AHC: Ruin Britain

Tovarich

Banned
Here's a Hansard record of a UK parliamentary debate on the issue (and others) that took place in February, 1979. There seem to me to be no obvious references at all to the weather having had anything to to do with the situation of the dead not being buried in Liverpool; there are, however, multiple references to pay and conditions of employment:
(occasional numbers appearing in text with values from 1839-1845 are part of Hansard reference system)

Link: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/...matoria-industrial#S5CV0961P0_19790202_HOC_13
Not many political points to be gained for either side of the House in admitting the ground outside was like rock under a mountain of snow, it had been that way for months, and there was therefore a backlog quite regardless of a minor, short, local dispute.

( I bloody loved it, but that's because I was 10)
 
What about the possibility of Thatcher deciding to nuke Buenos Aires during the Falklands War in a moment of extraordinarily bad judgment? It would turn the UK into an international pariah, ruining their reputation and possibly driving away investors who no longer see it as a safe country for their money.
 
What about the possibility of Thatcher deciding to nuke Buenos Aires during the Falklands War in a moment of extraordinarily bad judgment?
Never going to happen. Margaret Thatcher was never mentally deranged and even if she had been the rest of the Cabinet, senior military commanders, and potentially even the Queen wouldn't have allowed it to happen.
 
Never going to happen. Margaret Thatcher was never mentally deranged and even if she had been the rest of the Cabinet, senior military commanders, and potentially even the Queen wouldn't have allowed it to happen.

I agree. But this isn't something that came out of nowhere. She told the french president that if he couldn't give her the code to shut down the argentine defences, she'd just nuke them instead.

Now that was, imo, obviously a bluff but you know if she's telling a foreign leader that she's willing to do it, it's not unfair to bring it up as a possibility.

Anyway the problem with this topic is it's so clearly poiliticised, tories wll say if labour won these elections the uk would be ruined, labour will say the opposite.

But don't join the european common market? Don't give up the emprie peacefully meaning they go the way of portugal in africa? No peace with the ira? No marshall aid?
 
How's about, for a starter for thought:

The Unions beat Thatcher and the UK's large and unprofitable public sector enterprises (mining, manufacturing, so on) remain in public hands and remain a drag on the economy. Trade Unions, victorious over the government, are empowered such that their control over employees and employment laws make it very difficult to lay people off or dismiss them, leading to international investment being much reduced as foreign companies look elsewhere for their overseas bases of operation.

The result is the UK economy being remarkably different and UK politics being remarkably different: the whole UK is much more socialist and a lot of state spending goes into propping up inefficient industries and jobs. Ambitious people leave the country for Germany or the United States where the private economy is much larger and more flexible.

Standards of living, GDP-per-Capita and disposable income, on average, are much lower than today.

----

Don't know how true any of the above is, as economics isn't really my best subject, but it might spur discussion.

No Falkland effect on Thatcher and the 83 Labour manifiasco not being ' the longest suicide note in history' has the potential to put the UK into the positionof being a tital wreck by the turn of the millenium ...
 
She told the French President that if he couldn't give her the code to shut down the Argentine defences, she'd just nuke them instead.
IIRC we get that story second hand from Mitterrand's psychoanalyst after his death when he was publishing a book so you'll have to excuse me if I'm more than a little sceptical.
 
IIRC we get that story second hand from Mitterrand's psychoanalyst after his death when he was publishing a book so you'll have to excuse me if I'm more than a little sceptical.

Also, why would the president of France have the code to shut down Argentina's military?:confused:
 
I think the second hand quote was about codes to disable exocet missiles made in France.
Even then secret codes to shut down the French manufactured Exocet missiles sounds a bit far-fetched like something out of an airport bookshop thriller. Or a tell-all book that needs a bit of spicing up to boost the reporting of it and its sales.
 
Firstly, codes to disable missiles? How exactly does that work, like a cheat on a video game or something? Wouldn't the KGB be all over missile disabling codes if such things existed? Maybe all the defensive weapons on Soviet ships were in case the KGB didn't get the codes?

