Blue Skies in Camelot: An Alternate 60's and Beyond
- Thread starter President_Lincoln
- Start date
thatsbunkers
Banned
Maybe the Fallwell wing can come together with the Reagan wing of the GOP to kick out the Wallace types
The Libertarian Party hasn't actually been founded yet!
They could still exist ITTL as we move ahead, but as of this moment, they do not yet exist. The next chapter I had planned on posting on Friday is ready if you guys want to have it a few days early.
The next chapter I had planned on posting on Friday is ready if you guys want to have it a few days early.
That would be absolutely perfect.
Nah. Keep to the schedule you set for yourself. It would feel more consistent that way.
BP Booker
Banned
I could definitely see Ted Kennedy, with his elder brothers strong arming the Democratic Party, as Senate Majority Leader after 1980 (18 years in the Senate, the same amount of experiance Chuck Schumer had after 2016) if Chapakwa... Chapaqua... Chappaqui... ugh whatever the thing with the car and the lady that died, doesent happen.
Thank you all for the input!
I plan on posting the update that would have gone on Friday today and then resuming regularly scheduled programming next Monday. Consider it a friendly treat from me to you, my wonderful audience. 
Chapter 47
Chapter 47: Bad Moon Rising - A Former President Passes Away, Troubles Begin in Ireland, and a Crisis Brews in France
This photograph, taken January 2nd, 1969, shows People’s Democracy, a socialist reformist group, marching from Belfast to Derry City, Northern Ireland, demanding civil rights and legal protections for the Catholic Minority in Ulster. Marches like this one, and the violent struggle that would soon engulf them, foreshadowed the beginning of “the Troubles”.
A recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom on account of his lifelong humanitarian efforts, Hollywood legend Gregory Peck had been utterly honored when John F. Kennedy, the same President that bestowed that medal upon him also offered him an appointment he had always dreamed of: that of U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland. Through his paternal grandmother, Peck was related to Thomas Ashe, who participated in the Easter Uprising of 1916 against British rule, and died only a few short months after Peck’s birth in the United States. Raised Catholic, and possessive of both a deep love for the country of his ancestors and of the pursuit of human rights, decency, and equality, Peck saw his appointment to the Ambassadorship as more than simply an excuse to spend his days overseas. The first Irish-American and Catholic President had appointed him to the post, and by jove, Peck was going to make a difference in the biggest issue of the day in Eire: the ongoing battles for Catholic civil rights in the North.
Beginning earlier in the decade, a nonviolent campaign modeled on the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King and others in the United States took root in Northern Ireland and began to challenge the long standing status quo there. Comprising of groups such as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), the Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ), the Derry Citizens’ Action Committee (DCAC), and People’s Democracy, the campaign’s stated goals were thus:
- An end to job discrimination – it showed evidence that Catholics/nationalists were less likely to be given certain jobs, especially government jobs than their Protestant/unionist counterparts.
- An end to discrimination in housing allocation – it showed evidence that unionist-controlled local councils allocated housing to Protestants ahead of Catholics/nationalists
- One Man, One Vote – in Northern Ireland, only householders could vote in local elections, while in the rest of the United Kingdom all adults could vote.
- An end to gerrymandering of electoral boundaries – this meant that nationalists had less voting power than unionists, even where nationalists were a majority.
- Reform of the police force (Royal Ulster Constabulary) – it was over 90% Protestant and criticised for sectarianism and police brutality.
- Repeal of the Special Powers Act – this allowed police to search without a warrant, arrest and imprison people without charge or trial, ban any assemblies or parades, and ban any publications; the Act was used almost exclusively against nationalists.
The primary issue that the protesters swiftly ran into was the deeply held mistrust for them by the powers that be in Ulster. Some suspected and accused NICRA of being a nationalist-republican front group whose ultimate goal was a united Ireland. Although republicans and some members of the IRA (then largely pursuing a non-violent agenda under Cathal Goulding) helped to create and propel the movement, they by no means controlled it, and in fact had very little sway on the movement’s direction or goals. Nonetheless the authorities were suspicious, and almost immediately began heavy surveillance of the groups.
