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Ryan's Graphics Thread

SteveBP said:
Tell us more about the Republicans
Click to expand...

Yippee ki-yay

Random idea was Scottish home rule was set up some time during the Interwar period along the lines of the Free State. This remains the state of affairs through the present day. The election system is AV in county constituencies and STV in burgh constituencies.

Unionist Party - still the natural party of government in Scotland. Dodged a bullet when they lost the 2003 election to a Labour/Keep Left coalition just before a recession hit. Under their new leader they have promised 'Things will get better' but could not even manage a majority with their allies the National Liberals. In Westminster both parties take the Conservative whip.

Independent Labour Party - emerging as the dominant strand of Labour in Scotland following the acrimonious splits of the 1930s, the ILP have formed the Opposition in the Scottish Parliament for most of the last five decades aside from a few brief periods of government. Most recently they have served in coalition with Keep Left, a broad socialist party formed in protest at attempts to 'modernise' the ILP under former leader Dickson Mabon - widely thought to be at the behest of the UK Labour Party. In Westminster they have taken the Labour whip, but increasing differences between the ILP and the broader UK Labour movement have caused a rift, especially when the ILP tried to extract concessions from the Westminster Labour government in exchange for support. Keep Left wound up before the 2008 elections, supposedly because there mission in holding the ILP to account was completed, but really because party finances had dwindled. The ILP hoped to gain the votes of Keep Left, but instead most of these went to...

The Republican Party - with the Scottish Party and the National Party both folding back into the Unionist and Liberal parties, respectively, following establishment of the Free State, the remnant of John McLean's Scottish Workers' Republican Party took up the cause of a uniquely Scottish left party arguing for independence. They do not contest Westminster elections.

The Communist Party of Great Britain was forced to adopt a leader from the Scottish Parliament when they lost their last Westminster seat in 2000. There is a growing strand arguing to split off from the remnant of the CPGB in the UK and argue for independence. Especially with their most dedicated voters no mostly retirees. Many would have thought the BUF dead after the 1930s, but with Oswald Mosley setting the party on a 'Fascist, but British' path he eventually won representation to Parliament in a by-election during the unhappy winter of 1947. After his death the party went through years of turmoil before a new Leader emerged, one to take them into the 21st century. They have no representation in Westminster.

Highland Land League and Co-operative Party both emerged again as separate organisations following the Labour splits of the 1930s. The Protestant League evolved from the municipal Protestant parties in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the 1930s.
 
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Since there's been some speculation this week as to a brewing disagreement in the SNP as to whether an independent Scotland should aspire to be Norway or New Zealand, here's one where Scotland was peacefully separated from England (following similar actions from Ireland) in 1905. Elections are by party-list in seats corresponding to Scottish local government areas or groups of the same, seats are allocated amongst these districts based on a points system of population and area.

The election saw Prime Minister Alexander and the Liberal Party returned to government in Coalition with the Progressive Party and the Moderate Party; though once again the Labour Party under Alistair Darling had the most seats they were unable to form a government.

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Background colour on the map represents the party that topped the polls in that district. Now I have to work out what would be the equivalent in Scotland of Māori seats.
 
Of course, there are too few Māori in Scotland, but where there was some sort of attempt at federalisation of the Empire/Commonwealth during the Interwar period we might have ended up with something a bit Mosleyite

The Scottish Parliament General Election 2002​

Prime Minister Helen Liddell of the Labour Party would govern a second term in Scotland, supported by the remnant of The Democrats and its splinter Dennis Canavan's Radical Party (Canavan's former vehicle, the Socialist Labour Party was one of the four parties that had formed the original Democratic Alliance in 1991, along with the Green Party, the Social Credit League, and Fine Gael) and with confidence and supply from the neoliberal Progressive Alliance. Although the alliance of former Liberals and Unionists that had formed the National Party since the 1930s was dealt its worst result in decades it was still the largest opposition party in Parliament. Other non-government parties were Renew Britain!, the Taxpayer's Unity Voice, and the Green Party of Scotland (the latter having split off from The Democrats over the issue of GM crops, and managing to gain over twice the number of seats as the Democrats and Radicals combined). TUV Scotland, the Greens, the Progressive Alliance, the Radical Party, and the Democrats all renewed calls for the abolition of the vocational constituencies, intended to be a temporary measure at the time of establishment of the unicameral Scottish Parliament in 1937. The three largest parties were in favour of keeping them.

