The Hunt Report is published.

Brigadier Sir Henry Cecil John Hunt, Baron Hunt, KG CBE DSO (22 June 1910 – 7 November 1998)

The 'Report of the Advisory Committee on Police in Northern Ireland' was better known by the name of the committee’s chairman (Baron John Hunt CBE DSO - who led the 1953 British Expedition to Mount Everest) as the Hunt Report. The report recommended that a locally recruited part-time force, under the control of the General Officer Commanding (GOC) Northern Ireland, should be raised as soon as possible for duties as directed by the GOC. The police (the Royal Ulster Constabulary), and its part-time Ulster Special Constabulary, were therefore relieved of all duties of a military nature. The recommended part-time force was to become The Ulster Defence Regiment.

The report was signed on 3 October and published on 10 October 1969 when it was presented to the Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont, Belfast. It considered that matters concerning the protection of Northern Ireland against armed attacks from within or outside its borders were the responsibility of the central UK government in Westminster, London.

Protests followed the publication and during disturbances on the Shankill Road in Belfast, a line of RUC police officers, deployed to prevent rioting protestors from advancing from the Shankill on the residents of Unity Flats, came under fire and Constable Victor Arbuckle was stuck in the head by a bullet and died almost immediately. The first member of the security forces to die did so at the hands of a Protestant gunman and as the firing increased, the Army returned fire.

A Government White Paper setting out the arrangements and organisation for the formation of The Ulster Defence Regiment was published on 12 November, and General Sir John Anderson GBE KCB DSO was appointed Colonel Commandant of the new regiment. Its first commander was Brigadier Logan Scott-Bowden CBE DSO MC.

Regimental Headquarters was formed in Thiepval Barracks, Lisburn on 1 January 1970, when recruiting commenced.

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