Irish Soviet Republic

What would it have taken for the Limmerick Soviet and other such events in Ireland in the 1920s to have established an Irish Soviet Republic. What would the effects have been on the world of even a failed socialist revolution in Ireland?
 
This is so obscure I hadn't even heard of it before. According to Wikipedia, it was in effect for 12 days and merely the name given to a union committee running a general strike in the city. It wasn't actually a soviet or council in the real sense of the term - an assembly of workers that acts as a government. They used the term because it had become a popular term thanks to the Russian Revolution. When the strike ended so did the "soviet". There was no actual attempt to keep and hold power.

There is no possible way this group could have taken over Ireland (and there is no evidence they wanted to - again, it was just a general strike in the city). The people with guns in Ireland is limited to the British Army and the Irish Republican Army, which for all of their socialist ideas was not Communist. Whoever is in charge once the Irish War of Independence is over, it'll be one of them.
 
I think trying to get a Communist Ireland is instead a guarantee that the British Government finds the political will to either stay, or invade. I can't see them allowing a Communist nation so close. That being said given the "low" level of industry and urban development at the time it would be also hard to get the public support IMO.
 
What would it have taken for the Limerick Soviet and other such events in Ireland in the 1920s to have established an Irish Soviet Republic. What would the effects have been on the world of even a failed socialist revolution in Ireland?
Without major changes decades earlier I don't see this happening. Communism wasn't a popular political stance at the time, even the unions weren't that leftist. Groups like the Revolutionary Workers' Groups didn't exist until the thirties.
 
You get a communist Ireland by having a communist Britain.

You know, I did have an idea for a TL where there was a serious syndicalist revolution after WW1 in Britain, and the British Whites end up giving the Irish Nationalists and the Syndicalists a good enough fight that they are forced to form a confederation to both win the civil war and to protect themselves against the British Empire trying to re-take the home isles.

Even so, that produced an Ireland that, while the more left wing nationalists had more power, wasn't really Communist in any sense.

fasquardon
 
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