My Thoughts on Irish Alternative History in the Modern Era - Part 2

Guest post by Mark Lynch.

I recently submitted a guest blog relating to possible Irish alternative history scenarios during the latter part of the 20th century. In the first part of the article I mainly focused on hypothetical PODs during World War Two and particularly during the Northern Irish Troubles. I explored these specific time periods because they are my main areas of interest and knowledge, however, it was pointed out by some readers that there are many other potential PODs from the revolutionary period (1912-23), some of which could have resulted in far reaching consequences for both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This is perfectly true and therefore I have developed a number of scenarios from this period and have examined the potential consequences of such divergences. Enjoy...

1912-14: The Home Rule Crisis and the prospect of an Ulster Protestant uprising 

At a cursory glance, the pre-WW1 Home Rule Crisis appears to be one of the most bizarre occurrences in modern history. This was a confrontation in which a militant Ulster Unionist movement threatened to fight against an elected UK government, and the stated aim of the Unionists was to maintain the link with London and to remain under the control of the same government they were threatening to rise up against! This paradox can be partly explained by several factors. During the early 20th century, North East Ulster and the city of Belfast in particular was an industrial hub for ship-building and linen production, amongst other industries. Belfast had greatly benefited from the Union and from its place within the Empire. Unionist industrialists feared that a Dublin government would favour the agricultural sector over industry, as the Southern economy was still predominantly agrarian. Religion was also a factor as, by the late 19th century, the political affiliations within Irish society were largely determined by the sectarian division. The Unionists argued that Home Rule would mean ‘Rome Rule’, i.e. a nation and government controlled by the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the Ulster Unionists (UUC) weren't alone in their campaign as they enjoyed considerable support from the British Conservative Party.

Home Rule itself was not full independence, but rather self-government within the Union. Devolution had been the long-term political objective of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), and was supported by the British Liberal Party. Previous Home Rule Bills had been defeated in 1886 & 1893, but constitutional changes meant that the 1912 Bill would become law after a delay of 2 years. With their parliamentary safeguard removed, the UUC leadership elected to take more militant action to oppose Home Rule; with the mass signing of the Ulster Solemn League & Covenant, the formation of the 100,000 strong Ulster Volunteer Force, and the purchase and importation of 25,000 rifles from Britain’s continental enemy, Imperial Germany. With the Act due to pass into law in August 1914 and with no satisfactory compromise reached, the grim prospect of civil war appeared on the horizon. So what happened to avert this potential disaster? Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo and the whole of Europe went to war. Both the IPP and UUC backed Britain’s war effort, and the implementation of Home Rule was suspended until the end of the European conflict.

The intriguing POD here is; what if world war had not broken out in August of 1914? Would there have been a civil war in Ireland? The general consensus is probably not. Lloyd George’s Liberal government were in an unenviable position due to the political pressure from Bonar Law’s Tories. What’s more, on paper at least, the UVF significantly outnumbered the Crown forces in Ireland, and the loyalty of the Army Officer Corps was already in question due to the Curragh ‘Mutiny’ of March 1914. The IPP had established their own Volunteer force in support of Home Rule, with a total strength of 180,000. However, this force was poorly armed with only 1,500 antiquated rifles. Under these circumstances it is likely that the Liberals & Nationalists would have agreed to a political compromise rather than risk an unwanted war. Also, it is questionable whether the UVF could or would have gone to war if their bluff was called. An uprising against even a section of the British government/security forces would surely have been treated as an act of treason, and an armed campaign would surely have exposed the stark contradictions inherent in their campaign. From a military standpoint the UVF had only one rifle for every four men. Such a relative shortage of weaponry would likely have reduced the UVF to fighting a guerrilla style war, and such tactics would not have been favourably looked upon by the Unionists’ Tory allies. Bearing all this in mind, one can imagine a Protestant Uprising degenerating into a dirty, bloody insurgency which would surely have damaged the Unionists’ political credibility.

