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Former good article nomineeUlster Defence Regiment was a History good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 16, 2013WikiProject A-class reviewNot approved
August 21, 2013Peer reviewReviewed
October 5, 2013Good article nomineeNot listed
Current status: Former good article nominee

Loss of Catholic soldiers

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There are a number of reasons why Catholic soldiers left the UDR. Yesterday I expanded and re-worded the "Loss of Catholic soldiers" section as it focused far too much on one of the reasons: IRA intimidation and pressure from the Catholic community. It hardly explained why the Catholic community became hostile to the British Army, it hardly touched on the fact that a great number resigned in protest at the actions of the British Army, and it didn't even mention that Catholic members reported being intimidated by Protestant fellow soldiers. I included all of this information to make the section more balanced and less POV. I supported everything with reliable sources, some of which were already being used in this section. Here is the before and after. However, User:SonofSetanta (who wrote the section in the first place) has reverted my edit completely, claiming that it "introduced POV". Can you please explain how POV was introduced? ~Asarlaí 13:43, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We have an edit clash here. I've tidied it up. Could you read what I've written below please and then we can discuss how best our concerns can be addressed? SonofSetanta (talk) 14:05, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Asarlai. Thanks for your edit. I have reverted you because I didn't feel it added anything of note to the information already there. This is the sort of thing I mean:

  • Catholics within the regiment also reported being intimidated by Protestant fellow soldiers.

Ryder pp45-46 doesn't support this so I have substituted it with this: Some Catholic soldiers felt uneasy at having to report for duty in former B Special drill huts and experienced subtle intimidation from their comrades

  • Other Catholics resigned in protest at what they saw as the Army's harsh and biased treatment of their community.

The section already clearly identifies the problem in softer terms, which is as per the manual of style (WP:MOS). Your comment, taken again from Ryder p46, is certainly true but in my opinion it's beyond what is needed. For a start it isn't about anything the UDR did and that's already covered in the statement Various events outside the control of the regiment such as: There are loads more factors which any of us could edit in but they won't make the message any stronger. Well, maybe they would, but this article isn't the one to emphasise such matters. With Internment, Bloody Sunday and the Falls Road Curfew already there I think a reader would certainly get the message by using the inline refs.

You have to bear in mind Asarlai that this article is an overview. It's already too long and I'm turning over ideas in my head on how to cut down on what's already there, maybe by creating a separate article for the "Women's UDR". If we edit in every single piece of info we have then the article will just become more overweight. I'm not trying to express WP:OWN but I am trying to preserve the article in near enough its present form for the good article review. The tasks set out at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Ulster Defence Regiment have been done and really the only thing I believe we should be doing on this article now is tweaking, which I recognise you have tried to do. I hope you're happy with how I've compromised? SonofSetanta (talk) 14:02, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Having read your comments written during our edit clash and hoping you've read mine, could I ask what you feel still needs to be done? SonofSetanta (talk) 14:07, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The section needs to be re-worded and re-structured. It's about the loss of Catholic soldiers from the regiment. Thus, it should start by saying how many Catholics were in the regiment to begin with and how many left. Then it should explain the reasons why they left, giving proper coverage to all of them. Currently it doesn't do this. It goes straight into blaming the IRA and Catholic community and only briefly mentions the other reasons in passing.
The statement "Catholics within the regiment also reported being intimidated by Protestant fellow soldiers" is clear, direct and fully supported by the source. You made the sentence less direct and then tacked it on to the end of the paragraf, as if it hardly mattered. What's wrong with being direct?
The statement "Other Catholics resigned in protest at what they saw as the Army's harsh and biased treatment of their community" is also clear, direct and fully supported by the sources. Again, you replaced this with a sentence that is less direct and less clear: "as a result of IRA pressure and disillusionment with the government's attitude towards the minority community over internment, 25% of Catholics in the regiment resigned". That doesn't make it clear that it's the soldiers who were disillusioned and that the resigned in protest. Again, what's wrong with being direct and saying exactly what happened?
You write that the loss of Catholic soldiers had nothing to do with the UDR and was a result of "events outside the control of the regiment". That's untrue. As we've just discussed, some Catholic soldiers left due to intimidation within the regiment itself. Furthermore, Ryder wrote that some Catholic soldiers were angered at how their comrades abused people at checkpoints and how most of their actions were directed against the Catholic community.
Also, the tone of the following sentence is utterly biased and it has no place in an encyclopedia: "Without the support of community leaders, shunned by their own community and with their lives under threat, the vast majority of Catholic UDR soldiers resigned or simply stopped turning up for duty". ~Asarlaí 17:30, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Catholic recruitment" clearly states the regiment was 18% Catholic in April 1970. We don't need to repeat that. That's just WP:MOS.
The section blames PIRA and the Catholic community because it was assassination by one and pressure from the other which caused the loss of most Catholic recruits. I could go into more detail, because I've got the detail, but it's overkill and would produce an article which wasn't balanced. You must try to understand however, no matter how unpleasant it is, that the campaign against UDR soldiers by PIRA and member of the Catholic community who were influenced by PIRA and Sinn Fein were the main reasons. The section is accurate when it says that various incidents cause the church and political parties to withdraw support and this is a factor, but it led to few Catholics leaving.
Very few Catholic soldiers left because of intimidation from within the regiment. That's a fact.
"Without the support of community leaders, shunned by their own community and with their lives under threat, the vast majority of Catholic UDR soldiers resigned or simply stopped turning up for duty" is a direct lift from the regimental history.
No matter how unpalatable you may find it the facts are there but softened as per WP:MOS. So in my opinion we don't need a rewrite and that's one shared by the A Class reviewers.SonofSetanta (talk)
I've given this a little more thought but I'm still not convinced that putting anything in about army brutality adds anything to the article. The whole area of army brutality is a very spurious one with many false complaints made. I don't want to dismiss it out of hand however so may I ask: how many Catholic UDR soldiers left because of army brutality to fellow Catholics? If it is a significant number we'd have to find a way to edit that in. SonofSetanta (talk) 10:59, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What you need is a source that details it. If it's not sourced you shouldn't mention it especially if it is controversial which in regards to this article almost everything can be. Mabuska (talk) 10:30, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure a source can be found for it (like Jack Charlton, you find the players and I'll find them an Irish granny). The thing is though, for every source which supports such a contention there will be one saying that the vast majority of complaints against the army by Catholics/nationalist/republicans were contrived. I was reading something on this by English or Doherty just last week. The regimental history (Potter) is the best source we have for facts and it clearly states the IRA campaign against Catholic soldiers as the main reason for them leaving. The various army operations mentioned in the article caused a loss of support for the regiment by political parties (notably the SDLP) and the church. From that I think we can assume that recruitment and morale of Catholics may have been affected and I think it's certainly worthy of keeping in the article, but spurious claims of brutality - I couldn't see that as being free of POV. SonofSetanta (talk) 11:39, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This weird creepy revisionist lunatic is part of the problem " The regimental history (Potter) is the best source we have for facts " no it's the best source for english lies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8084:2163:2300:91A:37F0:EA30:7396 (talk) 13:14, 14 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Ulster Defence Regiment/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 01:57, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This article seems to be in an unusual situation, as its nominator is topic banned from working further on the topic.[1]

