"There are stronger things then Parliamentary majorities"

Bonar Law's quote, given before an army of Orangemen in 1913, demonstrates the tension that had arisen over the passage of the Home Rule Bill. Of course, in our timeline Franz Ferdinand was shot, the wheels start in motion, WWI, the Easter Rising etc, etc.

There have been innumerable alternate WWI timelines. However, this is one possibility I don't believe has ever been brought up. If we delay the war, even by a year, we can have Home Rule enacted. An armed Orange insurrection in Ulster, supported by the Tory party, would square of against Redmond's constitutionalists, long allies of the Liberals. Added to this mix would be the IRB and Sinn Fein, those groups that would become the Anti-Treaty forces in our timeline, viciously opposed to both sides.

This would appear to be the South African War writ large. Indeed, Peter Clarke has hinted that this was the issue which could have set Britain's waning aristocracy, scarred by trade, taxes and the Parliament Act, into open rebellion against the Liberal government.

So what so what do we think? Save Franz (easy enough), give it a year at least, and give Britain a civil war by proxy in Ireland? Worth giving a go?
 
Bonar Law's quote, given before an army of Orangemen in 1913, demonstrates the tension that had arisen over the passage of the Home Rule Bill. Of course, in our timeline Franz Ferdinand was shot, the wheels start in motion, WWI, the Easter Rising etc, etc.

There have been innumerable alternate WWI timelines. However, this is one possibility I don't believe has ever been brought up. If we delay the war, even by a year, we can have Home Rule enacted. An armed Orange insurrection in Ulster, supported by the Tory party, would square of against Redmond's constitutionalists, long allies of the Liberals. Added to this mix would be the IRB and Sinn Fein, those groups that would become the Anti-Treaty forces in our timeline, viciously opposed to both sides.

This would appear to be the South African War writ large. Indeed, Peter Clarke has hinted that this was the issue which could have set Britain's waning aristocracy, scarred by trade, taxes and the Parliament Act, into open rebellion against the Liberal government.

So what so what do we think? Save Franz (easy enough), give it a year at least, and give Britain a civil war by proxy in Ireland? Worth giving a go?

kaine

It's definitely a possibility if the war hadn't been triggered then but I don't know how things would have gone. Could have been very messy. At the time the main extremists were on the 'unionist' side and the Irish imperialists were only a small faction. A lot would have probably depended on how opinion in Britain itself responded to what would have been basically a military rebellion.

The knock on effects on international affairs could also be very complex.

Steve
 
kaine

It's definitely a possibility if the war hadn't been triggered then but I don't know how things would have gone. Could have been very messy. At the time the main extremists were on the 'unionist' side and the Irish imperialists were only a small faction. A lot would have probably depended on how opinion in Britain itself responded to what would have been basically a military rebellion.

The knock on effects on international affairs could also be very complex.

Steve

Cheers for the reply Steve.

I think the multi-polar conflict would be fascinating. You'd have the respectable elements of Nationalism in one corner, the Orangemen in the other, and the Fenians in the third. The backlash at home would have put the tension over the Boers to shame. George V had much more Liberal sympathies than his father, but would this be enough? It would seem only his personal intervention could have stopped the Orange Order.

One could cast this almost as an Ur-Spanish Civil War. 'International brigades' of Irish ex-pats returning to fight for oneside or another, young Tory aristocrats heading for Ulster, Socialists and romantics swayed by the calls of Pearse and Connelly.
 
There were all sorts of fears about the loyalty of the regular army officer corps too (Henry Wilson comes to mind), iirc. Or perhaps that is something that historians have pieced together by reviewing personal papers (been too long since I last looked at this area)?
 
I suspect that the political establishment would have groped their way to a compromise based upon partition, as happened IRL - Bonar Law and the Ulster Unionists were by the outbreak of the Great War looking to step back from the brink. Which is not to say that something couldn't have gone wrong.
 
There were all sorts of fears about the loyalty of the regular army officer corps too (Henry Wilson comes to mind), iirc. Or perhaps that is something that historians have pieced together by reviewing personal papers (been too long since I last looked at this area)?

That's Castlereagh right? Yes, there were a few fears of mutiny.

The interesting point Clarke makes in Hope and Glory is that with the Parliament Act overthrowing the permanent Tory veto, the extension of the franchise, and the dissolution of the Union with Ireland, the Conservative Party was in fear for its very existence. Now, we know the twentieth century was very kind to them, but this wasn't at all obvious at the time. There's a sense in which this is the place to make a stand against the tide of Liberal democracy.

What do we think of an international context? If a delayed WWI kicks off will Britain be consumed by its own troubles, or see the war as a useful bit of national unity?
 
Does any foreign government become embroiled in the Irish Crisis?

Hmmm, seems unlikely, perhaps funding from the USA for the Fenian element. I suppose the real question is, do we think the British Tory Party, in it's widest sense, would be willing to fund the continued insurrection of the Ulster Unionists? If so, what would be the Nationalist/Liberal response?

There something viscerally political here. If the Tories can block a key piece of Liberal reform, yet again, and by extra-Parliamentary means what does that say about the Liberals? Can they tolerate that?

And if Redmond's Nationalists can't get a 32 county Dominion playing nice, how long before the more radical element try for a 32 county Republic with guns?
 
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