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The Ulster Volunteer Force and the formation of the 36th (Ulster) Division

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Timothy Bowman
Timothy Bowman*
Affiliation:
Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University of Belfast
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Extract

Traditional accounts of the establishment of the 36th (Ulster) Division in October 1914 suggest that this unit was formed purely from the pre-war U.V.F. Writing in 1922, Cyril Falls (himself an officer in both the U.V.F. and the 36th Division) declared:

The Ulster Division was not created in a day. The roots from which it sprang went back into the troubled period before the war. Its life was a continuance of the life of an earlier legion, a legion of civilians banded together to protect themselves from the consequences of legislation which they believed would affect adversely their rights and privileges as citizens of the United Kingdom.

Modern historians have echoed this view. Tom Johnstone, for example, has noted that ‘the battalions of the (36th) Division, based on the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.) order of battle, had been in existence since before the war’. Meanwhile Philip Orr has even suggested that the 36th Division was a ‘covenanting army’, all its members supposedly having signed the Ulster Covenant opposing home rule. In this article the validity of these claims will be considered, particularly with regard to the continuity in personnel and equipment between the U.V.F. and the 36th Division and the military efficiency that the formation had achieved by the time it arrived on the Western Front.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 128 , November 2001 , pp. 498 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2001

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References

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108 Nugent to his wife, 12 Oct. 1915 (ibid., D/3835/E/2/5/10).

109 War Office, Army List, July 1916, col. 1496f.

110 The Army Lists for January, July and December 1916 make no mention of Ford-Hutchinson being on the active or reserve lists, which suggests that he had been compulsorily retired.

111 Nugent to his wife, 26 Oct. 1915 (P.R.O.N.I. D/3835/E/2/5/20A).

112 Nugent to his wife, 23 Oct. 1915 (ibid., D/3835/E/2/5/17).

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117 Beckett & Simpson (eds), A nation in arms, app. I, p. 235.

118 I should like to thank Professors Ian Beckett, Alvin Jackson and Keith Jeffery for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article, and the Scouloudi Foundation for a grant which enabled me to carry out research into officers’ personnel files at the Public Record Office. For permission to consult and to refer to documents in their care I am grateful to the Comptroller of H.M. Stationery Office, the Public Record Office, Kew, and to the Deputy Keeper of the Records of Northern Ireland.