AHC: Keep the whole of Ireland as part of the United Kingdom
- Thread starter Pilsudski
- Start date
Ian_W
Banned
Reading this speech may help.
Irish Home Rule Speech - Wikisource, the free online library
You can have democracy in the UK, or you can keep Ireland as part of the UK.
Pick one.
Reading this speech may help.
Irish Home Rule Speech - Wikisource, the free online library
en.wikisource.org
You can have democracy in the UK, or you can keep Ireland as part of the UK.
Pick one.
That's an interesting speech, Gladstone certainly brings up good points. Would it not be possible to keep the Irish in the United Kingdom even with a devolved government with a reintroduction of an Irish parliament? Or would the Unionists cause to much trouble for such a solution to be viable or tenable long-term? If home rule were to be instituted, would that precipitate an earlier formation of a Scottish parliament, or would that still be a long ways off?
I doubt strongly that it is possible keep Ireland anymore after WW1. Irish people really wanted Brits out. Best what what Brits can get is keep Ireland as dominion and even that is quiet difficult. Only way keep Ireland as part of UK after WW1 is harsh military rule and perhaps even genocide. But this is something what Brits are nto going to do. Even acts during Second Boer War were too much. So they are nto going make same with Ireland. And even then you can't secure that Ireland is going remain part of UK forever. At least Brits would face even more terrorist as in OTL in Northern Ireland.
Probably you would need POD before potato famine or at least Brits should deal that much better. Then keeping Ireland mihgt be possible.
Probably you would need POD before potato famine or at least Brits should deal that much better. Then keeping Ireland mihgt be possible.
It probably would just make things worse. One martyr more. Better would be if Brits decide throw Easter Rising leaders to prison instead hanging. And even then they just would delay independence while.
Actually ypu dont, It is possible that the plan for a devolved settlement for the whole UK and Ireland could have been accepted by the Conservative and Unionist Party at one point. Such devout Unionists as FE Smith were involved in serious discussions about it with the Liberalds and Irisah constitutionalists. in the end, however, this discussion did not suceed, but it might have. Of course this would have been a very loose United Kingdom, and certainly not a unitary state. Later on the British could at least have kept Eire in the Commonwealth long term if they had not over reacted in 1916, as the rising was very unpopular until the executions turned opinion around.
Ian_W
Banned
"Now, I must make a large demand on your patience and your indulgence — we conscientiously believe that there are Unionists and Disunionists; but that it is our policy that leads to union and yours to separation. "
Remember, this is an 1886 speech, and Gladstone lost on Home Rule.
The 1914 Government of Ireland Act passed the Commons three times, but was rejected by the Lords - which meant under the Parliament Act of 1911 it went for Royal Assent to become law.
Protestant Ulster hated the Government of Ireland act, because rather than being part of a Protestant majority within the UK, they were going to be the minority in a Catholic Ireland - and the Curragh Incident showed the British government was not willing to shoot Unionist mutineers (*). Note the UVF was formed in 1913 to oppose the Government of Ireland Act (**).
Now, a British government that does *not* suspend Home Rule in 1914 could be the POD - but (and this is a big but), you're going to need to deal with the UVF and so on.
It is interesting that the Churchill government's response to the very similar Indian independance movement in 1939-1945 was to promise independance after the war, if Congress would assist during the war ... and Ghandi and Nehru indeed took the postdated cheque from the crashing bank (***).
Yeah. So if the Asquith government goes to Ireland with 'You will have Home Rule now, and to beat the Germans we need a division from each County in Ireland', then things get interesting.
Especially if, given the war, they are not prepared to accept the resignation of Unionist officers, and make it clear that if they are not prepared to do their duty, then they go to Flanders as riflemen and are immediately replaced by Charles Parnell's friends in the Dublin Rifles.
(*) A constant of the Home Rule issue is that Ulster will only obey the law when the law is what they want.
(**) This is all absolutely still boiling, by the way.
(***) Ireland is the first British colony to break away, and the Congress Party knew it.
If collins is dead and there is still rebellion just who do Britain negioiate with?
Ian_W
Banned
George Noble Plunkett would be a start.
But, more importantly, they need to decide if they are goign to actually implement the 1914 Government of Ireland Act.
1919 is too late without involving the sort of stuff that would only be seen in Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. You would need a pre-1900 PoD to achieve this at all, and even then probably something somewhere post Flight of the Earls but pre-United Irishmen. Something like a halt on Plantations, Catholic Emancipation and a more "gradual" move towards Ireland as a whole being ruled from London including a dissolution of the Irish Parliament. Problem is that even with all that, you would need to fundamentally make the Irish feel, well, British in the same way that Scots, English and Welsh became British.
Otherwise, the rise of nationalism will just kill it every single time.
Otherwise, the rise of nationalism will just kill it every single time.