Easter 1916 – A nation-wide rising, or no rising at all

The 1916 Dublin Uprising is considered a great watershed moment in modern Irish history. The violent rebellion launched by a coalition of radical fringe groups kick-started the Irish revolution and would ultimately lead to independence, although few commentators of the time would have predicted this outcome. The rising itself was a military fiasco, and was only marginally more successful than the abortive Irish rebellions of the 19th century. Although a military failure, the rising turned into a major propaganda victory for the republican participants, not least due to the British military executions of the rebel leaders (which provoked widespread sympathy and outrage amongst the Irish people).

There are several possible PODs emerging from the Easter Week of 1916. The Dublin Rising itself almost didn't occur. A shipment of arms was due to be landed in Tralee Bay by the German trawler Aud, but the ship was intercepted by the Royal Navy and scuttled by its Captain. Roger Casement, the rebel’s liaison with the Germans, was captured around the same time.  Furthermore, Eoin MacNeill (commander of the Irish Volunteers) opposed the uprising and countermanded the orders for planned manoeuvres on Easter Sunday. Patrick Pearce, James Connolly, and the other leaders vowed to go ahead with their plan on the next day, but the setbacks meant that only around 1,200 rebels could be mobilised, and the uprising itself was almost completely confined to Dublin city centre.

It is nearly impossible to imagine any scenario where the rising could have been successful. If MacNeill and the full strength of the Volunteers had backed the rebellion, and if the Aud’s rifles had been landed and distributed, then the rebellion would have been more widespread across Ireland and likely would taken more British time, men and resources to suppress. Nevertheless, the final outcome would surely have been the same.

But could the British authorities have stopped the rising from occurring? The short answer is yes, although (surprisingly) such a preventative action may not have made much of a difference to the overall political situation. British Naval Intelligence knew about the Aud and so was able to intercept the arms shipment, however, the authorities in Dublin Castle assumed the threat had been averted and so were taken by surprise on Easter Monday. If British Intelligence was better informed they may have been able to prevent the uprising by arresting the leadership. However, the arrests, trials and likely executions (remembering that Roger Casement was hung even though he never fired a shot in anger) would surely have resulted in the same anti-British backlash from the Irish people. In any event, anti-British feeling reached fever pitch with the passing of the 1918 Irish Conscription Act (a piece of legislation which would have passed even without the rising).

It is true that the rebellion was not initially well received by the Irish public and famously the captured rebels were jeered and pelted by local Dubliners. This poses yet another interesting question i.e. could the British have recovered from the aftermath of the rising and retained political support in Ireland? This is perhaps a trickier question to answer. Two major factors impacted on the British position in the immediate post-rising period; their punishment of the captured rebels, and their efforts to boost the moderate IPP. Although much is made of the executions of the 15 rebel leaders (and later of Roger Casement), the British reaction was hardly extreme given the context of the time. If any other European power had suffered a rebellion at a time of war (not to mention a rising backed by their enemy), they surely would have responded as harshly as the British did, if not more harshly. Lloyd George did initiate fresh negotiations aimed at implementing Home Rule in 1916, but again these talks broke down due to Unionist intransigence and the now likely prospect of partition (which politically, John Redmond’s IPP couldn’t accept). As it turned out, the IPP was irreparably damaged by the rise of anti-British feeling during the 1916-18 period, by their own failure to deliver Home Rule, and by the huge number of Irish casualties suffered during the Great War (which Redmond had supported). Sinn Fein were in the best position to benefit from the growing disillusionment of the Irish nationalist population, and this Party won a huge victory in the 1918 general election; an election which provided Sinn Fein with a popular mandate for full Irish independence.

And so, maybe the Easter Rising was not as decisive as many assume. But interestingly enough, perhaps the most intriguing ‘what if’ from 1916 is this; what if Eamon De Valera had been executed by the British after his capture? If so, Ireland would have lost her most dominant and influential political figure of the 20th century.

[Editor's Note: If you want to see more Easter Rising what ifs, check out Andrew Schneider's take on the rebellion.]

