DBWI AHC Irish Republic

With a POD after 1900, how do you get an independent republic in Ireland.

Yeah, you can exclude Ulster but it would be good to see ways that Ulster is included. But it has to be free of the British monarchy. Bonus points if its not a member of the Commonwealth.

Also curious about the consequences on British politics.

(this is a companion to the Scottish independence thread posted earlier)
 
I'm pretty sure you'd need to avert or significantly lessen the effects of the Potato Famine to have a shot at an independent Ireland. That one catastrophe pretty much doomed Irish culture to slow death at the hands of Anglo-Scottish assimilation/immigration, especially come the second half of the 20th century. And before you ask, that Morocco war scare or other random "total war" scenarios won't remotely be enough to weaken the British such that the Irish could win a war of independence. Yes, it could suck them into a continental war that could possibly be really messy and even end badly for the Empire, but no amount of misfortune would change the fact that Britain is one small sea away and has ten times Ireland's population. They'll always have the strength to keep Ireland down, and they're no more likely to let Ireland leave than the United States would be to, say, let Florida bolt.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
*laughs endlessly into the night*

To be charitable, I think that you could have such a PoD in the 20th Century, even if we have a Potato Famine as bad as it is; it wouldn't be the whole of Ireland, though. Maybe if you could have the ITGWU succeed in the Dublin Lock-Out of 1913, which could lead to an independent Ireland down the road? A Continental War might help, but without an effective union in the political heartland, you aren't going to get very far.
 
You'd have to can the Home Rule Bill for one thing; that passed just fine and formed the basis of the mini-parliaments that the constituent Kingdoms of the UK could have, calming down a lot of the nationalist sentiment that might have been born. The other is that the British would have to remain pretty firm about suppression of their culture; the Irish lost their language and several customs over the decades because they were allowed to do them just fine, making them less romanticized and sought after. Lastly a slightly weaker famine or the UK being dragged into a wider war (maybe either the Second or Third Balkans War, which had a few greater powers as patrons to the belligerents) that lasts a good while might help.
 

JJohnson

Banned
A separate Irish Republic? Huh. Kind of odd, I'd say. Most Irish were pretty cool with the Queen and Parliament when I went there back in 2010 with my brother. We saw the Irish Parliament in Dublin, but they weren't in session, unfortunately. You're right about them losing their language, but the resurgence in the 60s and 70s during the immigration crisis (they still talk about it today!) did create the Irish schools (Gaelscoileanna), and conservative estimates place it about 980,000 using it daily by the early 90s, and about 1.6 million today. The good jobs being in the west and south may have helped, if I remember what Bridget O'Rourke was telling me (a pretty Irish girl I met there :) ). The companies were full of Irish speakers and to get ahead you pretty much had to speak Irish in a lot of those towns.

I have two questions on this supposed Irish Republic - would it be majority Catholic? The influx of Anglo-Scots, like TRH brought up, along with the surge from the colonies made a lot of Irish start thinking about their roots quite a bit, but the Church of Ireland seems to have grown more from all the incoming than the Catholic church did. It's maybe 1/3 of the population now, if we're generous. And the second question - would we still have the five provinces? Meath is pretty much the capital province with Dublin in it, but it got recreated for some reason, I don't really know all the nitty-gritty in that.

Okay, last comment. Could you imagine an Irish Euro though? I still have some Irish Pound coins in my coin drawer, with the Irish/English writing on it, kind of like Scotland has with Scots Gaelic. I just don't see them either going independent or going independent and then joining the EU. I thought I saw an alternate timeline where they actually joined the EU...ASB if you ask me! I got some Irish pounds while I was in Wales and a bit in London, but mostly Ireland. The whole collectors' series from 2001-2006 may have helped spread it around I think.
 
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