Alternate History Challenge: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Your POD must be no earlier than 1800 and you're goal is simple:

The British Isles must be unified under a single parliament, which must continue until the present day.

Bonus Points for:
1) A united law system
2) No Irish Potato Famine
3) Minimum devolution between England (and Wales) Scotland and Ireland
4) Mega bonus points (due to it's near impossibility) if you can scrap self rule for the channel islands and the Isle of Man

Points deductions for:
1) A united British Empire or Commonwealth system any more centralised than today (that's not the point of the challenge)
2) A dictatorship (that includes an elected Fascist Movement or Communist takeover), democracy please.
 
Your POD must be no earlier than 1800 and you're goal is simple:

The British Isles must be unified under a single parliament, which must continue until the present day.

Bonus Points for:
1) A united law system
2) No Irish Potato Famine
3) Minimum devolution between England (and Wales) Scotland and Ireland
4) Mega bonus points (due to it's near impossibility) if you can scrap self rule for the channel islands and the Isle of Man

Points deductions for:
1) A united British Empire or Commonwealth system any more centralised than today (that's not the point of the challenge)
2) A dictatorship (that includes an elected Fascist Movement or Communist takeover), democracy please.
You would not get union between England and Scotland with a single legal system, and if you include devolution then you would have to have seperate legal systems so if you get one point you would have to take away another.

I dont think you can stop the potato blight, but you could get a better government response which negates the effects thus avoiding most of the effects of the famine.

Devolution is an easy one. Get a more determined Gladstone administration in 1885 and devolution all round passes. Actually, thinking about it, if you get a codified constitution and get a federal/state law thing going.

Home Rule for Ireland and the effects of the potato famine negated you would loosen the valves on Irish nationalism. Devolution would allow for self government, thus stopping the decline of the Irish Parliamentary Party and avoiding the rise of Sinn Fein. With the rise of the Labour Party, Ireland could well develop into a three party polity of the IPP, Labour and the Unionists, all within the union.

The interesting thing is that this would lessen the chance of a majority Government in Westminster, assuming the IPP still remain as dominant as they were.
 
Actually I was saying minimum devolution, which mean the ideal is No devolution and the more devolution the worse it gets.
 
Actually I was saying minimum devolution, which mean the ideal is No devolution and the more devolution the worse it gets.
The problem is, without home rule Ireland is almost certain to go so the difficulty is huge.
 
They somehow all become Protestants??
Now you're not even trying :D

Right let's see if I can at least get a discussion going.

Pitt the Younger gets Catholic Emancipation Enacted at the start of the century after the King has a turn for the worst (mentally speaking) and also gets the Westminster Parliament decides to scrap the tithes shortly after. Land reforms enacted in the mid-20s loosen the powers of certain absentee landlords which allow for a mitigation of the worsts of a potato famine. There is an urbanisation on the Emerald Island greater than in OTL and a secularisation of certain working class. The protestant/catholic divide softens and without the Irish Flight and the navies there is a very different industrial revolution in both islands.

Calls for devolution grow but are resisted until today.
 
Cromwell allows more puitan reforms after comming to power
Cromwell does not disolve parliament
British subject like the idea of an elected parliament running their affairs
Cromwell lives longer
Tension with the French causes war
France invades both Ireland and Mainland Britain
A feeling of unity develops resisting the french
Frech expelled after a decade or so all areas of the isles have suffered to some degree
All attemps to resist the will of pariament vigorously resisted
Parliament establishes one system of grovernment for all the domain
 
Cromwell allows more puitan reforms after comming to power
Cromwell does not disolve parliament
British subject like the idea of an elected parliament running their affairs
Cromwell lives longer
Tension with the French causes war
France invades both Ireland and Mainland Britain
A feeling of unity develops resisting the french
Frech expelled after a decade or so all areas of the isles have suffered to some degree
All attemps to resist the will of pariament vigorously resisted
Parliament establishes one system of grovernment for all the domain
POD after 1800 though.
 
Ok, my second attempt.

A British Revolution! Free or a Desart!*

In the early 1800's there were major calls for universal suffrage, leading to events such as Peterloo and the 1820 Rising in Scotland.

Now if you could get the Scottish rising to spread throughout Britain and increase in success then you could force through a new form of Government with elections every year, freedom of speech and religion and a very democratic outlook. If the revolution ends in compromise, you could end up with a figurehead monarch.

A truly democratic government across the Isles would doubtless have done more to help the people of Ireland help ease the suffering of the famine and to change the outlook of the Irish people.

With religion and democracy taken out of the equation along with the famine, you could concievably get Ireland staying in the Union until today albiet with seriously strong calls for home rule.

Also remember, without the famine, Ireland has a huge population. In 1821, Ireland had a population of around five million, England and Wales around nine and Scotland two. Under a truly democratic form of Government in this scenario, Ireland would hold the whip hand in elections.

It is a very long shot, but I dont think ASB.

