The Road From Armageddon

So it's Unionists instead Nationalists, of course the latter's structure probably broke down after some went to Ireland, others saw the result of any military action and had their ideals damaged while the extreme Unionists saw that "the noble Brits have come to purge the Paddies". The tone implies that the problems have decreased by 1980 which suggests a shorter but deadlier Troubles, targeting Catholic areas more then anything else for sectarian reasons.
 
More great work, you've caught the contradictory nature of Loyalism and in particular Paisley very well, he's not a Unionist in the traditional sense but an Ulster Nationalist who is loyal more to Hardline Protestantism than to Britain itself, he toted with the Ulster Independence Movememt at several times and had it been a viable proposition he probably would have endorsed it. The harm he inflicted on my country because of his rabble rousing is incalculable and of course now we have to listen to him being lauded as a "peacemaker" :mad:

Even though you've probably butterflied me into oblivion with the destruction of Newry I'm really liking this! ;)
 
Comments...

Thank you once again for the supportive words, everyone.

To pick up on the comments - the irony of the failed Irish incursion was that it will compel the British Army to do what was its original mission in OTL - to protect Catholic communities in Ulster. There's an update coming on the impact of the war on a Catholic family in Belfast.

Vengeful elements in the Protestant community will see the Irish incursion as an excuse to dish out some mob "justice" to Catholics and that will force the Army to intervene and in fact Ulster will be even uglier in the 1970s than in OTL but more of that anon.

Impact on the US - well, Nixon has only just been elected so probably nothing long-term. The likes of Tip O'Neill will continue to champion Irish interests but it's peripheral to what else is happening in the world in the 70s.

The "destruction of Newry" is overdoing it somewhat. The short-lived firefight in the town centre will cause some trouble as will the retaliatory torching of abandoned Catholic homes by Protestants in the immediate aftermath.

There's another update or two in the works but probably not until next week.
 
Poor choice of words by me, my family history is that my parents first started going out just after the outbreak of OTL's Troubles so if most of the population fled as what the earlier update seemed to imply then that may never happen and I'm not going to be around. :(
 
Update

Extract from an article in The Independent by Dominic Sandbrook author of “The Seventies – The Forgotten Decade” published in September 2011

With hindsight, it can be argued that the short-lived Anglo-Irish War marked the end of the spirit of the sixties in Britain. Harold Wilson opportunistically seized on the surge of patriotism to win a third successive General Election in November 1969 but his majority was slightly reduced.

In the immediate aftermath of that victory, all things seemed possible. The former Defence Secretary, Denis Healey, became Chancellor of the Exchequer and Roy Jenkins moved to the Foreign Office. In the aftermath of their third successive defeat, the Conservative Party turned on Edward Heath and he was replaced by Reginald Maudling in the spring of 1970.

The returned Wilson Government set about its economic and industrial relations policy with a renewed vigour. Healey met with Union leaders just prior to Christmas 1969 and laid down the new law according to Wilson. Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon, Joe Gormley and Vic Feather were told in no certain terms that constructive ideas and partnership were in vogue and the economic strategy for the next Government would be based on controlling inflation and that meant lower wage demands.

The Government received further good news in that month with an unexpectedly low inflation number of 4.7% per annum. Healey also became the “front man” for the introduction of decimalisation in February 1971. He appeared in a five-minute information film broadcast before the evening news on both BBC and ITV throughout the autumn of 1970 explaining the conversion and re-assuring pensioners in particular who were wary of the change in currency.

Britain became a decimal country on 15 February 1971 and the conversion went smoothly though some shopkeepers were accused of inflating prices. The economy had survived the winter pay-round smoothly and the Government benefitted accordingly. The May 1971 local elections in London saw the Conservative advances of 1968 reversed spectacularly. In Lambeth, the Conservatives had won 62 out of 70 seats but lost all bar two of these in a rout which saw hundreds of losses in the capital. Two weeks later, Labour won the Bromsgrove by-election overturning a small Conservative majority from the 1969 General Election.

Yet storm clouds were already gathering over Wilson and his Government. Foreign Secretary Roy Jenkins had begun negotiating Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) in the early months of 1970 but Labour was deeply split on the issue with influential figures such as Michael Foot, Peter Shore and Tony Benn all strongly opposed. Wilson had been forced to concede a referendum on the final package but this had easily passed Parliament in the early days of 1972.

The referendum was fixed for June 8th 1972. The Conservatives were grudgingly supportive of Britain’s entry into the EEC while the Liberals were more strongly supportive. Wilson himself was lukewarm but Healey was supportive and Jenkins appeared with the likes of William Whitelaw and Jo Grimond in a spirit of cross-party unity which would resonate in the years to follow.

