There are no purely "Catholic parts" anymore than there are purely "Protestant" areas, so you still end up either displacing people or people ending up in areas they don't want to be in, also just where o you draw the line on this? Carve up Belfast?
Yeah, outside of the couple from Sweden all our tanks have been British surplus.
Not likely, I mean forces already committed to the campaign are committed, really the UK would just have to pull some units from the UK or Germany for a couple of days to counter such a situation, though tbh, by the time we're both in the EEC, it's not credible that Ireland would suddenly decide to try and invade NI for "reasons".
I've heard a pretty batshit insane scenario floated in an ASB TL on some other forum, forget when exactly, that Charles Haughey gets blackmailed massively for all of his corrupt deeds during the government formation process in early 1982 by an all knowing Tony Gregory, who is the decisive vote because in this scenario, the Workers Party gets 2 seats instead of 3 but won't support Fianna Fail, and the terms of the blackmail are an army raid on H Block to free Republican prisoners
That's impressively Batshit, for so many reasons, I mean hell it forgets that while everyone remembers H Block, our own Portlaoise at the same time period was one of the most heavily fortified prisons in Europe to hold Republican prisoners, up to and including an Army detachment armed up to MANPAD level to stop any escape attempts. If anyone was willing to use that irt on Charlie (and plenty of it was known, himself the Godfather was in one of his many jobs over the years one of the go to drivers for the Irish Government, the stories he tells...)
Cute, but the RUC of the time had other jobs, you might remember what some of them got up to.
Yeah, given the long list of actions during that period when the UK didn't react (Mountbatten, the murder of the British Ambassador, the burning of the British Embassy) and the UK knowing full well the limitations of the DF, "flattening" is a highly unlikely outcome. Most likely at best a show of force while NI was reinforced and that's the end of it.
I kind of wonder, even if that TL was ASB, what kind of good PODs could come from a Haughey blackmail scenario. I think MI5 for example knew about his women on the side, and his financial dealings as you mentioned, not exactly a secret. The most obvious would be stuff in his last term when money was starting to pour into the country, through perhaps a Russia-type firesale of state assets (where you mark them down first and sell them to a very specific bidder in dodgy fashion)
Very much so. The reason why North Belfast was the murder capital of the North during the troubles was that it was a patchwork of Protestant and Catholic areas literally separated from each other by about 100 yards of tarmac. Then you have largely Protestant villages like Castlederg or Sion Mills with a Catholic hinterland, largely Catholic towns/villages like Downpatrick or Kircubbin with vice versa or Kilkeel which traditionally had a Protestant side of the main street and a Catholic side of the main street.From what I understand at the time in Northern Ireland there was pretty severe segregation with "Protestant Neighborhoods" and "Catholic Neighborhoods". Saying that actually trying to divide it up would be a fucking nightmare. You wouldn't get a lot of neat even lines.
If you actually tried to divide Northern Ireland at the time into "Catholic bits" (Going to the Republic of Ireland) and "Protestant Bits" (staying in the UK) you'd get something those towns in India/Burma that ended up being exclaves in their neighbor's country. And in many cases enclaves inside of those enclaves and something enclaves inside of that Enclave. Just by walking between a few villages (very close to each other) you'd be traveling over international borders multiple times.
India–Bangladesh enclaves - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Dahala Khagrabari - Wikipedia
It'd be like that but on crack. Completely destroy the economy of NI and unless there's a lot of international cooperation cause a near complete breakdown of infrastructure.
One of the doomsday “plans“ that was floated in London during the worst of the Troubles was something like that, but it’s very hard to see how any Cabinet could get away with doing that.