Throughout March and April 1966, Irish nationalists/republicans held parades throughout Ireland to mark the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. On 8 March, a group of Irish republicans set off an explosion at Nelson's Pillar in Dublin. At the time, the IRA was weak, decentralized, and not engaged in armed action, but suspicious unionists warned it was about to be revived to launch another campaign against Northern Ireland. In April 1966, loyalists led by Ian Paisley, a Protestant fundamentalist preacher, founded the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee (UCDC). It set up a paramilitary-style wing called the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) to oust Terence O'Neill, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Although O'Neill was a unionist, they viewed him as being too 'soft' on the civil rights movement and opposed his policies.
At the same time, a loyalist group calling itself the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) emerged in the Shankill area of Belfast. The organization was led by Gusty Spence, a former British soldier. Many of its members were also members of the UCDC and UPV. In April and May it petrol bombed a number of Catholic homes, schools and businesses, in what one witness described as “virtual hell on Earth”. One of these firebombs killed an elderly Protestant widow, Matilda Gould. The situation continued to escalate as on the 21st of May, the UVF issued a statement declaring "war" against the IRA and anyone helping it. May 27th came and the UVF fatally shot a Catholic civilian, John Scullion, as he walked home. A month later it shot three Catholic civilians as they left a pub, killing a young Catholic from the Republic, Peter Ward. Shortly after, the UVF was proscribed (made illegal) by the Northern Ireland government, but the damage and terror they caused would long remain, a portent of the tragedy still to come. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed in January 1967, largely in response to these atrocities. The protests grew more intense and frequent and in the aforementioned march by People’s Democracy on January 1st, 1969, the marchers were set upon with violence by more than 200 loyalists, some of whom were off duty police officers. The protesters were bludgeoned with iron bars, bricks, bottles, and other crude weapons, and though no one was killed, hundreds were injured, some severely. That night, in response to the march, RUC officers raided Catholic homes, spreading fear and distrust through the streets of Derry, and this was only the tip of the iceberg. Clashes between protesters and police became an all too common sight throughout the North. In the Republic, the outraged IRA started to develop militaristic sentiments of their own.
Though the republican government in Dublin was unequivocal in its condemnation of the violence being perpetrated against the Catholic minority in the North, there was little it felt that it could legally do to stop it. Taoiseach Jack Lynch strongly desired action in defense of his persecuted countrymen, and believed that only a “truly united Ireland” would act as a permanent solution to the violence. His cabinet warned him however that any statements made on his part to that effect would be viewed as a threat of military intervention, and could only serve to escalate the situation further. It fell to American Ambassador Peck to recommend a temporary course of action: the deployment of Irish Army Field Hospitals to the border in County Donegal, near Derry. There, Peck and Lynch hoped, refugees could escape the violence and find help and necessary medical attention. Over the course of the next decade and a half, thousands of Catholics would escape to safety in the South through these Hospitals. The move was well received internationally, leading Lynch and Peck to call for a force of UN Peacekeeping troops to occupy Northern Ireland until the tensions could be worked out. Before such a resolution could be proposed in the General Assembly however, British soldiers were dispatched to Belfast and Derry in August of 1969 to restore order. Though British Labour PM Harold Wilson promised that the British troops would “swiftly end the plague of violence befalling the North”, it could be argued that their arrival heralded the onset of the most turbulent and tragic period in modern Irish history.
