B-Specials

Armed, part-time section of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The B-Specials helped to police Northern Ireland between their formation in 1920 to their abolition in 1969. They were replaced by the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) in 1970.

The B-Specials were formed in 1920 as part of the new Ulster Special Constabulary set up by the British government in response to the deteriorating security situation in Ulster at that time. Part of the reason for their formation was the threat that the Ulster Unionists would reform the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in order to defend themselves from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the fight for Irish independence.

In the eyes of Catholics and Nationalists, the B-Specials became associated with the worst examples of unfair treatment of Catholics in Northern Ireland by the police force. Catholics accused the B-Specials of being violently anti-Catholic and of abusing their powers of arrest and detention to intimidate and attack Catholics. The Unionist government of Northern Ireland saw the B-Specials as a vital part of its police strength to keep control of a potentially dangerous and unstable law and order situation.

The B-Specials were finally disbanded under pressure from the British government in 1969. Their abolition was one of the demands of the civil-rights movement. Some off-duty B-Specials were alleged to have been involved in the attack on the People's Democracy civil-rights march at Burntollet Bridge in January 1969. When the Northern Ireland Unionist prime minister Terence O'Neill subsequently accepted the need for a government inquiry into those events, the continuation of the B-Specials became unacceptable to Britain.

The abolition of the B-Specials was deeply resented by hard-line Unionists in Northern Ireland. To these Unionists it represented the success of ‘criminals’ and ‘terrorists’ in the civil-rights movement under the leadership of the IRA against a legitimate force of law and order. For Irish nationalists it was just one small victory in the campaign for equal rights in Northern Ireland.