AHC: Square the Circle: Keep the United Kingdom united.

[Cook]

Your AH Challenge is, beginning no earlier than the passage of the 1911 Parliamentary Reform Act, pass a Third Irish Home Rule Bill, (amended as necessary) and introduce it without a mutiny in the army or the outbreak of Civil War in Ulster, Ireland or within the broader United Kingdom.

In short: keep the United Kingdom united:

What impact do you see this happening, domestically (might this have saved the Liberal Party?) and internationally?

Alternative challenge (should you regard the primary challenge as unachievable): Enact Irish Home Rule and weather the storm of Civil War, with the United Kingdom (including Ireland) surviving, with or without long-term instability. Again, what impact does this have?

 

[theirishdreamer]

hmmm

The hard part is without some resulting violence and stupidity from somebody, I can envisage passing the Home Rule Bill pre-1911 and implementing and keeping Ireland within the United Kingdom is doable - albeit difficult into the 20th Century.

 

[Cook]

The limitation of no earlier than 1911 is set by the obstacle of the House of Lords prior to the reform act of that year. Some violence is acceptable, and may be inevitable, so long as the UK is maintained.

 

[GarethC]

Short answer, no WW1 due to anything you like, really. FF's driver slips and breaks a finger on the morning, and the replacement is a local policeman who doesn't get lost. Austria doesn't get a Blank Cheque (because Germany is pressured with both carrots and sticks by Britain), or doesn't cash it (because somebody looks at the terrain in the Alps and the number of Russians and thinks that maybe spending the next few years on internal political stability would be a more profitable pastime), that sort of thing.

Then, planning for the TTL Great War, the Tsarist Okhrana goes a bit off-piste, and gets caught trying to foment an ur-Easter Rising when some of the IRB (maybe the elder Plunkett?) decide that a Russian-sponsored civil war is not good for Ireland, which damages the Republican movement as foreign cats' paws.

Without death in wholesale lots in Flanders, Britain (both public and private sectors) has a lot more ability to invest in Ireland in the next five years, which boom further dampens the urgency of desires to grossly alter the status quo regardless of whether they are tinged orange or green.

 

[Emperor-of-New-Zealand]

snip

Why does that map have Croatia as independent? First thing I noticed.

 

[Clandango]

Why does that map have Croatia as independent? First thing I noticed.

It shows how Croatia-Slavonia was semi-independent from Hungary. The red line was likely sufficient for seperating Austria form Hungary, so it did not get it's own color. It was in personal union with the Emperor in his role as King of Hungary. Given the status of Fiume, you can see how there were some differences between the Hungarian and Croatian establishments to require something like that.

 

[sparky42]

Short answer, no WW1 due to anything you like, really. FF's driver slips and breaks a finger on the morning, and the replacement is a local policeman who doesn't get lost. Austria doesn't get a Blank Cheque (because Germany is pressured with both carrots and sticks by Britain), or doesn't cash it (because somebody looks at the terrain in the Alps and the number of Russians and thinks that maybe spending the next few years on internal political stability would be a more profitable pastime), that sort of thing.

Then, planning for the TTL Great War, the Tsarist Okhrana goes a bit off-piste, and gets caught trying to foment an ur-Easter Rising when some of the IRB (maybe the elder Plunkett?) decide that a Russian-sponsored civil war is not good for Ireland, which damages the Republican movement as foreign cats' paws.

Without death in wholesale lots in Flanders, Britain (both public and private sectors) has a lot more ability to invest in Ireland in the next five years, which boom further dampens the urgency of desires to grossly alter the status quo regardless of whether they are tinged orange or green.

How does that butterfly away the rising tensions between Ulster and the rest of the country? Even if you avoid WW1 you have that to deal with.

 

[Cook]

Short answer, no WW1...

Ulster was on the brink of exploding when news that war had been declared on the continent halted everything; remove the assassinations in Sarajevo without any other changes and mutiny in the army and rebellion in Ulster become not only unavoidable, but immediate.

