Successful IRA and other alternative Northern Irelands

I would argue that the Republicans have almost won. Demographics are on their side
Could demographics have been worked into the partition, a periodic census and redrawing of the border.

Would the UK be able to do anything to encourage Loyalists to leave Ireland, maybe promise land in a colony they want to shore up?
 
It should be noted that the Unionists started smuggling in massive amounts of arms before the Volunteers did. If Parliament had passed Home Rule, Unionists in the North would have started violence.
 
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Could demographics have been worked into the partition, a periodic census and redrawing of the border.

Would the UK be able to do anything to encourage Loyalists to leave Ireland, maybe promise land in a colony they want to shore up?

Northern Ireland as is was considered the smallest it could be balancing economic needs with populations. And even with that, I'd say the "economically viable" hasn't really stood the test of time. Periodically changing the border would just create more tensions I'd bet, first in even dealing with moniorities left behind (ie Preotestant/Unionists in Derry), then the clear point of it just coming down to population growth rates.

At best you'd end up with an even smaller rump statelet of NI with an increasingly hardline population screaming about being betrayed by London. And the Loyalists would never agree to leave NI.
 
It should be noted that the Unionists started arms smuggling in massive amounts of arms before the Volunteers did. If Parliament had passed Home Rule, Unionists in the North would have started violence.

Which was what the whole Curragh Mutiney was about, the concern from the officers that they would be ordered to disarm the UVF...
 
The Loyalists were compeletly against Home Rule long before the Rising or the War. Remember the UVF was formed before the IVF with the express intent of resisting Home Rule by force. They were the first to do the Gun Running as another example. Since the start of the Home Rule movement the Unionists were against it (ie the Conservative and Unionist party), so no I don't see why delaying it in the hope that the UK actually stood over their comitment this time was the only option to take.

Suggesting that the avoiding the War of Independence would somehow magically have reconcilled the Loyalists/Unionist of Ulster to a Home Rule/Free State. A perusal of any Youtube section will show idiots. No question the Unionists are against unification, for a host of reasons, the War of Independence wouldn't be the major driving force of that resistance.
Hmm. And the armed independence uprising certainly solved that problem?
 
Hmm. And the armed independence uprising certainly solved that problem?

As opposed to the likely armed uprising from the Loyalists if Home Rule was enforced on a 32 county basis, which from memory the King had already said he wouldn't sign.

Literally nothing Dublin did or said would have changed the minds of those determined to resist Home Rule in the North, trying to suggest that the War of Independence was the event that created such a hardline position is trying to rewrite history.
 
Sparky. My overall point was simply that an armed struggle for independence was unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. The counter struggle for independence was reinforced by this and I suggested that a political and more inclusive one might have saved the loss of life that has followed.

The trick has been looking to the solutions rather than apportioning blame. No one, no party, no group comes out well in the blame game but the successes have come from those brave enough to seek solutions.

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In the spirit of the original thread; in a break up of the Union, ideally triggered by England leaving, an alternative NI would be a union with Scotland. Controversially one could argue that NI is a Scottish problem. The protestants there were largely planted by James VI and remain a separate community from the rest of Ireland. Even from their fellow protestants in the Republic. English protestant settlers in the Republic have integrated and the social discrimination against them has died away by this century. The close protestant/orange links between NI and Scotland make that a more fitting union than with GB and Scotland is but a short ferry away.

Someone might point out that it would leave the republican community of NI even more of a minority. However, that does not seem to prevent the far larger Irish community of Great Britain from having emigrated there where they enjoy rights to vote, serve in the British army and stand for local government and Parliament.
 
Sparky. My overall point was simply that an armed struggle for independence was unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. The counter struggle for independence was reinforced by this and I suggested that a political and more inclusive one might have saved the loss of life that has followed.

I mean anything could be potentially counterproductive when It comes to alternet history. Anyway, when you consider the sheer bigotry held against the Irish at the time, it makes sense that eventualy the disire for compromise ran out.

All I am trying to say is that nothing in certain and what happened has happened. Perhaps if the thirteen colonies quieted down they might have ended up free as dominions and no one would have died in the revolutionary wars, but in the long run things turned out ok for the United States.

I think the same thought applys to ireland here: Maybe if they hadn't rebeled there would be less violence, but I would argue that things have turned out realtively well for the republic of ireland.
 
Genuine historical question, is there any chance that the IRA could have succeed in creating a unified 32 county Irish state after 1955? Where they really anywhere near powerful enough for this?

Just to reiterate militarily the answer is no. No-one was ever in favour of partition. Historically all were actually in favour of a united Ireland - Home Rule was not going to be an independent Irish Republic.