The Civil War, the first Northern Irish Troubles, and the assassination of Michael Collins

It is one of the sad ironies of the revolutionary period that the most brutal and vindictive conflict was not between the British and the Irish, or even between the Protestant and Catholic communities. The Civil War was in fact fought between opposing factions within the Republican movement, the very same movement which had fought a successful guerrilla war against the British state and had forced a truce by July 1921. The split resulted from the negotiated Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, which basically led to the formation of a 26 county Irish Free State and a self-governing 6 county Northern Ireland. The Pro-Treaty faction, led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, supported the Treaty as a stepping stone towards an Irish Republic. In contrast, the Anti-Treaty side opposed the agreement as they resented the terms which would recognise partition and keep the Free State under the Crown and within the Commonwealth. The Civil War was short but bloody. The Pro-Treaty side emerged victorious but the wartime divide would continue to poison Irish politics for decades to come.

Several PODs were possible during this period. The most obvious scenario is that of an Anti-Treaty victory. The reality is that the A-T IRA waited too long before commencing hostilities and, by the time the shooting started in late June 1922, the initiative had been lost. The Anti-Treaty side had lost the votes in the Cabinet, the Dail and, most importantly, they were decisively defeated in the first Free State election. Despite this, the majority of the ‘old’ IRA was against the Treaty and so their best opportunity for victory would have been to launch a coup d’état in early 1922, before Collins was able to build up the 50,000 strong National Army. If the IRA had succeeded in taking control in 1922, this poses some more interesting ‘what ifs’? If the IRA did take power they would not have enjoyed a democratic mandate to rule the country and, even before the war, the IRA Command had spoken of establishing a military dictatorship. The collapse of the fledgling Irish democracy makes for a sobering prospect, especially as the British government were unlikely to have accepted such an outcome and could well have intervened militarily.

A secondary outcome of the Southern Civil War was an end to the serious sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, which had been ongoing since the summer of 1920. There was fresh violence during the spring of 1922 as the IRA launched a campaign along the newly established border. In fact, the Pro and Anti-Treaty factions co-operated against the North and Collins covertly supplied arms to Northern IRA units. After June 1922 much of the pressure was taken off the Northern Unionist government, as the IRA units withdrew to fight for both sides in the South. There were other factors involved in the decline of violence in the North (such as the imposition of internment, etc.). Nevertheless, if the Civil War hadn't broken out in June, the Unionist government would have remained under extreme pressure and would have found it difficult to survive, although it’s tough to imagine a scenario where partition could have ended in 1922 (as even De Valera admitted it would not be possible to absorb 1 million hostile Protestants against their will).

There are moments in history where a single bullet or bomb can dramatically change the course of events. One such instance took place during the Irish Civil War, on the 22nd August 1922, when Michael Collins was shot and killed during an ambush in his native County Cork. At the time of his death, Collins was a young, dynamic and resourceful leader who had already demonstrated his military skills during the War of Independence, and his political finesse during his spell as Finance Minister and through his role as chief negotiator with the British government. Collins’ assassination was closely followed by the death of Arthur Griffiths, leaving the uninspiring W.T. Cosgrave to lead the ruthless suppression of the A-T IRA and to guide the Free State through the austere and intellectually barren 1920s. So, what if Collins had survived? It is likely that he would have remained a leading figure in Irish politics for many years, if not decades, to come. It is known that Collins wanted to make peace with the Anti-Treaty side at the time of his death. If a truce had been possible in 1922 then perhaps the decades long, poisonous divide in Southern Irish politics could have been avoided. At the very least Collins could have offered an alternative leadership to the dominance of Eamon De Valera during the 1930s and 40s. As with JFK, the premature death of Michael Collins robbed a nation of so many possibilities...

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Mark Lynch, who has lived in Northern Ireland all his life, studied History & Politics at Queen's University Belfast and maintains a keen interest in both of these subjects. He currently works as an office administrator in Belfast city centre and writes fiction in his spare time. His first two novels, Veritas Dawn and The War of Zero-Sum are available through Amazon. His third novel, entitled American Nemesis, is due for release shortly...

A Nation Once Again: An Alternate History of the Easter Rising

Guest post by Andrew Schneider.