Despite the opposition within Labour, the decision was overwhelmingly in favour of joining the EEC with a margin of 72% in favour and 28% against. All regions voted in favour though the majorities in the Northern Isles and Cornwall were quite small. Harold Wilson was able to announce the following evening that Britain would join the EEC on January 1st 1973.

It might have been expected that the Referendum would herald a quieter period in politics but the summer of 1972 would prove to be the most remarkable in British political history.

There had been whispers for a number of years in Westminster concerning Conservative leader Reginald Maudling’s relationship with businessman John Poulson. Poulson had been declared bankrupt at the end of 1969. The bankruptcy hearing in the spring of 1972 revealed the degree of Poulson’s corruption and the bribes he had paid to secure lucrative contracts. Maudling had known Poulson for many years and it was clear that while serving as Chairman of one of Poulson’s company, he had used his influence to persuade the Maltese Government to award a lucrative contract for the building of a new hospital to one of Poulson’s companies.

The background of innuendo and intrigue had bubbled on through the Referendum campaign and once the vote was over, intensified. In addition to this, the Conservatives were not performing strongly in Opposition. The 1971 Local Government Act, based on the Redcliffe-Maud proposals, was set to sweep away thousands of Conservative and Independent (but Conservatively-minded) Councillors. The dispirited Tories had endured a wretched night in the May 1972 local elections and the likelihood of a Labour-dominated local Government structure had weakened morale. The Kingston-on-Thames by-election saw Norman Lamont retain the safe seat by only 4,000 votes with a strong Liberal challenge in third.

When the Metropolitan Police began to investigate Poulson for fraud, the facts of Maudling’s involvement began to leak out and the News of the World published damning allegations on July 2nd linking Maudling to Poulson. It was now too much and Reginald Maudling announced his resignation as Conservative Party leader to a stunned Shadow Cabinet two days later.

The Conservatives were plunged into turmoil – William Whitelaw took on the leadership in a caretaker capacity pending a new leadership election. Following the death of Iain MacLeod in July 1970, this was a second hammer blow. Keith Joseph announced his intention to stand as did Whitelaw and Robert Carr. Margaret Thatcher backed Joseph while James Prior backed Carr. It was agreed to hold a rapid leadership election and barely two weeks after Maudling’s departure, the party’s 257 MPs gathered in the Commons to vote.

The results stunned the forecasters – Robert Carr got 115 votes, Keith Joseph 76 and William Whitelaw 65. Whitelaw immediately withdrew and urged his supporters to back Carr and just two days later on July 20th 1972 Robert Carr was elected Conservative leader by 170 votes to 86.

Carr immediately appointed Keith Joseph Shadow Home Secretary, James Prior Shadow Chancellor and William Whitelaw Shadow Foreign Secretary.

The furore over the Conservative leadership had barely died down and the British people were enjoying their summer holidays when, on August 10th 1972, Harold Wilson stunned the nation and the Labour party by announcing his own resignation.

Many over the past two generations have pondered the why and wherefore of Wilson’s departure. It is now known that he had never intended to serve more than eight years as Prime Minister and while one of his inner confidants once suggested that had Labour lost in 1969, Wilson might have remained in politics for a while longer, there’s no evidence of this.

Some have claimed that Wilson was hounded out of office by elements in MI5 who believed him to be a Soviet agent but there is little credible evidence for this. Others have asserted that Wilson had been advised of the early onset of the dementia which had eventually overwhelm him and his resignation was a way of dealing with this crushing diagnosis but again there’s no evidence for this either.

It seems most likely that this consummate political operator, who had been at the centre of British political life for more than a decade, was simply weary. In Denis Healey, he saw a vibrant successor who would carry on his works and confront the new reality of a relationship with Europe and the quickening pace of industrial and economic development. There’s little doubt his wife, Mary, wanted an end to the active political life and in truth Wilson, as the first Labour leader to win three successive General Elections, had more than marked his place in history.

Wilson had gone to Balmoral and informed the Queen on the morning before the resignation announcement and thus, at the shortest of notices, Roy Jenkins, as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, found himself Prime Minister and kissing hands in Scotland.

The second part of the “summer of turmoil” would now begin as the potential successors to Wilson jockeyed for position.
 
Update

Fionnaula Lenihan is an imposing figure – even now, almost bent double and crippled with arthritis in her seventies. In the parlour of her small house near where the Divis Flats used to stand, off what was once called the Falls Road in Belfast, she holds court surrounded by friends, neighbours and her family.

