PC: Labour wank averts the Troubles?

A scenario I've been mulling over recently involves Labour continuously remaining in power between 1945-1970 due to a mixture of luck, circumstance and FPTP breaking down hilariously during the 60s. As I was fleshing out the political consequences of such a Labour hegemony I started thinking about the political impact this would have on Northern Ireland.

As I understand it Labour had a support base amongst the Protestant working-class in Belfast in the 40s and 50s. Labour's 1950 manifesto promised extensive investment in Northern Ireland. If they manage and spin it well I can see them strengthening that base of support. In addition, the large influx of investment helps bring issues of economic, and by extension political, discrimination against Catholics to the fore. Labour generally being opposed to discrimination and disenfranchisement, as well as seeing it as a way to undermine the Conservative-aligned Unionists, throws their support behind the Northern Irish Civil Rights Movement and pushes for political and economic reforms to address these grievances, which gains them support within the Catholic community.

As a result the political and economic grievances that led to the troubles have been addressed, or at least can be addressed within the legal political framework, the British army is never called in and Labour (and possibly also the Liberals) are able to offer a cross-communal political space whilst the die-hard nationalists and loyalists are sidelined and forced to moderate.

How likely is this and what are the major hiccoughs that could still cause the Troubles to break out?
 
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You will have problems with Paisley who will be spinning Labour interference as a Papish/Communist plot. Big House Unionism will also try to do whatever they can to throw a spoke in the wheel, they have prior form having changed from Proportional Representation to FPTP when the NI Labour Party started to make a breakthrough in the 30's (and killed their momentum, the Labour Party vote went up in the first FPTP election but they lost seats).

Any attempt to build a consensus between the Catholic/Protestantworking classes will find resistance from the religious and political establishment. I have an Uncle who was in the Orange Order in the late 60's around the Civil Rights marches, according to him the IRA was not the concern instead political Unionsim thought the had another France '68 on their hands. In this scenario they will be seeing these fears coming to light a decade earlier.
 
Any disturbances from any quarter would have to be quelled. Paisley causing uproar and hiding behind his own religious setup would have to be dealt with firmly instead of giving him the oxygen of publicity. Peaceful protests should be allowed, but not incitements to violence.
 
Any disturbances from any quarter would have to be quelled. Paisley causing uproar and hiding behind his own religious setup would have to be dealt with firmly instead of giving him the oxygen of publicity. Peaceful protests should be allowed, but not incitements to violence.
That sounds much easier said than done.

I wonder, is there any way to marginalise Paisley and other such die-hards within Unionist circles. It seems that things would go smoother if he isn't in a major position to cause trouble (pun unintended).
 
In hindsight it looks like Paisley was seen as useful by those in the old OUP who wanted to oust O'Neill, a useful stalking horse but they underestimated his ambition and influence.

It's possible with the early PoD that he may not be able to build the influence he got 10 years later but it would be helpful if those in power realised that he could be a very dangerous man if unchecked.
 
Could O'Neill and other moderate Unionists use the perceived threat of Labour interference to quell dissent within their own party? Basically they could turn to the hard-liners and say that only a united front can stop those radicals in Westminster interfering in Ulster affairs and if they start infighting it would give Labour a free hand to Catholic and Communist up everything. At some point maybe the Paisley hard-liners break off and form an alt-DUP, but which goes nowhere and is safely marginalised, due to the efforts of the Unionists in Stormont and Labour in Westminster, effectively quarantining the more toxic loyalists from the Northern Irish body politic.

In hindsight it looks like Paisley was seen as useful by those in the old OUP who wanted to oust O'Neill, a useful stalking horse but they underestimated his ambition and influence.

It's possible with the early PoD that he may not be able to build the influence he got 10 years later but it would be helpful if those in power realised that he could be a very dangerous man if unchecked.

According to his Wikipedia page he was involved in some pretty shady stuff during his early activism. Maybe if he was implicated in the UVF killings or was arrested during the Maura Lyons thing? Of course it probably wouldn't be enough to keep one man out of Northern Irish politics to prevent the troubles, he clearly had some base of support who would likely flock to any other demagogue willing to take his place.
 
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there were other individuals and organisations thar fell by the wayside in the 70s and 80s, Bill Craig and Vanguard comes to mind. It's possible someone like that could become a totem for Loyalist dissent.

Paisley was an excellent orator , frequent lucky (he managed to survive a number of strategic failures) and had good people around him like Peter Robinson; he may have had the perfect storm to be successful that others wouldn't.
 
there were other individuals and organisations thar fell by the wayside in the 70s and 80s, Bill Craig and Vanguard comes to mind. It's possible someone like that could become a totem for Loyalist dissent.

Paisley was an excellent orator , frequent lucky (he managed to survive a number of strategic failures) and had good people around him like Peter Robinson; he may have had the perfect storm to be successful that others wouldn't.
Any particular candidates who would be incompetent/have enough skeletons in their closet to discredit extreme Loyalism?
 
I'd have to go through the books, with the changes we are considering and the timeline back about a decade a number of later prominent figures aren't readily available (Ronald Bunting is still in the armed forces for one).

We've also focused on Unionist opposition and been sleeping on the IRA, they will be seeing this a perfidious attempt to maintain Northern Ireland within the UK. Certainly there will be a response.
 
The issue for this is that for much of its time in Stormont the NI Labour Party pretty much represented exclusively Unionist/Loyalist areas in and around Belfast. The party really had little to no room to expand outside of Belfast - I can only think of Ivan Cooper out in the west of the province as being an example of where the party could potentially gain a foothold. What more the Unionist elements in the party would not really take nicely to it being pro-Nationalist or anti-Unionist, for instance when the party elected a Nationalist - Jack Beattie - as its leader in the early 1940s, the Unionist flank of the party, led by Harry Midgley bolted and formed their own moderately successful Commonwealth Labour Party, which would eventually fold into the OUP. Really I can't see Labour gaining enough support to ever win an election (coalition with the conservative Nationalist Party is out of the question) or to avert the Troubles.

In regards to Paisley and labourism, it is surprising to note that Paisley had a variety of left-wing beliefs in regards to economics and welfare. For instance he had a great deal of agreement with Bernadette Devlin when they met and had tea in the early seventies IIRC - he stopped short of supporting explicitly leftist beliefs in public however. On the topic of Craig it really depends which 'form' of him that is used. When he first entered Stormont he was a pretty moderate figure, though would go sharply to the right while Home Affairs Minister. His most extreme phase was as Vanguard leader - "it may be our job to liquidate the enemy..." - but let his guard down when he proposed a voluntary coalition with the SDLP, which wrecked his party and his political career. Its important to note that the DUP was being eclipsed by Vanguard by around 1975 - if Craig doesn't let his mask fall and show he is a moderate at heart - then Vanguard could pose a strong threat to the UUP by the start of the eighties, providing a stronger threat than the DUP by the early eighties (there was talk of the DUP eclipsing the UUP in the early eighties - this was mooted by the surprise victory of the UUP in the 1982 South Belfast by-election held by former Vanguard MP Robert Bradford.)
 
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