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In the ten years since the death of Edward Porter Alexander, President of the Confederate States of America from 1875 to 1910, the shaky coalition he had held together for almost three and a half decades had completely splintered. Having taken power when it seemed that the existence of the Confederate States would not survive its second decade as the cacophony of crises, both internal and external, began to pile up. The economic collapse that had led to the (mostly peaceable) departure of Texas from the CSA, combined with what seemed to be imminent invasion by the United States following the Jacksonville Raid by Fire-Eater filibusters had led to the March on Montgomery by Alexander. Dealing with the immediate problems he had the Charleston Mercury shut down and its editor Robert Rhett placed under house arrest, removing the primary mouthpiece of the Fire-Eaters. He then acquiesced to the secession of Texas as the revived Republic of Texas; negotiations to this effect serving the additional purpose of showing to representatives from London, Paris, and Washington, D.C. that there was now in man in charge in Montgomery with whom they could do business.

Alexander's position as President was confirmed by an election in which no other candidate appeared on the ballot, aside from a few favourite sons only appearing in their home state. He managed to secure the support of both the pro- and anti-administration wings of the Democratic Party, as well as the tactic support of Zebulon Baird Vance's Conservative Party out of North Carolina in exchange for a promise of reduced interference in state governments compared with prior administrations. In light of the President's commitments to internal improvements, he also drew the support of those few former Whigs in the CSA found in the Appalachians and in the Transmississippi and already beginning to coalesce into the Liberal Party.

The collapse in the cotton price that saw slavery move from agriculture to industry saw clandestine financial support given from the central government to near bankrupt plantations; the Planter Aid would never become known policy during Alexanders lifetime, but its continuation become a major point of contention in the years following his death. The Great Powers, primarily France, the United Kingdom, and United States but from the 1890s onward also the German Empire that owned much of the mining and industry of the CSA also turned a blind eye to the use of slave labour within those industries.

The system whereby plantation owners were paid by industrial conglomerates like the Confederate Coal, Iron and Railroad Company for the rental of slave labour, while at the same time receiving aid from the central government due to agricultural failings proved untenable. Especially when the boll weevil finally crossed the Sabine River in the twilight of the nineteenth century. 1899 might have been the year at which Alexander fell from power in conflict with the Dixie aristocracy, but by then there was no rival waiting in the wings all having been marginalised or bought off. The big slaveowners also found it impossible to gather allies amongst smaller freeholders and in the West. Any resistance to Alexander's planned compensated gradual manumission was ended before it could even start - though it left long lingering resentment in Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina.

The number of free blacks in the CSA had increased exponentially in the years since its independence thanks to the collapse of the cotton industry. The United States, having manumitted the remaining slaves within their borders over the course of the 1870s and 1880s, refused to countenance any southern blacks migrating across their borders and further refused to accept large numbers of freed slaves in their sponsored Liberia Colonization scheme. A separate Confederate Colonization programme was seen to be too costly an endeavour, but it was also strongly felt they could not remain in the states where they were born. Planned freemen towns in the Mississippi Valley were subject to repeated raids and sackings by the Redshirts, the militant wing of the small People's Party. The state governments of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee soon passed legislation prohibiting the establishment of new Freemen towns within their borders. Settlements were planned further west in the Indian Nations, after agreement was reached between the central government and the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Osage, and Seminole nations. Migration continued long after the Indian Nations were admitted as the tenth state of the Confederacy in 1902. One of the last major acts of the Alexander government was the establishment of ten additional seats in the Confederate House of Representatives, one for the African population of each state, as part of the Tuskegee Compromise to avoid open racial violence - this being seen as bad for foreign investment, remembering the reaction to the detailing of the abuses in the Congo Free State some years earlier. This set up led to a potential electorate of over 550,000 blacks in Georgia electing the same number of representatives as 550 in West Florida.

With the death of Alexander in 1910 power passed from the Executive branch to the Legislative. Alexander's Vice Presidents were a long line of empty butternut uniforms, and the latest of them was not seen as being the man needed to carry the country forward. Over the course of the decade elections grew more competitive, and soon the leader in the House of Representatives of the largest party, John Sharp Williams, was being unironically referred to as the Prime Minister of the Confederate States. Elections were quickly growing more competitive, and by 1920 what was arguably the first properly contested election in the history of the CSA was being held - albeit still under a very limited franchise.