Everyone knows Fionnaula round here – some have known her for well over fifty years. Her admiring great-grandchildren run excitedly throughout the house but are quietened by a look from this matriarch. Her history is the history of this community, the history of this troubled place, the history of our troubled times.

We sit in her lounge surrounded by pictures of her family, her late husband and her sons, one of whose lives was tragically cut short. She has paid her dues to this community but they have repaid her too with a kindness and affection you don’t see in too many places now.

As a young girl, she played on the Falls Road and up to Andersonstown and whispers softly of a young boy she courted until her parents found out he lived in the Shankill Road. She remembers the beating and the scolding from her father – that she must never see him again because, in her words, “He’s not one of us”. In time came love and marriage to Michael, a good husband and father to the growing Lenihan brood.

Yet the memory of that first forbidden love never left her. She recalls Billy McMillen and his office decorated with the Tricolour and the Starry Plough and the Police taking down the flag. That day conceived her hatred of the RUC and the role they would play in her life.

She speaks of the Civil Rights Movement and the marches of the 1960s, marching for equal rights just as they were doing in the southern States. She recalls listening to Gerry Fitt and Bernadette Devlin and other long-lost political figures. Then, in 1969, the War between Britain and Ireland began, a turning point for the community and for Fionnaula Lenihan. A few dreamed that the Irish Army would come to Belfast and free them all from the Protestants but it never happened of course.

Instead, there was revenge. On a cold January night, the Police came and chased the last Catholic families out of the Shankill and sealed off the Falls Road and the Divis Flats. The locals fought back with stones and petrol-bombs and the Police responded with live ammunition. Officially, five died that night, Fionnaula asserts it was twelve, including children.

A few days later, Michael was sacked from his job with the electricity board. He said all the Catholics were sacked at once. The Falls Road was sealed off, under curfew but the Specials roamed the streets, dealing out their own kind of justice. One night, Michael was badly beaten for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The community tried to fight back but the Provisionals had been crushed by the Army. Small groups tried to protect their community but were found and destroyed by the Specials. Then came the worst night of all, young Robert had been playing with some friends in the streets and had been shot by a sniper The Specials would pick off one or two each night just to keep the population quiet. Fionnaula cries even now – forty years later – and shows me a picture of her angelic little boy. He had been buried in the local cemetery along with one of his friends who had also been killed.

“Eighteen months of Hell” was how Fionnaula describes those times. Food was short in what became known as the “Falls Ghetto”. Electricity and water were periodically cut and most services including post were withdrawn.

Then, one spring morning in 1972, “Operation Motorman” – shooting from the Shankill, the power and water suddenly restored, the barriers torn down and facing them the British Army. Three very large smiling paratroopers advanced down the street to cheers even as shots were heard in the distance.

“Our liberators” explains Fionnaula and holds up a picture of that day with her husband shaking the hand of a British officer. Overnight, the British Army had been ordered in to Ulster by a Government appalled by the excesses of Stormont. Craig and his clique had been arrested and would stand trial. Paisley and his cronies screamed vitriol from the side lines until Paisley himself was arrested and would spend ten unrepentant years in Parkhurst Prison.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary was disbanded and the hated Specials outlawed. The Army patrolled the streets but the resentment in the Protestant community was palpable. Vanguard fought back inciting riots while the Ulster Workers’ Council declared a General Strike. A more sinister development saw the Specials go underground forming the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force. It was again unsafe for a Catholic to be out and about too late at night in the wrong places.
Michael went back to the electricity board and was able to work with most of his old colleagues but a few would ignore him until they were thrown out. The strike collapsed when it became clear most Protestants, the Catholics and the Army just wanted normality. Vanguard itself splintered but it remained a political force.

The UDA and UVF took their battle to England but terrorism and indiscriminate shootings continued in Belfast too. The Army was forever in the Shankill Road and Fionnaula always feared July – the marching season of old before the Orange Order was banned.

Yet, as the years passed, things began to heal slowly. Vanguard became in time a political force for peace under first James Molyneaux and then David Trimble. The UDA and UVF, despite their atrocities in Britain, never came close to success. Ulster was and would remain a part of the United Kingdom. By the time Paisley returned to Ulster, few would listen to his outbursts.

The road to peace within the communities was harder. Generations of sectarianism would take time to undo. Fionnaula smiles – her grandson married a “fine Protestant girl” from Craigavon while her daughter is living with a Sikh Doctor originally from the Punjab. “A highly intelligent man who helps with my old bones” is how Fionnaula describes him and she speaks of how his family confronted the sectarian divide in post-colonial India.