…
Never truly retiring from politics, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended the inauguration of newly elected President Romney in high spirits. Despite a begrudging respect for JFK and his accomplishments, Eisenhower couldn’t help but smile when he learned the GOP would be back in power once again. “It is a joyous day for the people of this country,” Eisenhower told a reporter who asked him how he felt after Romney’s inaugural address. “We should be grateful to have such a passionate, faithful American in the Oval Office as our new Commander in Chief.” Privately, Eisenhower had been pulling for Romney since before the convention, coordinating quietly released statements to the press and appearances alongside the then-Governor with Romney’s unofficial campaign manager, Nelson Rockefeller. Distressed by the rising popularity of the Goldwater-Buckley wing of his party, Ike felt that after Rockefeller’s defeat in 1964, 1968 would be the moderate establishment’s last chance to preserve its control of the Republicans moving forward. At his heart politically, Ike had always been a conservative, but moreover a pragmatist. He couldn’t stand the ideological posturing so popular with the grassroots conservatives on his right flank, and saw in Romney a chance for the GOP to become the party of paternalistic, centrist government. This was based, at least in part, on the Tories across the Pond in the UK, whom Eisenhower had respected since the leadership of his old friend, Winston Churchill. Ike believed in keeping the government from getting too big, of course, but he did not agree that it was an absolute evil that needed to be cut down to size in the way that William F. Buckley and his compatriots advocated. He saw, particularly through his own enforcement of Brown v. Board of Education back in 1954, that government could also be a force for good in society. The General left the inauguration in a “cheerful mood”, but according to his beloved wife, Mamie: “dreadfully tired as well”.
On the morning of March 28th, 1969, the day after commenting in his journal about his concern surrounding the worsening situation in Southeast Asia, Eisenhower died in Washington, D.C. of congestive heart failure at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He was 78 years old. The following day, his body was moved to the Washington National Cathedral's Bethlehem Chapel, where he lay in repose for 28 hours. On March 30th, his body was brought by caisson to the United States Capitol, where he lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. On March 31st, Eisenhower's body was returned to the National Cathedral, where he was given an Episcopal Church funeral service. The funeral was attended by President Romney, Vice President Bush, and the two living former Presidents, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy, along with much of Washington’s elite.
Seen during his administration and its immediate aftermath as a largely “inactive, uninspiring, golf playing President”, Eisenhower saw his historical reputation receive something of a restoration in the decades following his tenure. Though he had not pursued Civil Rights as much as activists would have liked, or to the degree that his successor did, Eisenhower did facilitate (if reluctantly) the movement’s development, and also saved the Republican Party from sliding into the pitfalls of isolationism and McCarthyism throughout the 1950’s. Ike maintained prosperity and launched NASA, built the interstate highway system, and got America out of the Korean War without starting another one, largely leaving a legacy of stability in the face of Cold War tension. Though seen today as perhaps slightly impotent compared to the sweeping, vigorous progress wrought by John F. Kennedy in the years after his retirement, Dwight D. Eisenhower nonetheless enjoys a legacy as one of the nation’s finest leaders, especially during the 20th Century. He was a wise, stable hand and a fine elder statesman.
Newly minted Secretary of State Richard Nixon eulogized the former President, the man who had been his boss for eight long years thus: “Some men are considered great because they lead great armies or they lead powerful nations. For eight years now, Dwight Eisenhower has neither commanded an army nor led a nation; and yet he remained through his final days the world's most admired and respected man, truly the first citizen of the world.”
…
Along with the many Americans who came to Eisenhower’s funeral service to pay their respects was his fellow Allied Commander and long time President of France, Charles de Gaulle, who was beginning to face a curtain call of his own. Though seen in his own country and abroad as a titanic figure, a colossus whose very name was forever linked to the fate of France, de Gaulle’s “untouchable” status was beginning to be called into question across the globe. The Frenchman’s prickly personality together with controversial decision after controversial decision eroded his support one step at a time. First it was his withdrawal of France from NATO’s military command structure in 1963, then his refusal to grant Ireland and the United Kingdom admission to the European Economic Community (EEC), his development of a French nuclear program, and his support for the so-called “Quebec Liberation Movement” in Canada. Even personable peacemakers like Lester B. Pearson and charmers like John F. Kennedy struggled to maintain warm relations with de Gaulle, who remained aloof and insistent on his “politics of grandeur” and a place for France at the table of the world’s great powers.