The next-to-last Irish rebellion against British rule began on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, when the Irish Republican Brotherhood seized control of the General Post Office and proclaimed the birth of the Irish Republic. Within days, Crown forces had cut off the city from the outside world and were starving it into submission. Land and sea based artillery pounded much of the city center to rubble. The end came on Saturday, April 29, when Padraig Pearse, commander of the Irish Volunteers, surrendered unconditionally.

The forces of the Irish Republican Brotherhood were hampered throughout by a divided command structure, poor communications, a lack of clear strategic objectives, and little support from the surrounding population. It’s often been argued that these factors doomed the Easter Rising from the start.  Pearse’s own writings suggest he went into the rising knowing it would fail. His hope, the argument goes, was that leaders of the Rising would become martyrs. Their blood sacrifice would set the stage for the final overthrow of British rule in Ireland.

The bulk of the Irish people either opposed the Rising or remained neutral. But the trial of the rebel leaders by secret courts-martial and their swift executions led to a massive upsurge in Irish nationalism. Britain threw together thousands of other participants in the Rising together in prison, where they were able to review and learn from their mistakes.  It released all of these prisoners by summer of 1917. The Lloyd George Government hoped this would reconcile the Irish populace enough to allow the introduction of conscription -- the Great War was entering its fourth year with no end in sight.

In the end, the combination of heavy-handedness and clemency backfired on the British in the worst way possible. Membership in Sinn Féin took off. [1]  The December 1918 parliamentary elections gave it a 70% majority of the Irish vote, demolishing the traditional nationalist parties. The Sinn Féin members refused to take their seats in Westminster, instead convening their own Irish Parliament, the Dáil Éireann, and declaring independence.  There followed a war lasting nearly three years, ending in the Anglo-Irish Treaty and independence for all but the six counties of Northern Ireland. The division triggered a civil war between pro- and anti-Treaty forces in the new Irish Free State , which lasted another year and defined the political landscape in Ireland (South and North) down to the present day.

Given the ultimate outcome was Irish independence, the Easter Rising would not appear to provide much interest as a historical point of divergence. Writers and readers of alternate history tend to be more interested in scenarios where the loser in a particular contest wins, rather than one in which the winner achieves victory sooner. But the Rising took place during and immediately prior to some of the most significant fighting of the First World War. For that reason alone, it merits greater attention.

In late April 1916, Britain was transporting gargantuan numbers of men and materiel to the Western Front in preparation for the Battle of the Somme, which would begin July 1. General Sir Douglas Haig (commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force) and General Joseph Joffre (commander-in-chief of the French Army) had agreed in December 1915 to make an attack on German positions along the Somme River the focus of the 1916 campaign. The Battle of the Somme ultimately cost over 400,000 British killed and wounded and barely moved the Western Front at all.

What’s rarely appreciated is that German casualties were even steeper than those of the British. The Germans lost half a million men fighting a defensive battle on the Somme at the same time they were waging a ferocious battle of attrition against the French at Verdun. Had the Germans been able to concentrate more of their forces at Verdun, they might eventually have broken the French Army.  A serious threat to the British home front that weakened or postponed the BEF’s attack on the Somme could thus have changed the outcome of the war.

So how could the Easter Rising have achieved all this? There were several lost opportunities before and during the Rising that, while they may not have led to a rebel victory, could have prolonged the fighting by weeks or even months. What would have made the greatest difference was better organization on the part of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The IRB’s Military Council, which planned the Rising, included romantics like Padraig Pearse. But it also included experienced, hardened fighters such as Thomas James Clarke. These were men who knew what had been tried in previous attempts to throw off British rule and what had failed.

One who was not admitted to the Council until very late in the planning was James Connolly. Connolly was head of the Irish Socialists, a prominent trade union leader, and commander of the Irish Citizen Army, a force of about 250 men organized to help protect workers from police brutality. Connolly long disparaged the IRB leadership as all talk and at one point threatened the IRB he would act on his own. Not only would an uprising by the Irish Citizen Army on its own have failed, but also it would have given the British a perfect excuse to crack down on the IRB and disarm the Irish Volunteers. To avert this, Clarke and Pearse met with Connolly on January 19, 1916 and only at this stage brought him on board.