The schools are now joined thanks to the British Government and Fionnaula once met the Queen herself when she came to Belfast – “we spoke as two grandmothers together, you know. Such a lovely lady and beautifully mannered”. Her other son is in New Zealand – “too far for me to travel but we have this marvellous Skype thing. I can see him on my computer. Wonderful what they can do these days.”

Going outside the house, the bullet marks in the wall are still evident. Divis is gone – “so many memories” and a new purpose-built integrated housing estate will take its place. Even the grimy roofs of the Shankill are disappearing in the wave of new investment from the US and China.

On the famous “peace wall” stand the epitaph to those who fell in the dark days of the early 70s, to Bernadette Devlin, shot down by the Specials while leading a crowd of women on Bloody Friday and to Gerry Fitt, beaten to death while in custody.

Fionnaula looks with hope to the future – “the young ones won’t have the hatred but they must have the memories” she says wisely.
Michael is gone these past ten years – he never really recovered from the beating inflicted by the Specials and he died on the way to work one day. “Such a sadness, such a loss” Fionnaula says wistfully but is that a glint in her pale eye I observe?

“That nice young man from the Shankill I courted some fifty years ago,” she smiles, “he came to see me three years ago. John, that’s his name. He’s a widower too. He comes over for tea and to talk. We could have had a fine life together and he’s company for me.”

But then that’s how it is for John, Fionnaula and many in Belfast. That curious mix of the tragic and the joyful, a lifetime of division and suffering but now, perhaps, for the first time, a real sense of hope and reconciliation and joy for the future – it’s that which permeates the Belfast air.

As I head back down the Falls Road to my hotel, I’m faced with a conflict of feelings and emotions but that’s what this place does to you and to the people. The history is everywhere but the past no longer rules the present and the future, well, the young Lenihans will write that and I’ve every confidence it will be a bright one.
 
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Excellent updte I like how things have turned around with the UVF et l taking terrorism to Great Britain rather than PIRA et al
 
Update..

Extract from “Lives and Walls – Ulster in the Seventies” by John Alderdyce, published 1988

The short-lived Irish incursion and its humiliating reversal had invigorated Stormont and the Unionist hardliners and led to the long and ultimately terminal crisis of Protestant and Presbyterian Unionism.

O’Neill had been appalled by the incursion which cut right through his attempts to introduce social reform in Ulster. The nascent Civil Rights Movement, many of whose aims O’Neill and his allies privately supported, was swept away in the atmosphere of recrimination and revenge which followed the abortive invasion.

Within days of the signing of the Dundalk Accord in December 1969, O’Neill was being challenged by the radicals within the Unionist bloc at Stormont and on January 15th 1970, he faced a vote of No Confidence which he failed to survive by two votes. James Chichester-Clark took over as Prime Minister of Ulster and immediately started to talk a tougher line.

Nonetheless, talk wasn’t enough for many radical Unionists such as William Craig, Harry West and on the fringes of Unionism, Ian Paisley. While initially supportive of Chichester-Clark’s rhetoric, they soon became disappointed by his actions.

The early months of 1970 saw the Unionist Government take a much harder line against the Catholic population of Ulster. In the eyes of many Unionists, every Catholic was an Irish sympathiser and would have applauded the Irish Army had it reached Belfast. “Remember Newry, remember Strabane” were the calls of the more strident Unionists.

I was appalled by this and left the Unionist Party in June 1970 forming my own non-sectarian grouping, Northern Ireland Alliance, but by then it was clear the civil and political situation was spinning out of control.

I became aware of some of the more questionable actions of elements of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in the Irish border villages but at the same time my own position came under threat as my supporters were frequently intimidated and in some cases beaten by the Specials who were now effectively the paramilitary arm of militant Unionism.

Our descent into Hell continued in the autumn of 1970 when Chichester-Clark, disillusioned by Protestant disunity and broken by his own ill-health, resigned. Brian Faulkner took over but the real power lay with William Craig and Harry West, who became Ministers for Home and Police affairs respectively. In late 1970, the shooting of two Specials in Belfast led to a well-planned clampdown on Catholic areas such as the Falls Road in Belfast and the Creggan Estate in Londonderry.

Economically, the Faulkner Government introduced measures more like the Nuremburg Laws than rational policies – Catholics were sacked from all senior positions and from all positions in sectors where, it was believed, they could commit acts of sabotage. Curfews were introduced in all Catholic areas and the Catholic communities were effectively isolated – Catholics living in Protestant areas had been forcibly “re-located” soon after the incursion.