At home, de Gaulle faced more criticism and a truly divided nation. His party won 352 of 487 seats in the elections of June 1968, a major success, but the President himself remained personally unpopular. A survey conducted by several Parisian newspapers after the election showed the majority of the country saw him as too old, too self-centered, too authoritarian, too conservative, and too anti-American. In a world where women were becoming increasingly empowered and demanding representation in society and government, 100% of de Gaulle’s ministers were male, not to mention Roman Catholic. The winds of change sweeping the globe were carrying with them many of the figures who had brought the world through its Second Great War, and de Gaulle, it seemed would be no different. Mass strikes, protests, and demonstrations by students against his regime broke out across the nation from just before the elections in May through to their aftermath and beyond. These strikes severely challenged de Gaulle’s legitimacy, and He and other government leaders feared that the country was on the brink of revolution or civil war. On June 21st, 1968, de Gaulle stunned the nation by disappearing without notifying Prime Minister Pompidou or anyone else in the government. He had gone to Baden - Baden, in Germany, to meet with General Massu, then head of the French military there, to discuss possible military intervention against the protesters. The army promised the President their support should violence erupt, but the move was received very poorly by the press and the public at large. Though de Gaulle attempted, with his new mandate, to negotiate with the strikers and student protesters, even ceding to some of their demands, the prevailing pulse of the nation remained firm: it was time for the President to, at long last, retire. De Gaulle promised to resign the Presidency should a referendum he desired be rejected by the French people. Realizing this was an opportunity to be rid of the 78 year old general once and for all, the people pounced and demolished the item at the polls. The French were now holding their President’s feet to the fire and demanded that he stay true to his word and leave office.
He did so on April 28th, 1969, with his Prime Minister and hand picked successor, Georges Pompidou succeeding him after another round of elections. The fall of de Gaulle was described by some Frenchmen as “a breath of fresh air” for the country, and a chance to finally “move forward, with the rest of the world, into a brave new future, together.” De Gaulle had been a great hero in leading France through her darkest hour, but that time had passed and the torch needed to be passed to a new generation, with a new set of values on how to move the country into tomorrow. Though disgraced somewhat in retirement, de Gaulle correctly predicted that history would vindicate him. Many French political parties, even today, consider themselves “Gaullist” and claim to carry on his legacy of a strong, internationalist France, though subsequent French administrations would take steps to undo several of the faux paux committed by their predecessor during his tenure. De Gaulle would live for another year before passing away, at the age of 79, on November 9th, 1970.
Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: More Foreign Affairs from 1968 - 1969
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Another great update Mr President! I have one nitpick though, the Easter Rising occurrd in 1916, not in 1917.
Thank you, your Majesty! You are correct! My apologies for letting that slip through the cracks
Thanks, FickleCrossroad.
Ike's passing is sad, but he lived a long and full life, and was able to accomplish so much. Let's hope the new generation can carry his torch and leave the world a little bit better than they found it.BP Booker
Banned
Several things I would like to say:
Eisenhowers death will leave a sort of power vacuum in the Republican Party, he was a unifying figure and the face of the moderate faction, with him gone it now falls to Romney and the dwingling northeastern liberal stablishment to keep to party from falling of a cliff and allowing the emocrats
So are Romneys, I realized. That must have been quite the dissapointment for Hillary
Great update as always
What the hell!? Thats some Jim Crow garbage, I had no idea the situation in the UK was so backwards in 1968
Eisenhowers death will leave a sort of power vacuum in the Republican Party, he was a unifying figure and the face of the moderate faction, with him gone it now falls to Romney and the dwingling northeastern liberal stablishment to keep to party from falling of a cliff and allowing the emocrats
So are Romneys, I realized. That must have been quite the dissapointment for Hillary
Great update as always