Clarke first proposed an Easter 1916 date for the uprising to some of his senior IRB colleagues in mid-December 1915. Critically, he excluded from these discussions the Irish Volunteers’ chief of staff, Eóin MacNeill. MacNeill opposed the idea of an armed uprising unless the British attempted to suppress the Volunteers. MacNeill was informed just days before the Rising was to begin. He was convinced to go along partly by means of a forged letter that indicated the British were about to arrest him, partly by the news that a German shipment of arms was due to be landed on Ireland’s southwest coast. When the Royal Navy intercepted the arms shipment, MacNeill sent out orders to the Volunteers calling off the Rising. Pearse subsequently sent out orders countermanding MacNeill’s. In the resulting confusion, far fewer Irish Volunteers mobilized for the Rising than had been envisioned.

Walk this back to mid-December 1915, and let’s take as our starting point two decisions by Clarke and his closest compatriots.  One would be to approach Connolly immediately and take full advantage of his organizational skills. A second would be either to completely isolate MacNeill or remove him from his posts as head of the Volunteers and as a member of the IRB Military Council.  Connolly, one of the first true theorists of urban warfare, wound up in our timeline as deputy commander of the Rising. [2] In this timeline, he would be the natural choice to lead the Volunteers in MacNeill’s place.

I envision several developments following from this.  The first, and most important, would be far greater operational security. With MacNeill unable to block the Rising, even if he became aware of it in advance, the orders to rise would have gone out with a minimum of confusion. The result is that far more Volunteers would have taken up arms than actually did. [3] Instead of taking place almost entirely in Dublin, the Rising would have taken place in cities and towns all over Ireland, as originally intended.

Second, it’s far less likely that the Volunteers would have committed some of the amateurish blunders that made it easy for the Crown forces to recapture the city.  These included the failure to seize Trinity College Dublin, or even make a serious attempt to do so.  Trinity housed a large armory that would have more than made up for the loss of the German arms shipment. It also commanded the approaches to the center of the city. The college’s Officer Training Corps held out against the rebels until units of the British Army arrived to launch a counterattack. There were also no efforts to destroy or secure the telegraph lines connecting Dublin to the outside world, which could have hampered the British ability to learn of the Rising and then deploy forces to respond.

All of this is asking a lot of the rebel forces, but one must consider what many of the same men and women achieved between 1918 and 1921 with better organization and better leadership.

If the Rising were prolonged by more than a few weeks, there would have been serious ramifications for the British war effort.  For a start, one has to look at the forces the British deployed to put down the Rising as it occurred. Apart from the naval units that bombarded Dublin from the sea, these included the 7th Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment) and the South Staffordshire Territorial Regiment, both units that saw action on the Somme. A more widespread Rising would have meant more units due for transfer to the Western Front being held back in the home islands to fight the rebels, or even some units being shipped back to Ireland from Europe for this purpose.

This would almost certainly have included part of the 36th (Ulster) Division, also known as the Ulster Volunteer Force.  The Ulster Volunteer Force was created as a Protestant Unionist militia, shortly after Parliament passed a bill that would have granted Ireland home rule within the British Empire. The UVF’s sole purpose was to resist the imposition of Home Rule by force. It had considerable support in this in the British Army, so much so that there was a very real danger of civil war breaking out in Ireland in 1914. [4] The only thing that prevented this was Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. At this point, the UVF volunteered en masse and was given official status. [5] By 1916, the Ulstermen were battle hardened and would have had tremendous motivation to crush the rebellion. In our timeline, the UVF saw some of the worst fighting on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. Taking these soldiers out of the line would have wrecked the timetable for the campaign -- massively increasing British casualties if the battle were launched on schedule, massively increasing French casualties at Verdun if it were not.

Prolonging the Rising until at least the end of May would also have had consequences for the war at sea. This was when the German High Seas Fleet attempted to trap and destroy enough of the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet to cripple the latter’s blockade of Germany. The resulting Battle of Jutland was the biggest naval clash the world had ever seen, dominated by long-range artillery duels between battleships. It ended in a draw, and the High Seas Fleet remained confined to port until it mutinied at the end of the war.