The Presbyterians, who historically are the dominant grouping in the North were against Dublin rule. In the late 1800's Belfast was the largest city in Ireland and was its industrial power base. They knew that their wealth lay in continuing doing business within the worlds most powerful economy at that time. If you care to go to the Linnenhall Library in Belfast and check the records, you will recognise places such as Andersonstown, Falls Road etc back in the 1800's were presbyterian not Roman Catholic as they are today.

The Ulster Scots Presbyterian roots are in the Island of Ireland, Thayer are not and never were planters. When trying to understand our crazy little world, please try at least to get the facts not the myths.

The troubles only enhanced the sectarian hatred. It really was counterproductive to its desired cause. After the defeat of the ira by the USC/RUC in 1963 the border was really only a line drawn on a map. The currency was the same North & South. Local trade from Fermanagh to Sligo was the same as Antrim to Down or Wexford to Cork. Without the troubles we could really have been considering, on the 100th anniversary of Home Rule, we would be better off together. For the PUL community the bitterest pill to take was the deliberate destruction of the industrial base in Belfast by the British government. Followed closely by the spending of EEC social improvement funding to garrison the troubles. Remember also the fact that Operation Banner was in response to Loyalist attacks on the Nationalist community. Perhaps it should've been the loyalists fighting the British and the Republicans supporting the British.

This is a crazy place - full of crazy people. Is their any-one out there that could talk sense to us?
 
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The Ulster Scots Presbyterian roots are in the Island of Ireland, Thayer are not and never were planters. When trying to understand our crazy little world, please try at least to get the facts not the myths.

It is the myth (and there is more to it than just a myth) that drives the perception. It is the perception that has to be accepted as so, even if it has a mythical base. Just as Ireland avoids its ancient history of slave raiding and colonisation on the west coast of England and Wales for example. Academically accepted but not in popular history. Not an example to point a finger but just to make the point that the popular myth is the popular history and the popular history drives the viewpoint of the public in general.
 
the deliberate destruction of the industrial base in Belfast by the British government. Followed closely by the spending of EEC social improvement funding to garrison the troubles. Remember also the fact that Operation Banner was in response to Loyalist attacks on the Nationalist community. Perhaps it should've been the loyalists fighting the British and the Republicans supporting the British.

This is a crazy place - full of crazy people. Is their any-one out there that could talk sense to us?

A 'deliberate destruction of the industrial base' might need some evidence? As far as I can see the same evidence could be applied to the destruction of the industrial base in England in the same period. It was a period where old industries were supplanted by modern ones over the whole of the UK. No EEC Social Funding was ever spent on garrisoning the troubles. It all came from the national exchequer and vast quantities of money were sent over the Irish Sea to support the NI economy. Not least as a prosperous NI is a peaceable one. One of the drivers for the accommodation by PIRA at the end of the Troubles was that they recognised that they were driving away investment and playing a part (inadvertently) in creating poverty.

Yes, Republic/Ulster politics are a crazy place because it has to reconcile the irreconcilable. An independent united Ireland means, to the Loyalists of Ulster, an end to their independence and their occupation by a hostile foreign power. The Irish government knew this from the beginning and have made no attempt to push the point other than symbolically. It was a brave and positive step by ROI to remove it's claim over NI from the constitution in 1998.

As an aside, I was privileged(?) to be present when some Irish lads were trying to get some 'Irish Americans' ('we call them Americans' one of the lads told me afterwards) to get into their heads that ROI does not claim NI and failing entirely to alter their mythical world view that was nearly as out of date as the Loyalist addiction to a 350 year plus old spat over whether the King should be a Scot or a Dutchman.

Since the threat of a hostile occupation of Ireland by the Spanish or French dies away in the 1870s the Westminster aim has been to dispose of Ireland without a civil war. Since 1922 the aim of both Dublin and Westminster has been to ignore NI and vaguely hope the problem will die away. That still seems to apply. So what AH might change that?
 
The Ulster Scots Presbyterian roots are in the Island of Ireland, Thayer are not and never were planters. When trying to understand our crazy little world, please try at least to get the facts not the myths.

While everyone in Northern Ireland, and the island as a whole, has a mixture of ancestries and there have been religious conversions on all sides, the bulk of the Presbyterian presence in Ulster dates from Scottish settlement (the Hamilton/Montgomery settlement in the Ards and subsequent plantations in the early 17th century, combined with later in-migration from Britain as industrialisation proceeded in eastern Ulster in the later 17th, 18th and 19th centuries).

That opinion is not particularly controversial unless we're going to wander onto the wilder shores of Cruithinology.
 
It is the myth (and there is more to it than just a myth) that drives the perception. It is the perception that has to be accepted as so, even if it has a mythical base. Just as Ireland avoids its ancient history of slave raiding and colonisation on the west coast of England and Wales for example. Academically accepted but not in popular history.

Well, it avoids it apart from the Patrick, Milchú and Niall of the Nine Hostages narrative.
 
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