What do you think?

*mis-spelt on purpose. It was the slogan on the banner held by the rebels in the Scottish 1820 rising, 'Scotland, free or a desart!'
 
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Ok, my second attempt.

A British Revolution! Free or a Desart!*

In the early 1800's there were major calls for universal suffrage, leading to events such as Peterloo and the 1820 Rising in Scotland.

Now if you could get the Scottish rising to spread throughout Britain and increase in success then you could force through a new form of Government with elections every year, freedom of speech and religion and a very democratic outlook. If the revolution ends in compromise, you could end up with a figurehead monarch.

A truly democratic government across the Isles would doubtless have done more to help the people of Ireland help ease the suffering of the famine and to change the outlook of the Irish people.

With religion and democracy taken out of the equation along with the famine, you could concievably get Ireland staying in the Union until today albiet with seriously strong calls for home rule.

Also remember, without the famine, Ireland has a huge population. In 1821, Ireland had a population of around five million, England and Wales around nine and Scotland two. Under a truly democratic form of Government in this scenario, Ireland would hold the whip hand in elections.

It is a very long shot, but I dont think ASB.

What do you think?

*mis-spelt on purpose. It was the slogan on the banner held by the rebels in the Scottish 1820 rising, 'Scotland, free or a desart!'
Yeah that's the kind of thing I was looking at. A very long shot indeed but not quite ASB. I guess I have a hard time seeing the English Protestants giving that much power to the Irish Catholics though. I don't think full democracy would be necessary immediately to prevent Irish Home rule- could we not have a gradual expansion of the right to vote over the 19th century as historical, but with less Irish oppression and generally a more prosprous Ireland?

When times are good, the calls for change aree always quieter.
 
Cromwellian Union?

Hi please forgive me if this isn't great but it is my first try!:)

I thought that you might have during the english civil war instead of being succeded by his second son Richard who was an indesicive leader thayou could have him succeded by one of his older sons Robert or Oliver. (who in our time died at ages 18 and 22) One of these hopefully more liberal and desicive leaders assumes power.
Also instead of dying in 1658 he could have been wounded and died of his injuries early on in his Irish campaign there by leaving us Irish more pen to a Cromwellian leader.
Over time the title of Lord Protecter could become a more of a figure head roll (similar to Monarch of Bitian now or president of Ireland) and the development of a president or speaker might occur thus having the british isles united democratically under one government.

How is that any good?
 
Well, here's a very partial start.

