AHC: make the UK keep the whole of Ireland
- Thread starter jessicajsscjs
- Start date
*Liberals lose voters to Labour*
*Liberals adopt Labour's policy ideas to win back their voters*
*Liberals keep losing voters to Labour for successfully achieving Labour's ambitions*
What I'm saying here is that if this dynamic had played out in the UK over the last decade, Nigel Farage would be the Prime Minister right now.
Could've sworn they failed at a few of those. Like Home Rule. And they mismanaged a war that's not supposed to happen. Or maybe it still is, because you dodged my direct question about whether you still envision that happening.
Here’s one idea on keeping Ireland British...
Let’s say Home Rule happens, and Ireland is still autonomous as of WW2.
In 1945 in reality, the island of Ireland had 4.2 million people; the UK had 50 million people. In the course of WW2, Ireland would be much less damaged by German airstrikes (thanks to its distance from the continent); children who went to the countryside of England in reality might go to the countryside of Ireland in this world. And the relative survival of Ireland’s infrastructure could make it a more important part of the UK economically after the war, with new towns popping up much more there instead of in England.
The result of all this... what if, say, 6 million Brits made their way over from Great Britain to Ireland in the decades following WW2, attracted to the new prospects there? That’d instantly tie Ireland firmly to the UK culturally, and stop any slow drift towards independence from happening.
Let’s say Home Rule happens, and Ireland is still autonomous as of WW2.
In 1945 in reality, the island of Ireland had 4.2 million people; the UK had 50 million people. In the course of WW2, Ireland would be much less damaged by German airstrikes (thanks to its distance from the continent); children who went to the countryside of England in reality might go to the countryside of Ireland in this world. And the relative survival of Ireland’s infrastructure could make it a more important part of the UK economically after the war, with new towns popping up much more there instead of in England.
The result of all this... what if, say, 6 million Brits made their way over from Great Britain to Ireland in the decades following WW2, attracted to the new prospects there? That’d instantly tie Ireland firmly to the UK culturally, and stop any slow drift towards independence from happening.
Chris Nation
Banned
You're conflating multiple things. The failure or success of Home Rule didn't have any impact on the rise of Labour. The rise of Labour has much more to do with a widening franchise, a burgeoning trade union movement (which also, to bring us back, spread to Ireland), and the ability of people to see through the Liberals transforming themselves in the space of ten years from the party of Lord Rosebery saying that allowing Councils to give children meals during school hours was a step on the road to communist tyranny to the People's Budget was an entirely political maneuver.
As for the First World War, I'm not entirely sure that an earlier and peaceful Home Rule impacts Austrian Archdukes' holiday plans in Sarajevo.
Chris Nation
Banned
Well, just off the top of my head, an early end to the Second Boer War. The UK is not exhausted and diminished in prestige and self-confidence. The 1906 landslide is transformed into a Liberal plurality propped up by the IPP. Either Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman pushes through his proposals for Lords reform, or he uses the threat of taking Lords reform to the country to get the King to broker a settlement (as he did in real life over the People's Budget). Home Rule in 1909.
That reminds me of Count Cavour's jaw dropping hypocrisy when it came to Ireland, which basically amounted to "sure Britain maybe has treated Ireland badly but Britain is so important to European liberalism the Irish have a duty to take one for the team and not bother London."
He did mention Ireland's geographical position as an advantage though.
And yet those are the policies that Irish are supposed to put their faith in to justify not aspiring to anything more ambitious than Home Rule, rather than treating them with as much cynicism as English voters apparently did.
And as for the First World War, it puts the implementation and acceptance of Home Rule on a clock, which is part of the problem. Actually, my biggest problem with your argument at this point is that it's amorphous and impossible to construct into a coherent narrative. Home Rule is passed when? The Ulster Volunteers are dealt with how? The British army? They don't mutiny like they did at Curragh why? During the war, there's no Conscription Crisis why? And Labour surges to overtake and destroy local Irish parties whose descendants still exist in Northern Ireland now, despite being stigmatized by the Catholic Church. When, exactly, and how?
It's just hard to engage with an argument that's this shapeless, and that seems to account for butterflies only when doing so is convenient. I mean, the fact that I've spent this much time unsure of whether your scenarios featured a World War should tell you how fundamentally confusing your case is.
Earlier Home Rule only means an earlier shift to Dominion. I don't understand how you can manage to both have early, peaceful(?) Home Rule and keep Ireland frozen in amber for three or four decades until a Labour welfare state is knocking on the door.
Chris Nation
Banned
Because my argument was specifically not focused on the circumstances which lead to this alternative Home Rule, but rather, from the very beginning, addressed the idea that even if Home Rule is achieved that the Union will still collapse.
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Interesting idea, except that it’s probably unlikely that children will be shipped overwater or so far from home. in reality most people evacuated on the outbreak of war soon returned home once it was clear it was a phoney war. The evacuations in the blitz were much more haphazard. Plus diaries and journals from the time suggest evacuation didn’t make the two groups fonder of each other As for the postwar period there is an excess demand for labour in the UK to rebuild (windrush). Given the postwar movement of people was from ireland to the uk in otl with ireland totally out of the war it’s unclear to me why ireland being more in the war would change the postwar direction of flow.
Also, it does remind me a little of the plantation of Ulster: let’s make ireland British by importing lots of British people
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Indeed, but your ideas basically require it to exist in a vacuum to make any kind of sense.