Worst possible Britain

Lateknight

Banned
What could cause britain to have a living standard and government similar to North korea? Please do not use nazis or nukes.
 
Government f ups the post ww1 world (maybe after an german victory.)
Communist revolution sees the UK become a small and isolated state under heavy government repression.
 
What could cause britain to have a living standard and government similar to North korea? Please do not use nazis or nukes.

I think that's pretty close to ASB, unless you somehow have Britian suffer absolutely apocalpytic home-front damage in a war, followed by the acsension of a dictator who imposes an unworkable economic system on the country. (And yes, I know Kim Il Sung technically came to power before the Korean War.)

So, find a way to make that happen, and that could be your starting point. But honestly, I don't know if I could see someone like Kim Il Sung coming to power in a country with the particular political traditions of the UK. I think you might have to radically alter pre-20th Century British history, maybe making them a suzerainity of some European Power, centuries earlier.
 
One party dictatorship in Great Britain by either the Labour Party,Socialist Party or Communist Party.

Labour one-party rule?

AneurinBevinJuly5th1948.jpeg


How dystopian, the mind truly boggles...
 
Post-1900?

How about a stronger USSR steamrollers Continental Europe in an alternate WWII (where the US isn't involved)? Britain, bankrupt from the war, is easy pickings for the commies. A civil war begins, with Soviet-backed communist forces in the north clashing with American-backed capitalist forces in the south. In the end, the British Isles are split in 3:
-The United Kingdom of GB and NI (OTL South England, Wales, and NI)
-The People's Democratic Republic of Britain (OTL North England and Scotland)
-The Republic of Ireland

Ireland and the UK are US-aligned, North Britain is a soviet-aligned totalitarian hellhole.
 
My goodness, Lateknight has started an innocent historical discussion and now people are accusing perfectly ordinary, democratic, unremarkable political parties (Labour and the Conservatives alike) of wanting to start evil dictatorships and equating those parties to Stalinists and fascists.

Why don't we leave the strawmen and the hysterics behind and head back to the discussion?

What could cause britain to have a living standard and government similar to North korea? Please do not use nazis or nukes.

Some kind of revolution is probably the best bet, and in the UK I suppose communism is probably likelier than fascism. The British political system as it existed in 1900 (we are in the post-1900 forum, after all), whatever its deficiencies (and I'm not personally in agreement with all its aspects), doesn't provide any easily workable mechanism for a totalitarian takeover.

As for a mechanism: perhaps the First World War gets nasty, there's an eventual German victory in Europe but the UK doesn't surrender and the war persists on, without any more fighting on land, for several years afterwards due to both sides' stubbornness and unwillingness to make concessions; at some point, whether before or after the war ends, there's a socialist revolution in the UK, which will (inevitably) find itself vigorously opposed by a considerable proportion of the British people (I'm thinking Southern England in particular, though of course not only there). The revolutionaries get into the habit of executing 'enemies of the people' with show trials, and a habit of purges develops. Eventually, one petty politician manages to make himself more important than others and then purges all potential rivals Stalin-style, making himself a Kim-style absolute monarch.

It's probably full of holes, but there's a preliminary idea.
 
I could stomach that better,i don't tend to be leftist by nature

Because Fascism is always preferable to Democratic Socialism, let alone Communism, amirite?

Yeah, but no, that's pants on head stupid/borderline offensive, thank you for playing.

As for the OP, it's tough to pull this off post-1900. I can see Britain going even further under during the Depression, or getting involved in a Dirty War style campaign in Ireland, but it's really tough to have them end up a Nork levels of dystopia. You could maybe manage something like the "Third World", but it'd be tough.
 

BigDave1967

Banned
Because Fascism is always preferable to Democratic Socialism, let alone Communism, amirite?

Yeah, but no, that's pants on head stupid/borderline offensive, thank you for playing.

As for the OP, it's tough to pull this off post-1900. I can see Britain going even further under during the Depression, or getting involved in a Dirty War style campaign in Ireland, but it's really tough to have them end up a Nork levels of dystopia. You could maybe manage something like the "Third World", but it'd be tough.

I'm starting to think right wing-Conservative thinking at all is considered offensive on this message board.:rolleyes:
 

Lateknight

Banned
Because Fascism is always preferable to Democratic Socialism, let alone Communism, amirite?

Yeah, but no, that's pants on head stupid/borderline offensive, thank you for playing.

As for the OP, it's tough to pull this off post-1900. I can see Britain going even further under during the Depression, or getting involved in a Dirty War style campaign in Ireland, but it's really tough to have them end up a Nork levels of dystopia. You could maybe manage something like the "Third World", but it'd be tough.

Could they maybe get involved in a war in india? Like some sort of super vietnam ?
 
I'm starting to think right wing-Conservative thinking at all is considered offensive on this message board.:rolleyes:

There's a difference between being a right wing conservative (there's plenty of them around here) and saying "I would support fascist groups over socialist/communist ones".

The issue isn't your views, it's how you're expressing them. The board has a vast political spectrum, but you need to be able to articulate a position more than just dropping in and saying "Better dead than Red!"

Could they maybe get involved in a war in india? Like some sort of super vietnam ?

Maybe? But I doubt how that would affect the homefront, India is thousands of miles away, and even if it did turn into SUPER VIETNAM you wouldn't see the country implode into a North Korea/Hoxhaist Albania hellhole.
 
I don't see Britain going Totalitarian of any stripe with a post 1900 POD. No party in the UK except possibly Mosley's Fascists would come anywhere near to going down that sort of road. It is possible to get either right or left dictatorships I think, but closer to Franco's Spain or perhaps the Greek Colonels (who were pretty nasty to be fair). To do that you need a different outcome to WW1. My own TL is exploring some of these possibilities.

This is nothing to do with prejudice against right or left. It is simply a reflection of what 20C Britain was really like.
 

Lateknight

Banned
Kung Fucious;9006567 Maybe? But I doubt how that would affect the homefront said:
What if was a combination of things like wars in India and Ireland along with a insurgency(leftist or rightist) in britain.
 
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