"Immediate and terrible war": Something even shitter for Ireland

I seem to be slightly masochistic when it comes to my own country don't I? I blame Pearse, he made self-sacrifice look cool.

The popular belief is that during the negotiations between the Second Dáil and the British government Lloyd George threatened the Irish delegation with "immediate and terrible war" unless the Treaty was signed. He may have said it, or it may have been attributed to him, but either way the fact was that of 1921 the British military was preparing to seriously "up their game" with regards the campaign in Ireland.

I doubt this was a bluff either, I think the British army in Ireland were well past the bluffing stage and had moved onto the "Do you think we should stop burning peoples houses down?" stage with regards their tactics.

So, can be done to make the negotiations breakdown? I hear tell that the IRA were planning to start a new "Dynamite Campaign" in Britain, much like the Fenians in the 1860's and the paramilitaries during the Troubles. The campaign was abandoned when the Truce was called, despite some serious attacks on the Liverpool docks already. Maybe these are bad enough that the British public are more willing to accept an extension of the Irish campaign when OTLs public opinion was firmly behind the peace? There were also IRA plans to attempt to assassinate the entire British cabinet (which I cannot find online to save me, but they were proposed by Cathal Brugha), whcih frankly would have been one of the worst possible moves they could ever make as it would have in actuality meant killing the minority of people in the British government who did not want to beat Ireland into submission. If even an attempt at that wouldn't have the British public baying for blood then I have literally no idea.

Any takers? Oh and before anyone says "Ireland screw", my own personal belief is that this would not be the begining of the end for the Anglo-Irish war, but the end of the begining.
 
Didn't Michael Collins say that the Treaty was a godsend, as the IRA had less than a week's ammunition left? That and the fact that virtually every IRA man in eastern Ulster was sitting in a prison ship in Larne harbour.

As far as I can remember, the RAF were just about to start deploying fighters to strafe and bomb the flying columns too, and British intelligence was getting its act together after Bloody Sunday. The treaty came at a good time for both sides. Give it another year and you have a shitload more blood, an even more pissed off populace in the south, probably population shifts on an even worse scale in the north and ironically, a more securely established Stormont.

EDIT: Found the exact quote - to Hamar Greenwood the Chief Secretary for Ireland - "You had us dead beat. We could not have lasted another three weeks. When we were told of the offer of a truce we were astounded. We thought you must have gone mad".
 
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Indeed he did. Though Liam Lynch thinks his troops could have gone on another 10 years. He was murdered during the Civil War, so shows you what he knew :p

Ultimately, I think this all out British campaign will result in the AIW looking a lot more like the Troubles. Fewer insurgent combatants, more urban conflict, more clashes with civilians, action on the British mainland (bombs), more bombings in general, fewer Flying Columns if any left by 1923.

Not to mention that if Collins, Griffith, Childers et al refused to sign they probably would have been arrested on the spot. They were terrorists after all.
 
... if they get supplies from somewhere. I can imagine the British Army really not fucking about and getting the UVF as a sort of even worse Black and Tans to do their real dirty work. A few hundred rifles, a couple of machine guns and explosives "stolen" from St. Patrick's barracks in Ballymena wouldn't be hard to arrange.

You're probably going to get a big, big backlash on the mainland if the IRA has a campaign there. This is still the era when thousands of Englishmen and Scots signed the Ulster covenant - Liverpool FC still leads the Orange Marches on the 12th of July at this time, same with Rangers further north. You have lots of Irishmen on the mainland.. but of both persuasions. That could get ugly very very quickly.
 
To be fair they weren't fucking about during the Troubles either.

Basically the IRA campaign is going to seriously slow down, basically cutting off in the countryside. The Republican Courts and "liberated towns" are going to be retaken. A fuckload of Volunteers are going to find themselves getting interned when they try to go home.

With regards the UVF, I could actually see the British government really leaning in Craig to get him to leave the northern Catholics alone incase something starts in Ulster as well. Which would just lead to a lot of non-state sponsored Secterian violence and maybe even British occupation in Ulster to try and stop that too.

I'm probably stretching the Troubles analogues with regards the new campaign style, but frankly if the IRA can smuggle guns in from Libya to NI in the 80's, then it might not be impossible to bring in guns from America. Not on an industrial level of course, but enough to keep ~400 men armed, which I think is the largest a fighting force could be operating entirely covertly.
 
I would be interested to see how a bloodier war played out in the Dominions. In my readings over the years I've seen repeated reference to the "Irish Question" being an issue of sorts in NZ even until the 1930s within the expat and general population
 
The point was things *had* started in Ulster, but Craig basically just interned everyone who so much as looked like they might have IRA sympathies, so it fizzled out. You had mortar attacks on troops up in Carnlough for instance, followed by the removal of half its male population to Larne.

Craig could convincingly state that he had the methods to control the problem, especially if Collins is trying to deal with a renewed British campaign in the south. I can't see Britain leaning too heavily on Craig lest they upset the apple cart.

Aquiring arms in America is easy enough, the issue is where do they ship them into? All the major ports are under British control at this point - in the 80s you had a neutral country with a porous border to ship them through. In this time you have to get the ship past a paranoid Royal Navy, past paranoid Army checks and then through the country with checkpoints. Damn sight easier to do it in the 80s, IMHO.
 
Never underestimate the constraining effect of American public opinion which would have been hugely pro-Irish at the time on the British capacity to commit atrocities in Ireland. Indeed it saved De Valera from being executed after the 1916 rising!
 
I seem to recall reading somewhere, years ago, that Lloyd George threatened to add a million more men (all of them WW1 veterans) to the Black-&-Tans' ranks if that was what it took...

The thing is, though, that as 'Home Rule' had basically been agreed on anyway before the Great War interrupted the normal course of affairs, the British government by this point was probably less interested in holding on to Ireland at any price and more interested simply in managing to get a "tolerable" new government in the south instead of an openly hostile 'Republican' one there.
 
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