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Smith’s UDR Declassified details the extent of illegal acts and collusive behaviour carried out by what was the largest regiment in the British army. The Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) was established in November 1969 as a successor to the Ulster Special Constabulary, better known as the B-Specials. This was an armed policing reserve that was created with the foundation of the Northern Irish state and had become despised by the Catholic community due to its decades of institutionalised sectarianism. The extent of the violence directed by the B-Specials against the Catholic civil rights movement of the 1960s made the continuation of this Protestant paramilitary force untenable for the British government. But there was a fear that disbanding 8,000 military trained Protestants during this restive period would just lead to aggrieved Loyalists funnelling into their own paramilitary organisations. There does seem to have …