Don't forget that Ulster Presbyterians were the most fervent United Irishmen. A post 1798 POD is still possible. Pre 1900, I would suggest combining the Act of Union with Catholic Emancipation as William Pitt wanted but King George thought violated his Coronation Oath (King having one of his porphyria episodes to coincide with the Act of Union might deliver that); and the Corn Laws being passed with an inbuilt suspension (or power to declare specific ports duty free) in times of famine procedure leaving Robert Peel in power during the late 1840s and early 1850s. Avoiding the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in 1882 might have led to earlier Home Rule before positions entrenched and without Cavendish's brother Lord Hartington leading the Liberal Unionists out of the Liberal Party. Avoiding the implosion of Parnell's political career would be another interesting POD.
Post 1900, if someone had had the brainwave of a federal devolution with most powers delegated to the 4 Provinces (like the Eire Nua group suggested fifty years later) a compromise might have been worked out at the Buckingham Palace Conference in 1912; The 1916 Rising might have been nipped in the bud if the Asquith government hadn't run down Dublin Castle's intelligence networks on the basis that they were no longer necessary with Home Rule on its way. And, obviously, if someone politically adroit had commuted all the Rising leader's death sentences to life imprisonment I think you could have had Ireland as a Dominion at least.
Ian_W
Banned
What, like this ?
The problem is Ulster Protestants run the place in their own sectarian interest, and will start a civil war if they get stopped from doing so. And were preparing to do so in 1913.
And until you get a British Army that is prepared to shoot Unionist terrorists - and I'd absolutely suggest Dublin Castle is the first place you'd need level with artillery if you were going to do that - you can't actually stop them winning it.
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Oh I'm not forgetting that at all, the reason I argue for a pre-1798 one would be so that the idea of creating a sense of "Britishness" in Ireland would allow those same men to join in the same general "unity" ideal. I still regard the, for lack of a better way of putting it, "split" between Presbyterians and Catholics after 1798 as probably the single most disastrous event in Irish political history.
Quite, I just was thinking the easiest one.
Again, all sounds good to me. More difficult than the general area I'm thinking of, but by all means doable. Hell, the Corn Laws one alone would be the biggest one there.
Not impossible, though I do wonder how you would get the English (specifically those of England, not a catch all term for the whole island) to agree to devolution at that point in time, as even with the possibility of it answering the Irish Question for a while (before we change it again, naturally) it would require some serious political gymnastics.
Which is why one of the things that would be needed, would be to prevent that. Ideally, somehow have Elizabeth cotton onto the idea of "freedom of religion, provided loyalty to the Crown" and move from there.
Also a more concentrated effort to convert the average Irish away from Catholicism, would help. A bible translated into Irish as opposed to using only ones in English would be a very good start.
No, not exactly. Transfer those powers to each of the four Provinces - Ulster; Leinster; Munster and Connaught individually with "Ireland" only running a couple of services at the federal level, rather than to Ireland collectively as OTL and the Unionists might have agreed to a compromise. Pretty much what they signed up to in 1923 after all.
You are conflating the post 1923 Six Counties with pre 1914 Ulster. Remember that four Ulster counties had Nationalist/Catholic majorities (Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan and Tyrone), one was more or less half and half (Fermanagh, 2% Nationalist majority) and four had Unionist/Protestant majorities (Antrim, Down, Londonderry and Armagh). The Unionists of Edwardian Ulster did not want to be (a) part of a state that they feared (not without some justification it must be said) was going to be dominated by the Catholic Church; or (b) separated by protectionist tariffs of any sort from the British and Imperial markets on which their then booming economy was dependent. Reassure them on those points and perhaps a deal can be struck.
Post 1923 Ulster is a different kettle of fish. To the Ulster Protestant, the 1916 rebels are a gang of traitors who tried to stab the Empire in the back as the cream of Ulster's young men were dying heroically on the Somme. He has been radicalised by the War of Independence and the attacks on the RIC; he has had his numbers added to by an influx of Southern Unionists and former RIC men who have fled here for refuge; he has surrendered three counties in order to shore up a Unionist majority in the industrial heartlands. Between his experiences in preparing to fight not to be part of a Home Rule Ireland and the activities of people like Broy and Nelligan in Michael Collins' intelligence war he believes that it is a security risk to have Catholics in key jobs. And he is further exasperated by his Catholic neighbours refusal to accept his new state and take their seats in local government and at the Stormont Parliament. And the Orange Order has become extremely politically powerful. And there certainly is a degree of religious bigotry (I hesitate to use the term sectarian because "Ulster Protestantism" are not a sect, they are a broad coalition of over a dozen distinct religious groupings) to be added to the mix.
And, if the Curragh mutineers were prepared to resign rather than fire on the Ulstermen, plenty of other officers had expressed no such opinion. And the Royal Navy were quite prepared to bombard Belfast, Larne and Carrickfergus according to Winston Churchill.
Mary Tudor and Cardinal Pole are waving at you. King Charles II and James III say "Hi" as well.