Troubles last into modern day
- Thread starter walmart
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A pipe bomb just down the road from my house in Lisburn too. Thankfully nobody is trying to explode hundreds of pounds of HME in town centres anymore though.
Have Gerry Adams be assassinated by Loyalists in 1984, resulting in SF's political strategy never advancing, the militarists remain dominate and keep the campaign going.
Usually dissident Republicans, sometimes Loyalists engaged in their traditional activity of feuding with each other.
In a sense it can be said that it never ended, but it is very clear that level of violence decreased dramatically after the Good Friday Agreements (and for some time before that as well). If the agreements had never happened, or never worked (for example, no real disarmement occurred) and the main armed factions (as opposed to relatively fringe groups) kept political violence as an open option, in principle you'd see an ongoing actual low level civil war.
It's hard to see how this could be allowed to go on. Britain as a whole had been absolutely sick with the entire matter for quite a long time (since the seventies, arguably) and the European Union would hate an actual civil war, even if a low level one, keeping going in its territory*. The US would also very much like the problem to go away somehow.
* IOTL, the role of the EU in making the downscaling of violence possible was probably not fully appreciated. It shows now, sadly.
Which brings back the old joke of "which IRA"? This one being "New IRA".
Another POD would Hume being killed at some point before the process grew into what it is, I mean Adams advanced the SF position, but Hume was the one that built the support of the Irish-American lobby in the first place and got so many of the talks underway. Could another figure have done what he did?
As to impacts for one the Republic would likely have developed differently, SF wouldn't have been able to shift itself to the Left Wing Party it moves under in the Republic today, so Daíl politics particularly since the Crash would be different, likely less of an economic growth from the 90's onwards, a stronger/larger Defence Force, other bits like that.
Britain was sick of the whole thing since the beginning. Westminster’s position has always been for a United Ireland.
The only terrorist organisation that decommissioned was Bill Wright’s LVF. It’s interesting to note this was the only criminal gang that opposed the agreement. Consequently he was murdered by armed ira terrorists inside the segregated loyalists wing in the top security HMP Magaberry Prison.
I am under the impression that this a bit more complicated than this, especially since the entire reason why "United Ireland" turned out not to be a viable option lies in earlier policies decided by Westminster. However, I agree that in the last century, British wishes have been generally to the tune of "we would rather prefer not have to deal with this headache".
For those interested. Official statistics in 21 years since the end of the troubles 164 people have been murdered by terrorists; 2,695 attempted murders; 1,715 bomb attacks; 2,169 weapons that were supposed to be decommissioned, recovered still activated; 326,686 rounds of ammunition that was supposed to be destroyed, recovered and 2.133 tons of explosives, that we were told was disposed off, retrieved.