On first pass, the article has a lot of good information, but also seems to have some ways to go to meet the GA criteria. Some issues I immediately see:

  • Needs to consolidate lead to four paragraphs per WP:LEAD
  • Needs to reduce overuse of single-sentence paragraphs and very short sentences per WP:LAYOUT
  • Needs copyediting (The sixth sentence, for example, is a comma splice: "The regiment was intended to be nonpartisan, and began with Catholic recruits accounting for 18% of its soldiers, however due to various circumstances by the end of 1972 this dropped to around 3%." A few paragraphs down is a sentence with no period, etc.) I've tried to fix some of the more obvious errors as I went, but this was only a quick pass and still more needs to be done. Future editors of this article might consider requesting a read by the Guild of Copyeditors before this is renominated.
  • "It is doubtful if any other unit of the British Army has ever come under the same sustained criticism as the UDR" -- an opinion this strong probably needs attribution to a specific author, or at least multiple sources, to meet WP:NPOV
  • Some statistics lack citation, such as "In time a combination of these factors reduced Catholic soldiers to around 3% of the Regiment's strength."
  • The article seems to rely quite heavily on Potter, to the point that it clearly endorses his view over another book and the BBC:

"This is not noted in Adams' Sinn Féin biography[205] and the BBC still insists the assailants were arrested by "plain clothes policemen".[206]" It would be better to note the diverging viewpoints here impartially.

  • The article needs work to meet the "concise" criterion (1a); at 69kb of readable prose, it's far longer than needed for a topic of narrow scope.

Given the nominator's situation and some clear issues with the article, I'm not passing it for GA at this time. I hope others may find the above comments useful as a starting point for future revision, however; this would be a great one to get to GA status. Thanks to all who have worked to bring it to this point. -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:57, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone know what this sentence is supposed to say?