Secondly, how about if Britain did really badly at Suez? Having ships sunk, a lot of planes including Valiants shot down and having the ground troops badly mauled and taking big losses. IIRC Nasser held his Air Force back in order not to escalate the situation, so the PoD is Nasser just goes balls to the wall and orders his forces to go nuts. I'm not thinking massive losses, maybe along the lines of what Britain lost in the Falklands, but this added to the diplomatic humiliation would lead to a massive loss of power and prestige and most likely severe economic impacts as well.
 
Even then secret codes to shut down the French manufactured Exocet missiles sounds a bit far-fetched like something out of an airport bookshop thriller.
Firstly, codes to disable missiles? How exactly does that work,
Even if they don't have a on off 'code' simply knowing the computer 'code' in the missiles would allow you to optimise your countermeasures to defeat the Argentinian missiles. French missiles could have a range of codes/frequency's but the export ones could have been set to 0001/single frequency as they are one small batch and or lazzyness.

Or a tell-all book that needs a bit of spicing up to boost the reporting of it and its sales.
Very much agree....

Secondly, how about if Britain did really badly at Suez? Having ships sunk, a lot of planes including Valiants shot down and having the ground troops badly mauled and taking big losses. IIRC Nasser held his Air Force back in order not to escalate the situation, so the PoD is Nasser just goes balls to the wall and orders his forces to go nuts. I'm not thinking massive losses, maybe along the lines of what Britain lost in the Falklands, but this added to the diplomatic humiliation would lead to a massive loss of power and prestige and most likely severe economic impacts as well.
Did the Egyptians really have a none ASB chance of downing Valiants designed to hit Moscow ? (or sinking significant parts of the RN/MN)
 
When the OP asks for something significantly worse than OTL, "pretty much OTL" is decidedly not an answer. All things are equal to themselves.
Without wanting to derail the thread further - the 'Britain, no longer Great' lobby seems to thrive on the fact that we're no longer world hegemon. We were never a superpower in the sense that the US is today, though, and even today the UK has one of the largest economies, one of the world's most capable militaries, and huge amounts of diplomatic clout.
There's always having Labour win the 1983 general election and implement the longest suicide note in history as their election manifesto was christened by one of their own Members of Parliament. That would certainly make things... interesting shall we say.
The 1983 General Election was my initial thought, but it really needs something to go badly wrong with the Thatcher government to make Labour's manifesto look like a better idea. Poach's suggestion of pushing too hard too soon with free market policies would probably set this up.
Firstly, codes to disable missiles? How exactly does that work, like a cheat on a video game or something? Wouldn't the KGB be all over missile disabling codes if such things existed? Maybe all the defensive weapons on Soviet ships were in case the KGB didn't get the codes?
It's fairly well accepted that the French supplied the British with the radar frequencies that the Exocet missiles sold to Argentina operated on, allowing jamming to be optimised against them. I can easily see how this gets corrupted into 'secret codes to shut down the missiles'.
Secondly, how about if Britain did really badly at Suez? Having ships sunk, a lot of planes including Valiants shot down and having the ground troops badly mauled and taking big losses. IIRC Nasser held his Air Force back in order not to escalate the situation, so the PoD is Nasser just goes balls to the wall and orders his forces to go nuts. I'm not thinking massive losses, maybe along the lines of what Britain lost in the Falklands, but this added to the diplomatic humiliation would lead to a massive loss of power and prestige and most likely severe economic impacts as well.
Suez is actually a really good possibility that I hadn't thought of. Given the damage that was done by a limited success and being called to heel by the United States, Nasser bloodying the noses of the British forces would cause a real crisis. A bit of economic mismanagement, never far from the surface, and you've got a Vote of No Confidence and a Labour government under Gaitskell.
 
The French turned out to be very staunch allies of the British. They immediately slapped an embargo on Argentina and gave the British all sorts of handy technical information such as radar seeker frequencies and specific performance and numbers of the Exocets delivered to Argentina. However this regular reference to 'codes' is a myth which is seemingly gaining credibility as the years pass.