The Democratic Party, the largest party in the CSA since before its independence, saw their vote plummet during this election, winning over 40% of the vote and a majority of seats in the last election they instead gathered only 16% of the vote and a mere 14 seats in the 1920 election, with even William Gibbs McAdoo, the unofficial Prime Minister, losing his Georgia seat.

Their partners in the long Alexander Coalition, the Conservative Party, party of states rights previously only managing to win seats in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, won the largest voteshare and the most seats in the election - 30 seats from 23% of the vote. Albert H. Roberts of Tennessee found himself leading the largest party in the House of Representatives. The Conservatives had long had a pact with the Liberal Party where they would not run against each other where they might split the vote in favour of the Democrats. In 1920 this arrangement was made across every district in the country outside of Sequoyah. Through this arrangement the Liberals won 22% of the vote and returned 28 Representatives under John M. Parker of Louisiana.

Coming third in both the popular vote and the number of seats were the Co-operative Commonwealth Confederation (Farmer-Labour-Socialist), a party far more tightly organised than any of the others led by Thomas E. Watson of Georgia. The final coalescence of the People's Party, the Granger movement, the Ruskin Colonies, and the Confederate Federation of Labour; they won 22% of the vote and 15 seats. Impressive for a party less than a decade old, with one of its major components being a proscribed organisation until just a year before that.

The Demcoratic splinter, the Reform Party, led by James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, won 5 seats on 5% of the total vote. Spread out across four states, they had split from the Democratic Party due to the continued existence of the Negro electorates, taking with them ten representatives including such big figures as Josephus Daniels of North Carolina, and Ellison D. Smith & Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina. Come the election this was whittled down to half, losing seven seats but gaining two, including a victory in Alabama for William Joseph Simmons.

In Sequoyah, the dominant Liberal Party had rebranded itself as the Indian Nations' Congress, under the auspices of Representative Alexander Posey. Concerns at the sovereignty of the six major tribes of Sequoyah, particularly over the booming oil industry, had led to the creation of a party devoted to the interests of that state as a whole. With the slogan "It's Sequoyah's Oil" translated into all the major languages of the state they leapt to victory winning 11 seats on 5% of the national vote. Only a single seat in Sequoyah did not return an INC representative, due tot he presence of an Independent Liberal candidate splitting the vote and throwing it to the CCC candidate.

Minor parties also saw representation for the first time in the shape of the Parti Cadien, a Cajun autonomous party operating in Louisiana led by Edwin S. Broussard, which won 2 seats in part thanks to a three way split in several constituencies between them, the CCC, and the Liberal Party. The Prohibition Party also saw William David Upshaw elected in Georgia, but only taking a marginal vote across the nation; though nominal party leader, Thomas Clarke Rye, managed a decent second in Tennessee.

As expected, the Negro Electorates returned Representatives from the Negro Representation Committee in every state. Led by Timothy Thomas Fortune of West Florida, the party had managed to stymie attempts by the Negro Labour Committee and the abstentionist African Communities League led by the Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey to run candidates. Helped in part by the refusal of the CCC to accept fusion of their party and the NLC in the Negro Electorates.

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Of the 116 seats in the House of Representatives the Conservative and Liberal parties between them had won 58 seats, falling just one short of a majority. Between the planned reforms agreeable to both parties and the states rights credentials of the Conservatives the INC would readily support their government. There were other factors at work however, the Senate, still appointed by the state governments, had a majority of Democratic Senators. Four states also had Democratic governments in their state legislatures; with many more having Democratic governments. Many in the Liberal Party were already beginning to regret not pushing for further reforms in their Pact with the Conservatives, several were even beginning to gravitate more towards the CCC particularly in Louisiana were a clique was already forming around newly-elected Baby of the House Huey Long. Seeing the advantage that ten additional seats might have brought them discussions had resumed between the CCC and the NLC, though many worried this would split the party. Meanwhile, a resolution was passing it's way through the Democratic/Reform dominated South Carolina General Assembly to "Call the election of the Conservative/Liberal government in the Confederate House of Represenatives a Hostile Act". Upon receiving word of this a famous cartoon appeared in the New York Times that was reprinted across the United States and eventually abroad - it showed some ancient, wizened men in butternut uniforms shrugging their shoulders and lamenting "Here we go again!"
 
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