Brighton Bombing succeeds

[The Lone Centurion]

WI the 1984 IRA bombing succeeded?

I think if say 150 or 200 senior Tories and their wives/husbands had perished including people like Thatcher, Tebbit, Lawson etc the political and public response would have been massive.

Whoever emerged as PM would have had to deal with the tidal wave of anger that would have been directed at the IRA and at groups like NORAID. Short-term, we'd have seen the reintroduction of internment without trial and possibly some attacks against Irish prople in London.

Longer-term, it probably forces the British and Irish Governments to seek (and impose) a settlement on Ulster. We get a form of Good Friday agreement several years earlier than in OTL but with a deal of residual bitterness.

It would be the British equivalent of September 11th in many respects.

 

[moth]

I think if say 150 or 200 senior Tories and their wives/husbands had perished including people like Thatcher, Tebbit, Lawson etc the political and public response would have been massive.

That's an intense understatement.

If the 'small' bomb kills that many people, it'll have effectively gutted the Government and thrown the country into a national crisis that has no precedent; once the dust settles, the question is "who wasn't in the Hotel and survived?", and the outcome is unlikely to be an earlier Good Friday Agreement, but rather a lot of dead IRA men and Shinners like Adams and McGuinness with the Government digging heels deeper in for the Unionists.

 

[Dom]

@Lord Roem started writing on a more successful Brighton bombing ages ago IIRC

 

[d32123]

This would probably be the end of the IRA as we know it. With international and domestic support largely disappearing, the British government will track down and capture as many leaders as they can. I don't think this would actually increase support for Unionism, most Brits didn't and still don't give a rats ass about Northern Ireland either way. But you would see a concerted effort by the British government to at least maintain the appearance of bringing the IRA "to justice" or whatever. You'd also see a break within the Irish liberation movement as many nationalists try distancing themselves from the IRA and terrorism more broadly. Whoever is leading the movement today will probably be whoever most skillfully makes that transition. Some sort of Good Friday Agreement is probably still inevitable as the Catholics aren't just going to quietly go back under the heel and the Brits will want the issue settled.

 

[Callan]

There is zero precedent in the Western world for a terrorist group actively successfully murdering a sitting leader. It would cause a national crisis, an escalation of violence, and scupper the fledgling political efforts to broker a peace deal. Peace is probably inevitable but I think it is possible that there still isn't anything close to a meaningful Good Friday-level settlement even today.

A smaller butterfly is that you'd probably see a formalisation of the rules of succession for the office of Prime Minister, there being no modern precedent for the death of a sitting PM.

 

[The Lone Centurion]

My view is that any kind of mass Cabinet assassination would probably lead to a declaration of national emergency.

In the short term, a national coalition Government containing elements of all major political parties (akin to the WW2 Coalition) would run the country until the emergency had passed.

Once that had happened, there would need to be a restoration of the political process. One argument after the Brighton bomb killed the Tory MP for Enfield Southgate (this is how Portillo first got into Parliament so an interesting WI there) was that Opposition parties shouldn't contest seats where the incumbent had been killed by terrorism. It didn't apply then, nor did it after Ian Gow's murder in 1990.

A mass murder is another matter, however. Given the tendency of Governments to become more popular during times of crisis, it's probable the Tories would hold all the seats in by-elections but not necessarily.

If a party leader is killed, then a new leader has to be chosen. Had Thatcher perished in 1984, or Major in 1991, this would have happened. In the short term, Geoffrey Howe would have taken over in 1984 as the Deputy PM - in 1991 I'm less certain as I don't think there was a Deputy PM at that time. If all the Cabinet is dead, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee would probably take over as caretaker leader of the shocked backbenchers until a proper election can be held.

This is all speculation and I doubt there is much actual documentation for such a contingency though something must exist somewhere.

It's a good WI - what if Portillo doesn't get into Parliament in 1984 or what if Hague doesn't win the Richmond by-election in 1989 ?

 

[moth]

In the short term, Geoffrey Howe would have taken over in 1984 as the Deputy PM

This isn't quite how it works. Howe was the Deputy PM, yes, and Foreign Secretary, but all this meant was that he covered for Thatcher when she was out of town at the Dispatch box. He does not become PM by virtue of being Deputy. Assuming he too was not killed in the blast, then the Premiership will likely fall onto the Viscount Whitelaw, who was Thatcher's defacto successor until his stroke, as an emergency Leader. And, well, given Whitelaw's reputation, d32123 is quite correct in their assessment.

 

[Charles EP M.]

If it killed that many people, yeah, it's emergency government, fury on the streets, and very bad times for Northern Ireland. Not just from the inevitable harsh crackdown but also from angry soldiers taking their anger out on random people*; and nobody's going to be able to flag up any abuses because nobody's going to care after that sort of attack. The Republic of Ireland isn't going to be having much joy either, with the stronger armed neighbour looking for vengeance while the Irish people demand to know what the Dail's going to do about abuses and America backing Britain in most things.

* This likely means some unfortunate protestants are going to get battered as well, and certain emergency measures will hit them as well. What does that do for unionism?

 

[George Kearton]

All fascinating stuff: as someone at that Brighton conference I recognize a lot from the above as being topics of conversation at the time....

 

[neonduke]

I'd find it grimly amusing if Paisley and Robinson got swept up in the crackdown because of Third Force.

 

[AgentRudda]

The effect it'd have on Irish Catholic communities in Great Britain would be interesting. Many communities, such as in Glasgow, Liverpool, and London, would likely be targeted by the far-right. You could see reprisal terrorist attacks from the Unionist supporters in Great Britain, and the response of the Government would be pretty important in deciding whether this also escalates into sectarian violence.

 

[Callan]

The effect it'd have on Irish Catholic communities in Great Britain would be interesting. Many communities, such as in Glasgow, Liverpool, and London, would likely be targeted by the far-right. You could see reprisal terrorist attacks from the Unionist supporters in Great Britain, and the response of the Government would be pretty important in deciding whether this also escalates into sectarian violence.

I suspect it would be a lot like the aftermath of the Birmingham Pub Bombings; a short burst of violence and reprisals, followed by months of general nastiness towards Irish communities. The tensions would linger for quite some time; in Birmingham, the St. Patrick's Day parade was indefinitely cancelled until 1983 OTL. Considering how the mainstream nature of anti-Irish bigotry had kind of started to dissipate by the mid-90s, it probably lingers in some forms for a bit longer.

 

[Cook]

we'd have seen the reintroduction of internment without trial

No, for two reasons. The first being that Britain in 1984 was a member of the European Economic Community and a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, and the European Court of Human Rights, all of which prohibit detention without trial. And the second reason was that by 1984 it was fully acknowledged amongst British law enforcement and defence circles that detention without trial is not just bad strategy in counterinsurgency, it is downright counterproductive and advantageous to the insurgents.

Longer-term, it probably forces the British and Irish Governments to seek (and impose) a settlement on Ulster. We get a form of Good Friday agreement several years earlier than in OTL but with a deal of residual bitterness.

That, I would say, would have been extremely unlikely. Such a terrorist action would have acted to strengthen the support for Unionists and marked anyone who voiced any interest in negotiations of any sort as a supporter of terrorists or a Quisling.