Worst Case of The Troubles

[theirishdreamer]

i agree

Oddly enough I agree with you in most ways but i will say the Irish Army company would only cross the border where thousands of catholics are streaming south with events like the balkans happening - your talking Sarajeco or Rwanda levels of violence to get a company to two across the border so by that stage its hard to see the British having any control ver the province.

 

[RossN]

General British policy was to ignore any and all Irish problems until the crisis became literally unignorable. In the case of Northern Ireland this essentially meant leaving nearly everything up to Stormont until that proved impossble.

Given five decades of 'ignore the problem and maybe it will go away' the Irish suspicion that the British would do nothing was slightly less unreasonable then than it appears in hindsight.

 

[irishparadox]

Forget about NATO attacking Ireland ... Could you have ended up with the US arming the IRA against the British, maybe if Ted Kennedy is elected President?

 

[sparky42]

Forget about NATO attacking Ireland ... Could you have ended up with the US arming the IRA against the British, maybe if Ted Kennedy is elected President?

The US Government, I really doubt it. Ireland brings nothing to the table. The UK brings everything to it and in the Cold War that's really all that matters. Perhaps a hands off approach to those gun running from the US and raising funds for the IRA instead.

 

[Simreeve]

How bad could the Troubles really could have got.

The Nationalists refuse the deal on offer after WW1.
The British government, as it is said to have threatened to do IOTL in order to obtain that deal, recruits another million army veterans into the Black-and-Tans and sends them across to sort things out.
The heavily outnumered Nationalists are thoroughly crushed, but with a high level of what later generations IOTL would call "collateral damage". Maybe not quite on the same scale as the 19th-century defeat of Paraguay during the War of the Triple Alliance, but maybe not far off of that.

Bad enough for you?

 

[IanBertram]

It never ceases to amaze me how British and Irish people manage to make a period of civil unrest and terrorism sound like having a cold.

Because nasty as it was it never really approached the concerted levels of things like the Watts Riots.

As for making it worse you would need on the British side someone daft enough to listen to the 'send in the SAS' brigade and on the IRA side more weapons and a willingness (and capability) to do things like the mortar attack on Downing St, or the murder of Mountbatten and Airey Neave. In the right (or wrong depending on your perspective) context these have been a trigger for a more 'robust' response from Britain.

Don't forget the 'Loyalists' either. If they had got access to more weapons and got themselves into pitched battles with Republicans that wouldn't have been pretty. In fact that sort of conflict is where any genocidal attempts would have probably come from.

 

[sparky42]

The Nationalists refuse the deal on offer after WW1.
The British government, as it is said to have threatened to do IOTL in order to obtain that deal, recruits another million army veterans into the Black-and-Tans and sends them across to sort things out.
The heavily outnumered Nationalists are thoroughly crushed, but with a high level of what later generations IOTL would call "collateral damage". Maybe not quite on the same scale as the 19th-century defeat of Paraguay during the War of the Triple Alliance, but maybe not far off of that.

Bad enough for you?

Well that's more how to make Anglo Irish relations worse than the Troubles themselves I'd think.

 

[Rapparee]

The Irish Naval Service and Royal Navy were quite good at interdicting arms shipments coming into the island, the large ones especially. The Provos always had a steady supply trickling in but they never managed getting in "the big one". A few massive shipments from Libya were stopped and even then they still snuck in flamethrowers, DSHK hmgs, semtex, AKs etc.

Look at South Armagh, three sides surrounded by the Republic. They managed to down 2 helicopters and made it the most dangerous posting in all of the North. Troops couldn't move by road so if they'd gotten in SAM's they could have made the whole region lawless, they already called it bandit country.

That would have really seen an escalation of hostilities I think, especially with the border being so crucial to the South Armagh brigade's success.

 

[sparky42]

The Irish Naval Service and Royal Navy were quite good at interdicting arms shipments coming into the island, the large ones especially. The Provos always had a steady supply trickling in but they never managed getting in "the big one". A few massive shipments from Libya were stopped and even then they still snuck in flamethrowers, DSHK hmgs, semtex, AKs etc.

Look at South Armagh, three sides surrounded by the Republic. They managed to down 2 helicopters and made it the most dangerous posting in all of the North. Troops couldn't move by road so if they'd gotten in SAM's they could have made the whole region lawless, they already called it bandit country.

That would have really seen an escalation of hostilities I think, especially with the border being so crucial to the South Armagh brigade's success.

That's possible, if the Republicans try getting equipment in before 72 then the Irish Navy won't be able to stop them, but that might require escalation before that. After that just some more luck in getting in (from memory the 3 Tons had issues as well)

 

[Rapparee]

Aye, some good intelligence work stopped the big ones getting through which definitely helped it stay relatively low-key. The arms from the US and the continent were always enough to keep a constant supply and the conflict going but it was the larger shipments that could have tipped it over the edge.

That said, the idea of the PIRA with SAMs, more Semtex, armour-piercing rounds etc is very very worrying!

Maybe a more concerted UDA/UVF campaign would have brought the conflict up a notch?

Or more attacks on the British mainland like the Canary Wharf bombing?

 

[sparky42]

Aye, some good intelligence work stopped the big ones getting through which definitely helped it stay relatively low-key. The arms from the US and the continent were always enough to keep a constant supply and the conflict going but it was the larger shipments that could have tipped it over the edge.

That said, the idea of the PIRA with SAMs, more Semtex, armour-piercing rounds etc is very very worrying!

Maybe a more concerted UDA/UVF campaign would have brought the conflict up a notch?

Or more attacks on the British mainland like the Canary Wharf bombing?

The idea of either side getting more hardware is a terrifying thought. They were more than bad enough as is. Perhaps more events like the Dublin/Monaghan bombings push the Irish into taking more hard line with the possibility of making the border more unstable and worsening the Anglo-Irish relations.

Maybe something goes a bit wrong when the Loyalists attacked the Clontibert Garda Station in 1986 and the Gardaí end up killing some of the Loyalists (even Robinson) sparking more responses from the Loyalists? Or Paisely being killed during the court appearance in Dundalk.

Or just killing Maggie in the bombing attack, sparking a hardline response?