No Profumo, Tories rule the whole of the 60s, Britain in Vietnam war, Labour government in the 1980s

Sorry for the long title this is a what if scenario had the profumo scandal hadn't occurred.

What if the Conservatives carried on running the country in the 1960s and we helped the Americans in the Vietnam war, however we lose the war and it humiliates Britain on the world stage even further, worst than the Suez canal crisis in 1957, the Tories are ousted in 1974 finally and Labour gets in (lead by Wilson or maybe Tony Benn) and takes Britain, a socialist Britain into the late 1970s and well into the 1980s
British and American relations are low and the two drift apart, The IRA troubles end with the 70s as a good Friday agreement equivalent is reached in 1975.

How would this Britain look by the 1990s and 2000s?
 
Which Conservatives in the 1960s? It makes a lot of difference. Macmillan was a good friend to the Americans, but also was firmly of the Winds of Change view of getting involved in adventures out of theatre. It's a moot point if he would had followed America into Vietnam. Douglas-Home was influenced by Powell, who wouldn't have pissed on the Americans if they were on fire, so there is not a hope in hell of Home taking Britain into Vietnam. Heath was pro-European rather than pro-American, and got on appallingly with American Presidents.

There is not a hope in hell of the Troubles being solved by 1975. If you get something that the IRA (and other TLAs of this nature) can tolerate, you've got something that the UVF (and other TLAs of this nature) will step up big time. The Troubles were not IRA versus Britain, or anything close to that.

I don't think you can leap from No Profumo to Socialist Britain in the 1980s without looking at the interim steps. Those interim steps can derail the best laid plans.

Incidentally, Suez Crisis was 1956 rather than 1957. Cease fire unilaterally announced in November 1956.
 
A continuing Tory government into the late 1960s would not have produced British involvement in Vietnam. It's Suez that needs to change here, not Profumo.

Even though the premise here is flawed, I suppose it's worth addressing the fact that the Tories winning in 1964 would still have been a close-run thing and that Wilson would have been PM by '68 or '69. There's no way that the Tories can solve the balance of payments crisis without devaluation and there aren't many Tories for whom devaluation is a valuable use of their political capital. Even if someone did it, the Tories were unlikely to do it swiftly and would thus fall into the same trap as Wilson did when he devalued in 1967.

So, it's incredibly unlikely the Tories would last from 1951-1974. It's also unlikely that Wilson, a man who would lose two elections under your scenario, would be leading Labour into a third - there would have been a challenge (from the left or right, it could go either way) and he would likely not have survived the '60s as Labour leader. Tony Benn is a possibility, but is still unlikely - it's going to be the crop of more senior ministers that Wilson appointed IOTL (Jim Callaghan, Barbara Castle, Roy Jenkins, etc.) that go for the crown.

You've taken some strange leaps here.
 
It also has to be remembered that one of the reasons in @ that Britain did not get involved in Vietnam was that we did not have the military resources spare. One year we were so overstretched Wilson considered cancelling the Trooping of the Colour. The Tories winning in 1964 is not going to change our military commitments as Wilson simply continued on with the ones he had inherited from Home (and Macmillan).
 
One correction above, that 1964 was the first election that Wilson had fought. Presumably a Labour defeat would have been narrow. Usually Leaders of the Opposition get two tries if they are seen as making progress on the first.
 
I'd suggest start with your chosen POD. Work out what the obvious main consequences are likely to be.

For example, no Profumo Affair probably means Macmillan stays on for a bit. Tory leadership succession becomes a bit blurred; no need for Douglas-Home as stop gap leader. The 1964 election may be closer, but Mac was, by all reports, looking for a way out, and with plenty of people around (courtesy of the Night of the Long Knives) to shove a knife into his back.
 
There is not a hope in hell of the Troubles being solved by 1975. If you get something that the IRA (and other TLAs of this nature) can tolerate, you've got something that the UVF (and other TLAs of this nature) will step up big time. The Troubles were not IRA versus Britain, or anything close to that.
Was a lot of this unemployed guys in their 20s? And I'm not down on young men. Just when you've been excluded since maybe age 14 or younger, you have a lot of valid criticism of the system and no one seems to be listening to you.

And people of all stripes somehow think violence is more direct and more of a sure bet. It isn't. What missing is how to finesse a poker hand other than steamroller method.