The problem was the growing concern of the British Government during 1971 as details of the excesses of the Specials leaked out through non-British media (a Canadian documentary covering an attack on an isolated farmhouse just south of the border got particular attention and prompted a strong response from the Nixon Administration).

I found my own political activities curtailed – in April 1971 Alliance was formally outlawed as was the SDLP. The resulting protest saw Bernadette Devlin shot leading a group of women protesting in the Falls Road and Gerry Fitt’s death in Police custody, officially from a heart attack but in fact from a beating at the hands of the Specials. I, too, was subject to arrest and intimidation during much of 1971 and many of my friends saw too much of the inside of Police stations and RUC truncheons.

By late 1971, even Faulkner could stand it no longer and resigned. William Craig took over but the Unionist movement was splitting asunder. Falkner created a new Unionist Reform Movement which was immediately banned by Craig but moderate Unionist opinion was starting to unravel and, unbeknownst to Craig, Falkner had powerful contacts in London. In November 1971, Craig effectively shut down the Stormont Parliament and declared a State of Emergency blaming growing civil unrest which there certainly was but now in some Unionist areas too.

1972 began with a General Strike which, although patchily supported in some areas, was effective in showing the divisions in Unionist opinion.
Craig began to overstep the mark in February 1972 by having both Terence O’Neill, James Chichester-Clark arrested as well as myself and dozens of moderate Unionists and charging us all with sedition. Finally, he removed the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and placed Harry West and several Specials commanders in positions of leadership.

Many moderate Police hated the Specials and walked out of the RUC and with that law and order began to break down in most of Ulster. The British Government, which had prevaricated badly in 1970 and 1971, finally acted. On March 9th 1972, a large well-armed force landed by air at Aldergrove and by sea at Belfast Lough. Within hours, they had fanned out across Ulster, relieving the Specials, opening the isolated Catholic communities and arresting William Craig, Harry West and their associates.

I was released from Belfast Gaol by a squad of paratroopers and stood in the courtyard with a shocked-looking Terence O’Neill and James Chichester-Clark. We decided then and there to merge Ulster Reform and Alliance to create the Ulster Reform Alliance (URA). We could hear shooting in the distance as elements of the Specials resisted the British in the Shankill and elsewhere but they were rapidly out-gunned and either arrested or fled into hiding.

Paisley was brought in the next day after a gun battle at his house in Cyprus Avenue. One of his daughters and one of his sons died in the cross-fire yet he was screaming defiance and proclaiming that Ulster needed to be “free of Popery and free of the British”. We hoped that sentiment was his alone but as the next few years showed, many extreme Unionists became separatists and Vanguard began life as a pro-independence movement.

Eventually, Paisley was shipped to the mainland and would serve ten years in Parkhurst Prison yet he would emerge in 1982 as defiant as before. For him, it was still 1969 and the Fenians were at the gates but for the rest of us, the world had moved on.

The reconstruction would be painful. The new Northern Ireland Secretary, David Owen, told us a week later that the Army had been sent in “to normalise the civil and political situation” but, as we pointed out, tanks on the streets were not an indication of any form of normality.

We wanted the Army gone but it soon became clear that there were some, a few perhaps, who would not accept what had happened. William Craig and Harry West were exiled to the mainland and tried for their actions and, to his credit, William Craig mounted a stern defence of his actions to the Royal Commission on Ulster in 1974 but no one was really listening by then.

Extreme Protestants had gone underground after “Motorman” while Vanguard had mobilised a General Strike headed by the Ulster Workers’ Council. When the strike collapsed, the extremists turned to terror with the dispiriting results we saw throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.

I myself was a target and narrowly escaped an attempted car-bombing in 1976. All Ulster’s political leaders gathered at Sunningdale after the auspices of Roy Jenkins after Denis Healey became Prime Minister in the autumn of 1972. I found Jenkins an immensely intelligent and urbane man but Owen was the one who banged heads together. The Ulster Assembly which would eventually and painfully emerge was in many ways a masterpiece of compromise ensuring the minority Catholics would live a proper say in the affairs of the Province.

I still walk past the “Peace Wall” at the end of the Falls Road and look at the names of “the fallen” on it and wonder how we survived those times. I even went to Dublin once to speak to Jack Lynch himself but that’s another story.
 
I wonder- would Paisley have ties to some elements of the Fundamentalist Religious Right in the US? He was a regular speaker at Bob Jones University for a long time. (Although, he was kept from entering the US- ironically under Reagan...) I wonder if they'd be able or willing to exert political pressure...
 
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