Unrecognisable Ireland -the Croke Park bombing of 1917

According to Richard Walsh (later a Fianna Fail TD):-
"The Volunteer Convention was held in a building in Croke Park, known as the Pavilion, (the) end portion of this building was filled with hay. The large number of delegates seated themse1ves where convenient on portions of an open stand and around on the hay. Planks and forms were also used for seats. At the end of the building where the hay was a group of men assembled, of whom it could be said they were the men of destiny in the Ireland of our time. The Chairman of the Convention was Eamon de Valera. Behind him, lying on the pile of hay, were Michael Collins, Cathal Brugha, Austin Stack, Dermot Lynch, Eamon Duggan, Dermot O'Hegarty, Michael Staines, Liam Lynch of Cork, Terence McSwiney of Cork, Ernest Blythe, Joe McKelvey, Dick Barrett, Frank Barrett of Clare, Mick Brennan and one of his brothers of Clare, Sean MacEntee of Belfast, James Keaveney, Sligo, Alec McCabe of Sligo, Rory O'Connor, Dick McKee, Oscar Traynor, William M. O'Reilly and some of the McQuills of Dundalk, Brian O'Higgins, Laurence O'Toole, etc. All the prominent men in the republican physical force movement of that time were present."
Assume wartime British intelligence sent someone a bit nastier than OTL to Dublin following the 1916 Rising to ensure no repetition, be they a fanatical unionist or someone revengeful who had lost a relative on the British side in the 1916 rising or just a sociopath, who had a background with the use of explosives and using informers gets advanced notice of where the Volunteer Convention will be held rigs a large bomb or series of bombs under the hay. All those named are killed. There is a subsequent cover-up that "the men appeared to be either concealing or removing a store of ammunition which exploded" which even some of their supporters believe to be a genuine statement of fact
What happens to Ireland's campaign for independence and War of Independence? Is there a Civil War over the Treaty?
 

Ramontxo

Donor
Some time in the eighteenth century a Prussian asked a Polish noble why did he keep supporting a dead cause as everybody knew Poland was lost for ever. He was answered "Fortuna variabilis Deus mirabilis". More than two hundred years after that Poland lives and so does Ireland. Ireland lives beacouse Irish people want it to. There are several pods which would make the whole of Ireland as the fourth member of the United Kingdom. No one of them being a British military victory over the Irish.
 
There are several pods which would make the whole of Ireland as the fourth member of the United Kingdom. No one of them being a British military victory over the Irish.
Oh I certainly don't think Irish nationalism could have been extinguished following the 1916 Rising, that genie was well out of the bottle. I am more intrigued by the sheer number of C20th Ireland's main shakers and movers being clandestinely met in one location.
Someone once posted a thread on the theme of a bomb in the Central Cafe in Vienna in 1912 eliminating Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito and Freud. Now that might have a greater global impact but, in terms of Ireland, wiping out the leaders of the Volunteer Convention of 1917 would have immensely far reaching consequences.
Ireland's main political divisions derive from the differing approaches of Collins and de Valera even today; de Valera promulgated Ireland's Constitution; Rory O'Connor was responsible for the occupation and (indirectly) the subsequent destruction of the Four Courts; Cathal Brugha and Austin Stack were leading political champions of the anti-Treaty side. Michael Staines originally set up the Garda (Ireland's police force); Dairmuid O'Hegarty effectively set up the administration of the Dail and the Irish civil service; Ernest Blythe was a key stabilising force in the early days of the Free State;Terence McSwiney's death has a key place in Irish Nationalist legend following on from the martyrs of the 1916 Rising; Dick McKee helped train and organise the early IRA; Liam Lynch was probably their greatest guerrilla commander. Oscar Traynor was Ireland's longest serving Defence Minister and Michael Brennan the Irish Army's Chief of Staff 1931-1940. So I don't think Ireland would have ceased to struggle for independence or not ultimately have achieved it. What I wonder is, with so many leading figures gone who would have come to the fore thereafter (Arthur Griffiths? William Cosgrave? James Ryan? Eoin O'Duffy?) and would the struggle have been constitutional or military?
 
I think there's two issues with this question. The first is that of all the above people are removed it's such a huge change it really is impossible to plot out a likely course. The movers and shakers will surely be people we've never heard of.

Furthermore, an explosion that devastating is almost certainly going to be blamed on the British in one way or another.
 
The movers and shakers will surely be people we've never heard of.
Up to a point but some of the political types not involved on the military side wouldn't be there. I suspect Tom Barry was there but not mentioned as he was still active in the movement in the early 1950s (Walsh himself died in 1954 or 5) but no mention of O'Duffy, O'Higgins, Cosgrave or Ryan none of whom there would be any harm mentioning by 1952 or 1953. Delahanty not there either. Nor is Mulcahy mentioned.

Actually a pre-emptive act of that kind would be so unusual that the British might have escaped blame if they weren't spotted in the first place. Mostly British intelligence didn't go in for assassination, certainly not prior to the War of Independence where assassination started to breed counter-assassination (if you read between the lines in Winter's Tale, it is obvious that Winter was a believer in retaliatory sanctions -but the key word was "retaliatory") only figures I could think of in the British intelligence structures potentially nasty enough are District Inspector Nixon and Claud Marjoribanks Dansey. And the movement were stockpiling arms so a cover statement of the kind I mention would at least have created doubt and confusion.

What would be interesting is what would have come from the "second eleven" of Irish politics of the period being propelled to the fore by the absence of so many of the leading figures of OTL. There actually was a day in October 1917 when 75% of the leading men were together in one room. Would we have the IRP instead of the Garda? Would the border negotiations have gone the same way? Would Ireland have remained a Free State? Or become a Dominion? Would it have adopted PR or stuck with first past the post in the electoral system?
 
What would be interesting is what would have come from the "second eleven" of Irish politics of the period being propelled to the fore by the absence of so many of the leading figures of OTL. There actually was a day in October 1917 when 75% of the leading men were together in one room. Would we have the IRP instead of the Garda? Would the border negotiations have gone the same way? Would Ireland have remained a Free State? Or become a Dominion? Would it have adopted PR or stuck with first past the post in the electoral system?

I think the key thing with this PoD is you can take things wherever you want within reason. The second team are outside what we know so you've a lot to plausibly work with.

On the other hand I can't see a conflagration this cataslysmic not being blamed on British intelligence. Between pre-existing prejudices and the amount of devastation caused it seems likely the Brits take the blame.
 
Fair point but would it be a Kennedy assassination sort of thing with all sorts of speculation and no hard evidence? But in terms of "devastation" we are speaking with a century of hindsight. In October 1917 we are speaking of the death of one relatively well known figure (de Valera due to his role in the Easter Rising) and 40 or 50 obscure young men unknown to the wider public outside Nationalist /Republican circles. Who according to the official version were killed when arms and explosives they were hiding ignited. Which as I say even their friends and supporters wouldn't find implausible or be able to rule out. They might well suspect that the British were somehow behind it but they couldn't be sure because at that point these men actually were stockpiling arms and explosives.
 
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