AHC: Ireland partitioned/repartitioned by the River Bann

With a POD of 1919 how can you get an Ireland that is divided by the River Bann? Bonus points for West Belfast being included as a West Berlin-style enclave.
 
Tricky one -easier to do with a pre 1914 POD (no WWI could have slightly accelerated the Protestant eastward migration if Scottish shipbuilding had been more buoyant during the 1920s and 1930s and a Four Counties exclusion with local plebiscites in Fermanagh and Tyrone could have given a precedent -not to mention taking you halfway there already).

Couple of possibles - the attempt to swap South Armagh for Lifford district succeeds during 1922-23 and a culture of horse-trading and shedding hostile demographics takes hold. Minor border adjustments over the 1920s and 1930s (and better if there is no WW2 to stoke up Unionist resentment and moderate British and American sympathy for Dublin) in which case 1940s as well. Slightly more Southern Protestants (farmers and business owners often remained) so probably no de Valera government. Mild rapprochement with O'Higgins, Cosgrave and Mulcahy. Realisation in 1950s Stormont that the introduction of the Welfare State would be easier and a much higher local level of provision without Fermanagh and Tyrone. Compromise and only West Tyrone handed over with Fermanagh but continuing demographic shifts and most of East Tyrone also ceded by 1995. Unrest in 1970s (slower to get off the ground with biggger relative Protestant/Unionist majority but inevitable through continuing discrimination) leads to West Belfast being offered to the Dominion of Ireland/Free State as an additional territory in return for a reciprocal arrangement for Orange access to Derry's walls.

Alternatively, although the demographic gap was very slowly closing anyhow, this was really accelerated by NI Protestants largely adopting birth control a generation and a half earlier than NI Catholics. So a TL where someone does a much earlier botanical expedition to Mexico and the Pill is discovered in the 1920s or 1930s? Protestant adoption of birth control a full generation earlier. Demographics a political factor much earlier and repartition with population exchanges in the cases of enclaves adopted under Sinclair or O'Neill around the end of the 1960s (after Brooke is off the scene and with mammoth rearguard action from Harry West). West Belfast too populous to exchange and precedents of Berlin and Jerusalem now exist and are followed.
 
@ShortsBelfast

Discrimination could possibly be somewhat less of an issue. As the Unionist majority becomes more secure, the less need for overt discrimination.

Defections of border councils if home rule delivered two parliaments might be a possibility. Seems harder to stop a contiguous council moving from one semi- autonomous region of the UK to another.

Edit: Didn't see the 1919 PoD
 
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Discrimination could possibly be somewhat less of an issue. As the Unionist majority becomes more secure, the less need for overt discrimination.
The problem with discrimination in Northern Ireland is twofold and I think both factors would still have told against Catholics: 1) Michael Collins intelligence war involved a brilliantly successful co-option of Nationalist moles in the RIC, Civil and Prison Services. Stormont thereafter were unwilling to allow Catholics into key posts in the RUC or Civil Service and very reluctant to allow them into those bodies at all; 2) Masonry played a key role in Stormont politics and administration and top political and administrative jobs tended to be delivered to 33K Masons. Now Masonry does not ban Catholics per se, the problem is other - the Roman Catholic Church bans its communicants from becoming Masons. So I fear some discrimination is inescapable even if less severe than OTL.
@ShortsBelfast


Defections of border councils if two home rule delivered two parliaments. Seems harder to stop a contiguous council moving from one semi- autonomous region of the UK to another.

Absolutely, but I think that 1919, as stipulated by Von Tyrconnell, is too late for this to be possible. As I said above, it gets trickier if the POD is post 1919.
 
Ireland has a Castro-type figure who’s less successful and turns the eastern portion red? Then you have a partitioned Ireland AND the possibility of Soviet nukes in Britain’s backyard.
 
Ireland has a Castro-type figure who’s less successful and turns the eastern portion red? Then you have a partitioned Ireland AND the possibility of Soviet nukes in Britain’s backyard.
You wouldn't get a Communist arriving in power in twentieth century Ireland North or South. Land ownership was widely dispersed, most businesses were small and religious observance very high in the early to mid C20th and fairly high in the mid to late C20th
 
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