A BATTLE to safeguard one of the country's oldest regiments is being fought by councillors.

Labour councillors are calling on the Ministry of Defence to retain the Green Howards, a Yorkshire regiment raised in 1688, which has its headquarters in Richmond.

The regiment is expecting to hear soon whether it will survive defence cuts proposed earlier this year.

It was among those facing an uncertain future after Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced that four infantry regiments would be cut as part of an Army Board restructuring programme.

Redcar and Cleveland borough councillors are planning to persuade their colleagues to call on the Government to retain the regiment.

The authority's Labour group will be putting a motion to that effect to the next council meeting on December 16.

Normanby Councillor Wendy Wall said: "Many residents from this borough have given service, and in some cases their lives, under the banner of the Green Howards.

"If this council has, in the past, been good enough to give the Green Howards the freedom of the borough, then it should be good enough now to come to their support."

Councillor Brian Briggs, a former serviceman, said: "Having completed my basic training with the Green Howards during my National Service, I feel I am going into battle again to save everything the regiment stood for."

The motion will be proposed by Coun Wall and seconded by Coun Briggs, Labour councillor for the Skelton ward in East Cleveland.

The regimental board of the Green Howards has decided that, from the available options, a merger with the Prince of Wales' Own Regiment and the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, both from Yorkshire, to form the Yorkshire Regiment would be preferable to disbandment.

The board has assured serving and retired members of the regiment that if a merger does take place, every effort will be made to ensure that it includes the Green Howards' history, traditions, spirit and identity.

One of the regiment's most famous soldiers was Stanley Hollis, from Middlesbrough, who won the Victoria Cross for his actions in Normandy after the D-Day landings in 1944.