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At Ulster Defence Regiment#USC recruitment it says Others joined the newly formed RUC Reserve instead, especially in Belfast, where during the first month of recruiting, only 36 Specials applied to join the UDR compared to an average of 29% – 2,424, one thousand of whom were rejected, mainly on the grounds of age and fitness

I assume it's attempting to say the percentage of B Specials who applied to join the UDR was lower in Belfast than in other parts of Northern Ireland, except it's not saying it particularly well. It doesn't even match the mini-table on the right hand side next to it, which says 70 B Specials had applied and 36 had been accepted. FDW777 (talk) 12:53, 23 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

- The 5,351 total is incorrect and should be 4,776. Needs changed in the recruitment summary paragraph too. Gavin Lisburn (talk) 16:12, 24 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:52, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Man from the udr

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He is sgt h Connor number 22968464 I’m trying to find more information on him but can’t find anything all I know is he was awarded the campaign service medal 2A02:C7E:331E:8700:88FA:C145:50CD:BC5 (talk) 23:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Contradictory table and text

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By March 1970, there had been 4,791 applications to join, of which 946 were from Catholics and 2,424 from current or former members of the B-Specials. 2,440 had been accepted, including 1,423 from current or former B-Specials.[1]

B Specials UDR applications[2]
Battalion Applications Accepted USC Accepted
Antrim (1 UDR) 575 221 220 93
Armagh (2 UDR) 615 370 402 277
Down (3 UDR) 460 229 195 116
Fermanagh (4 UDR) 471 223 386 193
County Londonderry (5 UDR) 671 382 338 219
Tyrone (6 UDR) 1,187 637 813 419
Belfast (7 UDR) 797 378 70 36
Total 5,351 2,440 2,424 1,353

References

  1. ^ "Ulster Defence Regiment Applicants (1970)". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Written Answers. 23 March 1970. Retrieved 15 October 2008.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Potter-p31 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

The numbers don't match unless Potter is claiming 560 consecutive applications were rejected, and that 70 former B-Specials were accepted then rejected. FDW777 (talk) 16:02, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind. Since Hansard includes essentially the same table (without the 5,351 and 1,353 figures, which don't add up) I've standardised the data. FDW777 (talk) 16:16, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Loyalist Infiltration

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Having read through this I note it is an incredibly long item which, in my view, is subject to WP:NOTMEMORIAL. It also includes the names of people who had left the UDR when they committed their crimes. I seek other views on this but to my mind this section shouldn't be longer than the list of actual UDR casualties as it gravely affects the neutral balance of the article. Mindful of the sensitivities around articles such as this I invite comment from other editors before attempting to improve this section by removing a lot of the padding to concise it. It certainly needs to contain the salient information that serving members of the regiment committed crimes, including murder, but it shouldn't be this detailed.

Leitrim Lad (talk) 16:26, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the Collusion section certainly needs editing per WP:NOTEVERYTHING. We can easily summarise what's there in less detail without leaving anything significant out. FDW777 (talk) 17:58, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I think I'll start by removing the names of anyone who wasn't in the UDR (or "former UDR member) who committed a crime.
Leitrim Lad (talk) 16:29, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some weeding out completed. I'd be obliged if someone would have a look and see if I've been too keen or have missed anything.
Leitrim Lad (talk) 16:42, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What I had in mind was much more drastic. I would cut out pretty much everything that's covered by Several stolen weapons were used in the commission of sectarian killings, attempted killings and robberies and 18 UDR soldiers were convicted of murder and 11 for manslaughter. Those adequately summarise the information, without the constant detailing of every single incident. FDW777 (talk) 18:33, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also Between 1970 and 1985, 99 were convicted of assault, whilst others were convicted of armed robbery, weapons offences, bombing, intimidation and attacks on Catholics, kidnapping, and membership of the UVF. FDW777 (talk) 18:37, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If that's what you feel then make the edits. I support your conclusions but didn't want to be seen as rabid in my own editing.
Leitrim Lad (talk) 15:20, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've done a little more but reading through it so many times makes me feel it is rather intended as a hatchet job which is a big imbalance in a article - especially when there is no list of UDR casualties or crimes against UDR soldiers by paramilitary organisations. Effectively I believe the inclusion of this list severely affects the neutrality of the article as a whole. I seek a way to include the information but to concise it in an effective statement which makes it clear that some UDR soldiers committed serious crimes, including murder but not to try and make it a sub-article which has the sole purpose of discrediting the regiment. Has anyone any ideas?
Leitrim Lad (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've reverted to the version of the section before one editor started adding to it with every single news story they could find, ignoring that WP:NOTEVERYTHING says we summarise things (which the article already did) not list every single sodding thing that can be referenced. Any issues with that version, please say so. FDW777 (talk) 16:39, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm certainly more comfortable with that than I was with the list of newspaper articles. It still educates a reader to the facts but doesn't overwhelm the piece as we saw before. I really think I should study this article in depth to ensure that more sections don't have prejudicial content beyond what is the truth and expressed in the neutral terms Wikipedia demands.
Thank you.
Leitrim Lad (talk) 17:10, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Those are very helpful and well thought out edits. You do appear to be better at this than I. Thank you.
Leitrim Lad (talk) 15:51, 31 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but it was a joint effort. FDW777 (talk) 17:11, 31 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]