The German government had attempted unsuccessfully to supply the IRB with weapons before the uprising. By all accounts, the Germans had little faith the rising would succeed. But they recognized that a friendly Ireland would offer them naval facilities that would have made it impossible for Britain to maintain its blockade. [6] The longer the Rising lasted, the more tempting it would have been for Germany to intervene. It would have been a simple enough matter, while the Royal Navy was distracted in the North Sea, to send one or two U-boats to Ireland with additional arms for the rebels.

Finally, at this stage, Britain’s great hope for defeating Germany depended on convincing the United States to side with the Allies. America was still neutral in 1916. President Woodrow Wilson would go on to win reelection that year campaigning on the slogan, “He kept us out of war.” The U.S. finally did enter the war in April 1917, after the British intercepted the Zimmerman Telegram and handed a copy to the Americans. The telegram from Germany’s foreign secretary to its ambassador in Mexico City proposed a German-Mexican alliance against the U.S., with the aim of restoring to Mexico much of the American Southwest.

The Irish, then and now, constitute one of the largest ethnic blocs in the American population. By 1916, they were a major force in American politics. Most wanted no part of a war for Britain’s sake. The longer the Rising lasted, the more it would have inflamed Irish-American opposition to Britain. If, in the end, it still failed, the British suppression of Ireland that followed would certainly have been harsher than what followed the Rising in our timeline. That too would have stiffened Irish-American opposition. In this atmosphere, even the Zimmerman Telegram might not have been enough to tip the U.S. to Britain’s side. The contents of the telegram were outrageous, but they were also fantastic, and it would have been easy enough to dismiss the telegram as a British forgery. If Irish-American opposition kept the U.S. out of World War I, a German victory would have been all but certain.

How long the Rising would have lasted in these circumstances is anyone’s guess.  It may have evolved into a guerrilla campaign very like what took place during the Anglo-Irish War, or it could have collapsed in a matter of weeks.  If it had brought about a German victory, though, it very likely would have led to Ireland’s gaining independence as a German client state. The naval facilities such an Ireland could give Germany would eliminate the threat of a Royal Navy blockade permanently. This Ireland would likely include the six counties that now make up Northern Ireland, something the Ulster Protestants would bitterly oppose.  It’s easy to imagine Britain channeling clandestine support to Ulster militants, much as Nazi Germany aided the Sudeten Germans up to 1938. Ireland, rather than Eastern Europe, could ultimately have provided the spark that ignited a Second World War.

Endnotes

[1]: Sinn Féin was a pacifist organization prior to April 1916. British newspapers mistakenly blamed it for the Rising, in which it played no role. It was only after the 1917 amnesty, when Éamon de Valera took control of the group, that Sinn Féin embraced militant republicanism.

[2]: For an example of Connolly’s thinking, see his article, “On Street Fighting,” Workers Republic, July 24, 1915, reprinted in The Guerilla Reader: A Historical Anthology, ed. by Walter Laqueur (New York: New American Library, 1977), 169-71, and in The Art of War in World History, ed. by Gérard Chaliand (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 911-13.

[3]: Most sources estimate less than 2,000 fighters mobilized on Easter Monday 1916.  The total strength of the Irish Volunteers is unknown. Sources place it anywhere from 14,000 to well over 100,000. See William H. Kautt, The Anglo-Irish War, 1916-1921: A People’s War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 56.

[4]: The classic treatment of this is George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914 (New York: Putnam, 1980).

[5]: The Irish nationalists, largely Catholic, formed their own militia in response to the creation of the Ulster Volunteer Force, which they called the National Volunteers. Like the UVF, most of the National Volunteers sought to enlist at the start of WWI, in large part because they believed a show of loyalty in Britain’s time of need would be their best guarantee to gain the promise of Home Rule after the war. Unlike the UVF, these volunteers were split up rather than being allowed to form their own official unit within the British Army. About 14,000 of the National Volunteers refused to enlist. This group became the Irish Volunteers and was soon dominated by the IRB.

[6]: Peter De Rosa, Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916 (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1990), 227.

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Andrew Schneider is the business news reporter for KUHF Houston Public Radio.