Building An Army
Shortly after the Willow Meeting in 1965, the Traditionalist faction began to grow from a small cabal, to a full fledged movement. The opinions of most of the British Army, was that the duty of the armed forces was to serve the British people in defending their nation. Support for the new government was a divisive issue within the military, with the ceasefire in India being a huge bone of contention, especially after the newly established Republic of India fell to Communists. The decade of conflict and resulting deaths caused many to see the ceasefire as a sign that their comrades had died in vain and that the British Empire was being forfeited. This was not a majority view, but certainly engrained in the opinions of the people of Great Britain. The Conservatives found ever more and more reason to support this line of thought, and following the Saint George's Day Coup, much of the Conservative heartland would take the side of the new government.
After some meetings with top financial officials in London, who were outright enraged at the prospect of losing the massive cheap and usually free labor force in the African colonies, that were forced to do business with the British as they were still colonies of the United Kingdom, Mosley and the NSBWP-Labor government had made promises to dissolve the Empire in support of self-determination, many in the elite began to support the hypothetical concept of a regime change, that would restore the Doddies to full power and keep things running on schedule. And as a result were more than willing to assist in terms of financial support. In the south of Britain, a paramilitary force composed of conservative veterans of the Indian War, known as the League of Saint George began to organize rallies in coalition with the Conservatives echoing the moral ineptitude of the governing bodies to rule over Britain. The concept that an International Communist Conspiracy, funded by Jewish bankers was in the process of taking over the United Kingdom. While no Conservative MP said such things outright in Parliament, they were more than willing to endorse the opinion to the masses. In the Highlands, the Conservatives began to campaign on the prospect of self determination and autonomy from the Jews in Edinburgh and the Catholics in Glasgow. Scottish officers in the British Army coalesced around Colonel Richard O'Connor of the Cameronians. The Cameronians had seen heavy losses at the Fourth Battle of Delhi in 1963, during the Anglo-Pakistani retreat in the face of the newly organized Nehruist-Communist coalition, but had achieved great fanfare for their actions during the Offensive of 1959 and 1960. O'Connor was a member of the Church of Scotland and vastly against the current anti-religious government in place, seeing the National Socialists as heretical for advocating the separation of Church and State.
While the Traditionalists began to grow, especially in the barracks of Lanark and Aldershot, they found a hotspot of support in Northern Ireland. While the rest of Great Britain had sent their children off to war as a result of conscription, Northern Ireland, due to the presence of a virulent nationalist minority in support of unifying with the Irish Republic, was exempt from this fact of life throughout the Commonwealth. Even though there was no official conscription, between 1953 and 1964, somewhere in the area of 100,000 men volunteered to join the British Army. The vast majority of these soldiers were from the Protestant community in the North, but close to 15% were from Catholic families, regardless of which side of the border they would rather be on, the British Army provided a nice pay check to any Irishmen willing to join. Although unrelated in the grand scheme of things, 4,000 men from the Republic of Ireland fought in India for various regiments through this time, only to receive a cold hearted reply from the general populace on their return.
Sectarian violence erupted in 1965, following the return of the majority of those who had fought in India, and the long held back promises of ending the monopoly on power held by the Unionists, who were only challenged in the slightest by Independent Unionists and Labour, as the Nationalist parties were gerrymandered into having the smallest potential influence, which, considering they boycotted the Northern Irish Parliament, was almost unnecessary. The returning veterans, imbued with new patriotic fervor, found the protesting Catholic's who had "shirked their duty" to serve King and Country, demanding what many saw as special treatment, and were angered. Also on the minds of many of the returning veterans, was the rise of attacks by the Irish Republican Army, who, influenced by Socialist literature, were in favor of a true Irish Republic, even more so than the established Republican government in Dublin. These returning veterans would become the basis of the Ulster Volunteer Force, an irregular paramilitary group that was sworn to defend the Protestant and Loyalist community of Northern Ireland, while actually engaging in terror tactics against the suspected supporters of the IRA. For the large part, the majority were caught between violent minorities all around them, with the Ulster Constabulary doing little to assist in any positive way, often due to corruption and bias.
The Northern Irish Unionist sentiment would also help the Traditionalists find a completely loyal territory, thanks to the Ulster Unionist monopoly power in Stormont, as many in the UUP were against the overtures of socialism and anti-church attitudes. The NSBWP did have a following in some of the North's more grab areas such as Belfast and Londonderry, but not enough to even control those voting areas and had only one member of Northern Ireland's Parliament. By 1966, the plotters of the Coup had achieved a blessing of sorts from the ailing King Edward, who was terrified of a communist takeover of Britain, who stated he would support a return to power of the Conservatives. The Conservatives, were kept largely in the dark, to avoid a scare in Westminster. That being said, the Coalition government had it's doubts as to the military's political ambitions.
In light of this, much of the Labour Party relocated to Edinburgh, with the NSBWP moving from London to Manchester and York over a period of several months, all in preparation for an event that no one desired, but few had any answers to solve the political incapability of the old conservative base and the new progressive leftist-nationalist alliance.
Traditionalist Tanks in London, April 25th, 1966
On April 23rd, the League of Saint George assembled a massive spontaneous rally across England, in the Holland region of Northern England, all of Southern England excluding Sussex, and the Southwestern Wales, as well as several isolated areas of Wales, the League of Saint George attempted to portray the revolution to come as one of England, as Saint George slaying the Red Dragon, representing what they perceived as the Communist alliance between the Natties and Labour. In Scotland, the Church of Scotland, lead by General Richard O'Connor, well known for his actions in the Bengal against superior forces, as well as how command of the Cameronians in the last Pakistani offensive of the war. The conservative highlands were rather against the new racial makeup of Scotland, with African-Britons * making up 12 % of the Scottish regional populace in 1966, largely due to veteran rights of transit to Britain, a title granted to all of Britain's former colonies, by the new government during the peace process in India, allowing a massive movement of Indians from the new Republic, and largely to communities created in Northwestern Australia, and slums in Ceylon and Kenya. However, the 100,00 Indians who did arrive in England, caused a massive culture shock to the entrenched English middle class. And so, in order to absolve themselves of this dilemma, following two days of festivity, tanks rolled into London and across Southern England and Northern Scotland, as well as Northern Ireland, creating a new government for England. Prime Minister Mosley escaped to Birmingham, as a new Conservative led Parliament was established. On April 25th, the British Civil War began in earnest.
*- A term created to designate all those who came from "Commonwealth Africa".
