DBWI - No Home Rule

Irish history enjoyed a gradual path of greater freedom over the course of the twentieth century: Home Rule; then increasing powers to the Dublin Parliament over the 20s and 30s, then finally the grant of Dominion Status as a recognition of the sacrifices made by Irish soldiers and families on the Home Front during the Second European War. A status that the island has enjoyed since war's end. Not always easily - the North springs to mind - but by and large things have been fairly good for Ireland, especially with the relocation of war industries to the island during EWII.

The question is: what if Home Rule hadn't been granted? Would Ireland have continued as a directly-ruled part of Britain? And could that have led to a resurgence of Fenianism or other such sentiments?
 
Ulster would definitely be more peaceful-the Orange Order didn't take too kindly to London handing them over to "Papist" rule.
 
I recently took a trip to Cork to visit the memorial for Aer Lingus Flight 768, which was destroyed en route from Dublin to Toronto by a bomb planted by the Orange Order.

OOC:Based on the behavior of the OTL Loyalist militias, I assume that Protestant rebels in a reverse-Troubles scenario would be less restrained about civilian casualties.
 
I still remember how fast the Archbishop of Canterbury disawowed the Anglican Church from the Orange Order after Aer Lingus 768 went down....
 
If the Four Counties had been excluded as Agar-Robartes proposed, then the Irish governments could have been a good deal more stable without 20% of the seats at Leinster House being occupied by Ulster Nationalists opposing everything but an independent Ulster. We could have seen more governments with a three or five year term rather than rocky hand to mouth coalitions.
In fairness, they did mostly quieten down during WW2, apart from that MP who broadcast from Germany. But they started to froth at the mouth again from the fifties on. And looking at the North of England, it is hard to see that staying under British rule or going independent would have saved the linen industry, it was third world competition and synthetic fibres that done it in. And we probably wouldn't have a bloody base rate of 60% for income tax if the British had kept them! Belfast is doing alright (it should with all the subsidies to that fecking shipyard!) but every other town in the Province seems to be shedding jobs and doing drugs.
 
Belfast, like the rest of northeast Ireland, could have fallen into economic decline if it weren't for the subsidies to expand the Harland and Wolff shipyards in the 1970's to build even bigger ships (and became a subsidiary of STX Europe in 2000). In fact, Belfast is booming because the STX Europe Belfast shipyard has contracts to build smaller, more luxurious cruise ships used by high-end cruise lines, including five new ultra-luxury cruise ships for Seabourn Cruise Lines.
 
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