I think its not ASB for the EAF to shoot down a Victor because I don't think Victors did conventional bombing from 50,000 feet. If they have to come down lower to actually drop their bombs they can be vulnerable to fighters and/or radar directed AAA. Similarly LSTs and NGFS ships aren't invulnerable to determined attacks in a contested airspace scenario, so its not ASB for an LST or two and a few frigates, destroyers and maybe even a cruiser to cop some serious damage and even be sunk by aircraft, shore batteries and warships. I believe an Egyptian Frigate did challenge an RN ship during the crisis, but the RN ship turned out to be a 6" gunned cruiser so the result was a bit one sided.
 
Well, if there was any doubt if this should be in Chat, there ought to be none.

Indeed. This is drifting into chat, which is quite worrying because when you think about it, an awful lot of people are saying just how bad it was during the 1970s and 1980s, certainly up in the north of England.

The best way to continue that is to get militant into power, which shouldn't be all that too hard - try getting rid of the Falklands war, making the 1981 depression last longer and then have Foot win in 1983. That should do it.

Alternatively, why not go with Gordon Banks? That's pretty nasty and it's clear from the post script that after the mess of that alt-1970s, the UK is left cold and isolated drifting towards American statehood and NAFTA by the late 1990s.
 
Indeed. This is drifting into chat, which is quite worrying because when you think about it, an awful lot of people are saying just how bad it was during the 1970s and 1980s, certainly up in the north of England.

The best way to continue that is to get militant into power, which shouldn't be all that too hard - try getting rid of the Falklands war, making the 1981 depression last longer and then have Foot win in 1983. That should do it.

Alternatively, why not go with Gordon Banks? That's pretty nasty and it's clear from the post script that after the mess of that alt-1970s, the UK is left cold and isolated drifting towards American statehood and NAFTA by the late 1990s.

Wouldn't that require the SDP to not split off?
 
When the OP asks for something significantly worse than OTL, "pretty much OTL" is decidedly not an answer. All things are equal to themselves.

I agree. Furthermore this is not the only thread where people have missed the point of its OP.

Having said that I grew up in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s and it is very hard to think of how it could have been worse economically. High inflation, one balance of payments crisis after another, poor economic growth and mass unemployment.

Having thought about it, a way it could have been made worse is to screw up some other sectors of British industry.

Chemicals springs to mind. Perhaps this could be done through greater fragmentation by not creating ICI in the 1920s. But that breaks the post 1945 POD.
 
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I agree. But this isn't something that came out of nowhere. She told the french president that if he couldn't give her the code to shut down the argentine defences, she'd just nuke them instead.

Now that was, imo, obviously a bluff but you know if she's telling a foreign leader that she's willing to do it, it's not unfair to bring it up as a possibility.

Anyway the problem with this topic is it's so clearly poiliticised, tories wll say if labour won these elections the uk would be ruined, labour will say the opposite.

But don't join the european common market? Don't give up the emprie peacefully meaning they go the way of portugal in africa? No peace with the ira? No marshall aid?

Wasn't that a quote about Maggie threatening to turn BA into rubble from the French Presidents Barbers assistant or some such? Not a direct quote from the Man himself? I seem to recall it was not a 'reliable' primary source. Not that it stopped the papers from printing it!

Anyway - Britain is not run like a dictatorship and the decision to pop BA with a Nuke would not come from one person and certainly would have to pass through the Cabinat and then on to HMS Warrior (Communication base at Northwood, North West London) where a couple of high ranking Military types would overview the order and then on to the unit intended to make the attack (Submarine, Bomber Squadron, Aircraft Carrier etc).

Unless the entire Chain of Command was insane then it would not happen.

Lots of ways for Britian to emerge from the 50s / 60s in worse shape - the Oil Crisis on going

And as for the 70s Im old enough to recall the brown outs!

How about the SS Richard Montgomery blowing up in the Thames Estuary during a spring tide and the resultant surge flooding the centre of London - in particular the financial district as well as East London and parts of Essex and North Kent

The resulting damage is so extensive that it takes a decade for London to recover.

If this happened during the low points of the 60s and 70s and seriously compromised Londons place as one of the centres of the Financial world then this could have had serious implications to Britains Post war and post Empire recovery.
 
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