Someone once wrote than the way to look at the six counties of northern Ireland is like the optical illusion where one way it's a rabbit and the other way a bird. That it's both part of Ireland and the UK, and there's a broad range in which political institutions can recognize this.

PS I'm a Yank, and I'm an optimist. You're more than welcome to disagree with me. :)
 
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Was a lot of this unemployed guys in their 20s? And I'm not down on young men. Just when you've been excluded since maybe age 14 or younger, you have a lot of valid criticism of the system and no one seems to be listening to you.

And people of all stripes somehow think violence is more direct and more of a sure bet. It isn't. What missing is how to finesse a poker hand other than steamroller method.

Someone once wrote than the way to look at the six counties of northern Ireland is like the optical illusion where one way it's a rabbit and the other way a bird. That it's both part of Ireland and the UK, and there's a broad range in which political institutions can recognize this.

PS I'm a Yank, and I'm an optimist. You're more than welcome to disagree with me. :)

There was a lot of unemployment in NI during the period. The Troubles initially kicked off in 1969 because of injustices between Catholic and Protestant, where there was institutionalised differences in treatment. Of course, once the Troubles kicked off big time, it was hard to get companies to invest in the region, so that meant that solving unemployment became harder, which meant more resentment, which meant more trouble. Although if I'm honest, the problem wasn't the young men with a willingness to murder and maim; it was the men in their 30s and 40s with cold eyes and colder heart who planned things.

However, the violence became endemic, and the whole thing became wrapped up in the British/Irish question, exacerbated by paramilitary groups on both sides funding their primary activity of blowing up people and infrastructure by criminal activity, and got to enjoy the criminal activity. The paramilitary groups were assisted by outside groups pumping money and weapons in to keep the situation bubbling along (on one occasion to my certain knowledge, a group decided to rob a pub. One of the gang members was armed with a flame thrower, with the serial number of the military outfit of the nation it had come from still wet). You had kneecappings and drilling and six-packs as basically warnings.

The violence led to violence, and the whole situation degenerated. I've seen reports that said that one side or the other were justified because of this reason or that reason. Maybe, maybe not. I find it hard to understand justifications for things like planting bombs in shops selling baby clothes because the other side tends to congregate there. You had snipers shooting at emergency services trying to save people inside a burning house because the people being burned to death were on the other side.

You had both sides deciding that the way to scare the other side was to target the families of the other side, so you had the deliberate targeting - by both sides - of the children of members of the other side. You had the Ian Paisley's of this world stirring things up.

It was a mess. I can go on (and on and on) about the situation, but the Cliff Notes version is that it was a whole bunch of no-fun. I'm in the middle of a timeline (see sig) which tries to capture the flavour of the situation. It doesn't come close to achieving that aim, and it has meandered a bit, but essentially, you show me someone who says they understand The Troubles, and I'll show you someone who hasn't a clue about The Troubles.
 
What if the Conservatives carried on running the country in the 1960s and we helped the Americans in the Vietnam war...
Okay, first off sentences are your friend. ;) That aside I think British deployments to Vietnam are certainly possible with the right conditions, see my answer to David Flin below.


... however we lose the war and it humiliates Britain on the world stage even further, worst than the Suez canal crisis in 1957...
This bit is harder as I can't see Britain sticking around until the very end, just like the Australians I'd expect to see troop drawdowns being announced in the late 1960s and starting at the beginning of the 1970s. During the deployment losing badly is tricky since they likely wouldn't be deployed anywhere too threatening to begin with, British troops having experience of the type of fighting, and no doubt demanding to run things their own way. Now warfare is a complicated affair so even with the best planning there might be a company or at most battalion that has bad luck and gets chewed up but nothing on the scale of Suez.


... the Tories are ousted in 1974 finally and Labour gets in (lead by Wilson or maybe Tony Benn) and takes Britain, a socialist Britain into the late 1970s and well into the 1980s...
Without Profumo there were still the other things, the government was starting to look a bit tired, and people in general start getting tired of parties that have been in power after ten-fifteen years or so. The easiest point of divergence I can think of is that the Conservatives are able to win the 1964 general election, it was pretty close in a number of places, with Home sending a token force to South Vietnam.

Problem then becomes 1969, there's simply no way that the Conservatives will win that general election after eighteen years in power. This in turn means that Labour will now be pretty much guaranteed to be in power for at least a decade, which considering this is the 1970s we're talking about is practically the dictionary definition of a poisoned chalice. I honestly can't see how you can stretch out a Conservative government past the 1969 general election short of adding large doses of lead to the tea supply at Transport House and making Labour do something unimaginably stupid.


