Royal Ulster Constabulary (including Specials)

The police force of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), came into existence on 1 June 1922 upon the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). It was preceded by local paramilitary defense forces that were officially recognized in June 1920 as the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) and divided into "A" (full-time), "B" (part-time), and "C" (reserve) sections. The Usc was seen as violent, ill-disciplined, and sectarian. After the demise of the Boundary Commission in 1925, the "A" Specials were disbanded and the "C" force lapsed. The "B" Specials survived as a police auxiliary force, whose main advantages were its low cost and local knowledge. Its unofficial activities included bitterly resented harassment of local Catholics.

Nationalist attempts to secure proportionate Catholic membership of the RUC in the early 1920s failed. Protestant predominance increased as older Catholic members recruited from the RIC retired; the RUC had 23 percent Catholic membership in 1922, 10 percent in 1970. From the 1920s to the 1960s the RUC was a small provincial police force. Its politicization and lack of professionalism were exposed by its violent response to civil-rights demonstrations in 1968 and 1969; its inability to contain rioting in August 1969 led to direct British intervention. The 1969 Hunt Commission recommended that the RUC should be restructured, modernized, and disarmed, with the "B" Specials replaced by the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). The UDR inherited the "B" Specials' reputation as a semiprofessionalized Protestant defense force; some UDR members were implicated in loyalist paramilitarism. (The UDR merged with the Royal Irish Regiment in 1992.)

The Troubles precluded disarmament; "Ulsterization" of security policy beginning in the mid-1970s placed the RUC on the frontline. It was professionalized and trebled in size, and it suffered an increasing proportion of security-force casualties. (303 RUC officers were killed; many were severely injured or traumatized.) The RUC remained predominantly Protestant (republican paramilitaries targeted Catholic members). Controversy surrounded its interrogation techniques and the role of double agents who were sometimes accused of becoming agent provocateurs or licensed murderers within paramilitary organizations. However, the RUC arrested and secured the convictions of numerous loyalists as well as republicans.

The Patten Commission, established under the 1998 Belfast Agreement, recommended a reformed police force whose name and emblems would be neutral between communities On 4 November 2001 the RUC became the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Republicans complained that the old culture of the RUC persisted; unionists protested that the changes retrospectively dishonored the RUC, and that the loss of experienced officers compromised policing. The history of the RUC illustrates the difficulties of policing a deeply divided society.

SEE ALSO Special Powers Act; Primary Documents: The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (10 April 1998)

Bibliography

Farrell, Michael. Arming the Protestant: The Formation of the Ulster Special Constabulary and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, 1920–27. 1983.

Follis, Bryan. A State under Siege: The Establishment of Northern Ireland, 1920–25. 1985.

Ryder, Chris. The RUC, 1922–1997: A Force under Fire. 1989. Rev. edition, 1997.

Patrick Maume