Decision to axe
historic names of regiments
already taken

The letter, from Major General Graham Binns, Regimental Colonel of the Yorkshire Regiment, rules out the names of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, Green Howards, or Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment (PWO) being kept in the wake of the biggest round of cuts to the military since the Second World War.

Earlier this month, it was announced that the Green Howards will be scrapped after 300 years service, with the Yorkshire Regiment reduced to two battalions as part of the sweeping cuts to axe a fifth of the total British Army.

It had been hoped that the historic names would be retained in the new look Yorkshire Regiment, with a consultation recently launched to look at ways of preserving the titles.

But Maj Gen Binns’s letter, dated July 5, to Friends of the Yorkshire Regiment, will dash campaigners’ hopes. He writes: “We shall not retain the names of our antecedent regiments in our battalion titles.

“After the merger we will have two fully-manned regular battalions of the Yorkshire Regiment, supported by a reserve battalion.

“These battalions will not be PWO, Dukes or Green Howards. They will be Yorks.

“Hence the removal of the antecedents from our regular battalion titles.”

Yesterday, Lieutenant Colonel David O’Kelly, regimental secretary of the Yorkshire Regiment, defended the ongoing consultation which will take place until the autumn, despite the decision to remove the names.

“The letter states we will not be constrained by our heritage,” he said.

“We are not cutting ourselves off from our past but we will not be held back by it either, so we are looking at ways to carry some of the best parts of our history forward.

“At the moment it is a blank canvas.

“I cannot provide any assurances that they will be kept because that decision hasn’t taken place.”

The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment dates back 300 years and first fought under the Iron Duke’s command at the Battle of Waterloo as the 33rd Regiment

Meanwhile, the Green Howards, which was first raised as a regiment in 1688 and gained its nickname in 1744 during the Wars of the Austrian Succession, has deep-seated links to its base in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Both were amalgamated alongside the Prince of Wales’s Own in 2006 to form the Yorkshire Regiment.

Keighley and Ilkley Conservative MP Kris Hopkins, who served with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, said: “The regiment has already been lost and there is a huge wound still from what happened in 2006. A lot of soldiers were, and still are, very angry.

“New troops now will have joined the Yorkshire Regiment, not the older regiments, but there is a responsibility to retain these traditions.

“There is an obligation to preserve the memories and the names of the three regiments.”

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond’s plans will see 17 major units axed and slash the total number of soldiers by 20,000 over the next five years to 82,000.

Also facing the axe are the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, the 3rd Battalion the Mercian Regiment (Staffords), and the 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh.

The 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) will be reduced to ceremonial duties in Scotland.

Mr Hammond has insisted the cuts are necessary to plug the “massive black hole” in his defence budget left by Labour, and that the shake-up would create an “agile, capable force”.

His plans also involve a much-increased role for the Territorial Army, which will see its numbers doubled from 15,000 to 30,000.

Mr Hammond has said the Army needed to change its structure radically as it finally withdraws from the conflict in Afghanistan.

Labour MPs have described the move as a “huge gamble”.