Douglas-Home was influenced by Powell, who wouldn't have pissed on the Americans if they were on fire, so there is not a hope in hell of Home taking Britain into Vietnam.
Home was very anti-communist. If the Americans were to open the chequebook to help fund it, and support the wider British economy, I could perhaps see them sending an infantry brigade and support to run a small quiet province as a gesture. Dress it up as a request from the South Vietnamese and from the Australians to play up the Commonwealth angle, just as the Australian deployment was nominally under American command but in reality had a direct line the Westmoreland doing what they wanted have the British contingent come under the Australians but really be independent. The airfield complicates things but Bien Hoa province, neighbouring the Australians, looks like a half-decent option if you could swing it. Of course everyone would know that it was really being done in support of the US but it would give them at least a thin cover, the people that protested the Americans having a domestic target for their ire in the UK would also likely be more vigorous.

Assuming that American financial support is able to paper over the cracks that could potentially mean a less serious balance of payments crisis allowing devaluation to be put off until after the general election. Speaking of that I'd expect the Conservatives to announce the drawdown of troops in early 1969 well advance of it, helps defuse the issue slightly and quite frankly they'd need all the help they could get.


Even though the premise here is flawed, I suppose it's worth addressing the fact that the Tories winning in 1964 would still have been a close-run thing and that Wilson would have been PM by '68 or '69.
A change of roughly 5,800 votes in the right twenty constituencies would have given the Conservatives a majority of 17, change roughly 3,660 votes in 14 constituencies would still give them a majority of 5, which without looking to see how many MPs died between 1964 and 1969 might just be enough to scrape them over the line.
 
The GFA only became possible when both sides realised that a victory through violence/military means was not going to happen. The Brits realised this earlier than either the Republicans or Unionists and were very clear in private that OP BANNER was supposed to hold the line until there was a political solution.

I think it also helped that the general population became weary of the violence and stopped supporting the Paramilitaries.

I could perhaps see them sending an infantry brigade and support to run a small quiet province as a gesture.

We didn't have a brigade spare to deploy. What commitment do we cut to deploy troops there? The British armed forces were very busy in the '60s. As I've mentioned above one year the Trooping of the Colour was almost cancelled, that means we didn't even have a single battalion from the Brigade of Guards spare.
 
To go back to the UK in Vietnam. Can I ask what commitment do we cut to deploy troops there? The British armed forces were very busy in the '60s.

The traditional one beloved of politicians from the 60s onwards to my knowledge. Leave and training. That's what gets cut. That's what always got cut.
 
I think that without Profumo McMillan would have gone on. He was ill and his treatment botched but still...

I read somewhere (I think in Horne's biography of Macmillan) that his popularity was actually starting to recover from its post-scandal lows, and that he would have run again--except that his doctors gave him an unjustifiably bleak prognosis after his prostate surgery. As it turned out, he was to live for twenty-three more years...
 
The traditional one beloved of politicians from the 60s onwards to my knowledge. Leave and training. That's what gets cut. That's what always got cut.

I think we were cutting those already to meet existing commitments in @.

One other thing to consider is how a Conservative government would deal with the escalation of the Confrontation with Indonesia. In @ the RAF asked for permission to bomb Indonesian airfields and ports. Denis Healy said no, although he did authorise the 'Claret' raids by the SAS and Gurkhas.

What if a Tory SecState said yes and the Confrontation became a full blown war? That would suck in anything the UK had spare and would possibly also impact on Australian and New Zealand commitments to South Vietnam. I'd argue that the ANZAC countries might well put a Commonwealth commitment ahead of a one to Vietnam. So a Conservative victory in 1964 could make it even less likely than @ that Britain would get involved in Vietnam.
 
. . . I've seen reports that said that one side or the other were justified because of this reason or that reason. Maybe, maybe not. I find it hard to understand justifications for things like planting bombs in shops selling baby clothes because the other side tends to congregate there. You had snipers shooting at emergency services trying to save people inside a burning house because the people being burned to death were on the other side. . . . . . . essentially, you show me someone who says they understand The Troubles, and I'll show you someone who hasn't a clue about The Troubles.
Thank you for sharing a difficult story, but one which needs to be told.
 
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