, beginning in February 1978, held in Belfast – between HQNI, Intelligence and Security Company at 39 Brigade (which covered Belfast), the director of security in London and, eventually, the secretary of state.5

These meetings concerned an internal investigation for fraud, corruption and subversion into 10 UDR – the Belfast city battalion of the regiment, based at Girdwood Park in Belfast. In fact, two separate investigations were launched – one by the Special Investigations Branch of the Royal Military Police (RMP/SIB) after a routine audit of 10 UDR’s accounts uncovered evidence of major fraud; the other by 120 Security Section (military intelligence) after a UDR weapon went missing.

The minutes of a meeting held on 1 February 1978 to discuss crime and security in 10 UDR provide a synopsis of the SIB and Security Section reports into the incidents. It was discovered that up to seventy members of the battalion had links to loyalist paramilitary groups at some level, while it was also suspected that up to thirty members of the battalion had engaged in large-scale fraud, claiming an estimated £30,000–£47,000 for duties not carried out. This money was strongly suspected of being passed to the local UVF.6

The minutes show that SIB reported, ‘In respect of the theft of stores and equipment, irregularities of stores accounting and the control of keys have revealed the ease with which these items have passed to paramilitary organisations.’ There had been significant thefts from the

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