 

[sparky42]

Ulster was on the brink of exploding when news that war had been declared on the continent halted everything; remove the assassinations in Sarajevo without any other changes and mutiny in the army and rebellion in Ulster become not only unavoidable, but immediate.

Exactly, one thought that I had a while back for another thread was what if they didn't allow the Lords to delay the Act for two years, could the Government have made the case that it would bring instability by delaying for 2 years? If they could short circuit the build up of the UVF in Ulster that might have created breathing space for Ireland.

 

[theirishdreamer]

hmmm

Exactly, one thought that I had a while back for another thread was what if they didn't allow the Lords to delay the Act for two years, could the Government have made the case that it would bring instability by delaying for 2 years? If they could short circuit the build up of the UVF in Ulster that might have created breathing space for Ireland.

The interesting thing is that the whole series of problems were a slow build all in all from the start of the 1880's, where theres a large number of smaller actions and opinions taking place alongside each the Home Rule bills and various nationalist attempts at such. Its very hard to point to any one event or period and say "yes if X happened instead of Y then it would have been peaceful" rather OTL was a case of cumulative bad decsions by the British, Nationalist and Ulster Unionist leadership in regards holding Ireland within the Union - it was very much an attitude and political viewpoint issue effecting these decisions and by the time this attidtude changed the Nationalist demands had radicalised. To really get a proper peaceful move to Home Rule you have to get the Unionists to at least tolerate Home Rule in Ireland and thats something the IPP did try and do OTL but largely failed at doing - as sparky says once the UVF is formed then a Nationalist force and a violent confrontation was likely inevitable.

As to WW1 - Britain was effectively on the verge of civil war in Ireland without WW1 and looking at government attempting implement Home Rule and an Army willing to Mutiny to support the Unionists. Of all the nations WW1 probably helped Britain relatively as without your looking at a full blown constituintional crisis and an Ireland than makes OTL look like sunshine and rainbows by comparison.

 

[Viscount Stanthorpe]

If I remember correctly, Joe Chamberlain resigned in 1886 on the issue of Home Rule for Ireland, on the grounds that it was unfair for one part of the country to have more representation than the rest. Hmm, that sounds eerily familiar. Anyway, his solution (in principle) was to create a federal United Kingdom, with home rule for each constituent nation within the Union.

If this is done then a lot of the heat is taken out of the Irish question, which reduces some of the tension; moreover, as it is resolved a generation ahead of OTL, the situation is less explosive generally.

Longer-term, it is impossible to tell what happens as the butterflies are numerous: the Gladstone government doesn't fall, Ireland gets a much more settled political structure, the UK keeps its act together at a crucial point, so isn't discounted by the German General Staff... who knows where we end up?

 

[GarethC]

How does that butterfly away the rising tensions between Ulster and the rest of the country? Even if you avoid WW1 you have that to deal with.

Well, there's going to be some unrest, and quite a few folks are probably going to be shot or hanged. The problem OTL was that there wasn't a great deal of support for doing the shooting or hanging by the police and army, as the sort of sentiments that led to the unrest were fairly prevalent within the rank-and-file of both institutions.

Was there ever a discussion of bringing colonial troops in to the North? Gurkhas, or a few Indian divisions or the King's African Rifles - which have just been disbanded, but reforming them means that Lettow-Vorbeck won't be able to hire them either - maybe? How hard can it be? /TopGear

Let's be realistic here - if it was easy to keep Ireland together, Asquith and Lloyd George would have done it. That's really pretty amazingly high on the list of priorities for the British Government, apart from getting a generation to learn about artillery up close and personal in Belgium. So pretty much anything we put together for the OP is going to be based on clutching at straws with a few lucky breaks that keep the pot from boiling over at key moments until suddenly it looks like Ireland has had a decade of Home Rule without any bits of scaremongering jingoism actually coming to pass. And then the whole place will get caught up in women's suffrage and be distracted from the pressing business of Murphy's vs Guinness until -bam- it's largely something that gets trotted out as a sportscaster's cliché on Five (or Six, or Seven, or whatever) Nations rugby matches.