The Queen is most certain that all the Catholics must surely bless the Duke; Peel; and Gladstone for the most worthy efforts made on their behalf – but, oh!, the bigotry and un-Christian hatred of the Protestant factions!
–Victoria RI to Lord Ebrington​
The Queen is sure – poor Sir Robert – and the Duke, of course – ought to be blessed by all Catholics for the many and noble ways in which each stands forth to protect and do good for poor Ireland. But the bigotry, the wicked and blind passion it brings forth, is quite dreadful, and the Queen quite blushes for Protestantism!
–Victoria RI to the Prince Consort​
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Some writers have described the duke’s concern with Ireland – at once as a source of potential disaffection and as the primary reservoir of soldiers for the Crown – as an obsession. This is hardly fair; nor does it do justice to Wellington’s most primary motives for concerning himself with the Irish Question, Catholic Emancipation, and the repeal of the Corn Laws.
Wellington’s abiding concern for the welfare of Ireland was of a piece with his devotion to the Crown, and was set in stone by events in the Peninsula. The Catholic clergy of Irish extraction who played so dominating a part in the duke’s system of intelligence, in Spain, have a fair claim to be regarded as the godfathers of Irish renewal within the Empire, and Salamanca as the seminary of our political catechism….
–Sir John Mitchel Gavan Duffy MP: A History of Irish Renewal, vol. IV: Conciliation and Constitutional Reform in the Reign of Queen Victoria
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The Duke of Wellington sees Ireland as the source of our soldiery and free trade as the sinews of our strength. Smuggling he regards, not as a fraud upon the Exchequer only, but as an imposition upon the publick, who are taxed largely so as to make up the revenue lost. It is rumoured that there is to be a Bill in the parliament next called, to reform the Civil List and the Estimates in return for an assumption of direct government over the Manx and the Channel Islanders: in the latter case, as I suppose, for better security against the French, but, in the main – all because of a few smugglers, and coast-guards and excise-men who will not do their duties! A more absurd proceeding I have never heard of....
–The Creevey Papers​
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Maynooth! All depends upon it, to be sure. It is there that the stability of the Throne in Ireland rests, and no exertion can be too great to keep it within the orbit of British loyalties.
–The duke of Wellington, to Mr Gladstone​
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It is quite true that Wellington at all times regarded Ireland as a purely military problem. Being the Duke, however, he regarded everything, from free trade to Fenianism to foreign relations, as a purely military problem: as poor Kitty, the Duchess, learnt soon enough.
– Sir Philip Guedalla OM​
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One may, by way of example, all too easily imagine the consequences of a disaffected Ireland. Had her firmament’s best and brightest stars been labelled rebels and transported to make some constellation in the Antipodes, or fled to add stars to the American banner, Ireland, Australia, and the United States alike might today be the greatest foes of a merely English ‘Britain’. In the same manner, one might conjecture that a failure to repeal the Corn Laws and to enact Catholic Emancipation – or even the delay of these measures – might have driven Gladstone into the ranks of Whiggery. It is precisely the imagining of such unimaginable dangers and unlikely fates that lends alternative history its frisson; it is in the working out of a plausible series of happenstances, to support such alternatives, that alternative history trains and concentrates the historian’s mind.
– Professor Fergus O’Neill, TCD: ‘Preface’, Had It Happened Otherwise: an Alternative History (ed.)​
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... the duke of W––––––n, if rumour is to be credited, is working hard upon Brougham and the Scotch in the Irish & papist cause, w/ what shew of success one cannot imagine. I make certain that this is all of it due to the malign influence of Croker.
–The Creevey Papers​
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It was typical of Peel that he sought to bind the Irish and indeed the Scots to an increasingly British and Union Crown by chains of gold: jobbery and rotten boroughs had been his forcing-school as a young Member. It was equally characteristic that Gladstone, even as a very junior partner in the enterprise, should have sought to grapple the other nations to England with bands of iron. It was left – to the surprise only of those who knew only the public man – to the Iron Duke to bind Ireland and Scotland more securely to the United Kingdom by bonds of interest, affection and conciliation.
–Lady Longford​
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The Wellesley brothers had regarded their father Mornington’s Irish earldom, and the marquessate later bestowed upon Richard in the peerage of Ireland, as merely ‘gilt potatoes’. Yet as sober – not to say cunning – statesmen, they were well aware that a considerable number of Irishmen, and especially of Catholic Irishmen, were voracious of these staples of the honours system, and that, properly managed, the system of honours and peerages, even of an Irish creation, would feed, sate, and stop the mouths of almost all of those Irishmen lean and hungry for place and preferment: particularly those now freed by Catholic Emancipation to take their seats at table and sup with their Protestant fellows. If the potatoes were gilt, that but sweetened the taste to many. Most of those who might otherwise have agitated for rebellion and Irish secession were thereby rendered somnolent, in a well-fed, unthreatening lethargy of postprandial drowse.
– Sir Philip Guedalla OM​
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I, unlike Grant ‘El Bueno’, had not so much to do with the intelligencers who supported the guerilleros. Yet I met with not a few of the Irish in Spain, and I must say that I found them to be, albeit papists and Jesuits, quite gentlemanly and remarkably brave men.
– Sir George Scovell​
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The escape of the Cardinal Secretary of State, Consalvi, from French captivity, on what appears to have been a sudden, if happy, impulse on the part of the escaping Colquhoun Grant, might easily have led to the death of Pope Pius VII: a second papal martyrdom at the hands of Buonaparte. It was the disasters that befell French arms in 1812 that saved His Holiness. Yet who can now say that Consalvi – the future Pius VIII in succession to his master – acted rashly, let alone wrongly? Pius VII was to assert that Consalvi had acted at all times in accordance with that pope’s policy; and if Consalvi alone, freed from French imprisonment and censorship, could not quite enlist the banner of the subjugated Papal States in the Coalition, he did all that he could do short of that official and formal step. His subsequent election to the papacy, in a bitterly contested conclave in which the backers of Della Gagna were overtly committed to repudiating and reversing the policies of Pius VII, was a godsend to Great Britain and her allies; and his attitude towards Ireland, no less than that he adopted towards Canada and the United States, made the life of successive ministers of the Crown a good deal easier.
– Sir Philip Guedalla OM​
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So far as Scotland went, naturally, it was not by the fragile leaves of the Queen’s Highland journal, but by the iron and steam of the railways, that the Tories succeeded in grappling, as Gladstone had dreamt, the constituent nations together with iron and steel. It is a curious monument to poor Huskisson’s efforts, in light of his ironic death.
–Lady Longford​
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That a commander who – as I knew all too well – was willing to move at daybreak and dine upon cold meat in order to defend the liberty of, not his own nation alone, but all Europe, should be equally diligent as a statesman in perseverant conciliation of a long-depressed people, is only what I should have expected of that great man whom I was honoured to call a friend.
–Álava​
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The philanthropy and gracious condescension of England to Ireland was merely an expression of commercial interest, and no more. Behind the charity of a Lady Burdett-Coutts was the predatory capitalism of Coutts & Co., bankers in the Strand.
–F. Engels and K. Marx​
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The Duke of Wellington’s compliments to Sir Robert Peel, and will Sir Robert dine with the Duke, at Apsley House, on Friday next?
– The letter that began it all​
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