Maybe if the British military and allied paramilitaries reacted more harshly militarily against insurgents ? Maybe even with aircraft. Maybe if Home rule had never been revoked.
Maybe if the British military and allied paramilitaries reacted more harshly militarily against insurgents ? Maybe even with aircraft. Maybe if Home rule had never been revoked.Anyway the Troubles could last into the modern day
How popular would the various groups going into the 2000s and 2010s
What would be the impact on British and Irish politics
Maybe if the British military and allied paramilitaries reacted more harshly militarily against insurgents ? Maybe even with aircraft. Maybe if Home rule had never been revoked.
Sadly can’t change hatred. ☹️Maybe if the British military and allied paramilitaries reacted more harshly militarily against insurgents ? Maybe even with aircraft. Maybe if Home rule had never been revoked.
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.
9/11 actually improved the situation quite a bit. A lot of Irish Americans had no problem sending money back to the home country, albeit indirectly in many cases. Quite a bit of IRA funds came from the US.
Suddenly one day terrorists flew two jets into the World Trade Center, a third into The Pentagon, and nearly attacked a 4th target before Flight 93 plowed into a field in Pennsylvania.
Terrorism isn't a big deal when it happens "over there" and has no direct or indirect impact on you, but a lot of people had their world view rotated 180 degrees after the 9/11 attacks when they could look out their window at the WTC, or the lack thereof in the days after 9/11.
The likelihood is if the Belfast Agreement hadn't been signed and decommissioning hadn't started in 1998 - even though support and enthusiasm was already waning - then 11th September 2001 would as good as end support and funding from the previously terrorist friendly American public.
There's always be support from diehards, but before 11/9 it was perfectly acceptable as a mainstream thought to be pro PIRA. Once the NE USA starts getting a taste of that it's not politically palatable for it to continue.
More likely is HM Government insists on Dubya clamping down US funding in exchange for UK participation on the "War on Terror", otherwise it's a "War on some Terror but not all terror, only brown muslim terror but not catholic Irish terror"
Than there also had been Gadaffi's supllies.The likelihood is if the Belfast Agreement hadn't been signed and decommissioning hadn't started in 1998 - even though support and enthusiasm was already waning - then 11th September 2001 would as good as end support and funding from the previously terrorist friendly American public.
This was openly fundraising at Irish bars with a cop actually involved on one occasion, like I said PIRA's relationship with nations/entities that the US political and public views were hostile to didn't hurt them through the Troubles and still doesn't for Dissidents. As to the UK forcing the issue, depends very much on the political calculations for the US, as they know the UK isn't going to sit out Afghanistan anyway.
Well not being in the Ra I couldn't tell you their fundraising history.Was it as significant as it was before 9/11? There's always going to be diehards or old fossils around who can't or don't want to change their ways. If before 9/11 everyone did it and after 9/11 only a handful of locations did it, there's still a vast difference.
One week after September 11 2001 i Heard on the news that IRA would be looking for a political solution. If they had not and continued attacking London would start saying "IRA is connected with Al-qaida" and whatever support IRA had outside northern Ireland would vanish. Bush would publicly go on TV and start speaking about IRA and Al-qaida as one. Then the leadership of IRA get phone calls from SAS asking them to lay down their arms Before a Tomahawk is launched.