WI Ireland took advantage of the Falklands War to launch a sneak attack on Britain and liberate Ulster?

Charles III Stuart

Charles III Stuart

The Falklands War (in 1982) was concurrent with the Troubles. What if Ireland had taken advantage of the British Armed Forces being occupied in the Southern Hemisphere to launch a sneak attack to liberate Ulster and Unite Ireland?

What would happen to the British Protestants in Northern Ireland and the Irish Catholics in Britain (there are many in Liverpool)? Would some Greece/Turkey style population exchange likely result?

Could Ireland have successfully pulled this off? Would the US have come to Ireland's aid? Reagan (US President at the time) was half Irish and apparently sympathized with Ireland.

How would this have effected the EU?
 

French Frog

The Irish would never have sufficient military capability to even contemplate this...and it would not be politically or militarily effective and the Brits would only have to use a few elements of their air force and it would all be over.
The strategy used by Sinn fein and the IRA was much more effective if slower and still has not achieved complete success .But the demographics are there to make that probable and by democratic means too.That's key to the legitimacy and success of any change there as it effectively ends most of the potential violence and criticism that goes with it .
 

Falecius

I understand that Ireland at the time had no interest or desire whatsoever to do any such thing, and even less ability.
The chances of this succeeding are so remote that they do not deserve consideration.
Such an action would trigger NATO Article 5 response, so the US would be obligated to intervene against Ireland, up to and likely including full military commitment if necessary. Which probably would not be because Britain would probably be able to handle the matter alone. Regardless, Reagan would be livid. This messes mightily with his overarching foreign policy goal, which was anti-Communism (specifically, anti-Soviet-aligned-Communism). The maximum support the Republic can expect from Washington is like refraining from nuking Cork.
Also, Britain is a nuclear power. Generally speaking, you don't launch sneak attacks against the sovereign territory of nuclear powers. It's stupid and dangerous, and any even remotely sane Irish leadership would get that very basic point.
This is only possible in the sense of not violating any actual physical law.
 
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chopperdave

Even if (a massive if) you had an Irish Government that was crazy enough to consider it. The UK deployment to Northern Ireland in the 1980s was around 10,000 (not including the Ulster Defence Regiment and unionist paramilitaries who'd also resist any incursion). This is still more than the Irish army of the time.

Even if (this is another massive if) this is successful Ireland would still have to cope with an ongoing insurgency in Northern Ireland. The type that they'd just seen the Brits involved in.
 

Teiresias

chopperdave said:
Even if (this is another massive if) this is successful Ireland would still have to cope with an ongoing insurgency in Northern Ireland. The type that they'd just seen the Brits involved in.
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Except unlike Britain they actually share a land border with NI, so anyone can just walk across the border to plant a bomb in mainland Ireland. Oh, and there are more Protestants than Catholics in NI, so the insurgency is likely to be a good bit bigger, yet the Irish would have less resources to handle it.

Also, I might be mistaken, but didn't some of the IRA splinter groups not recognize the Irish government as legitimate?

IMO the 'best' result for the Irish is that the leader of whatever expeditionary force Ireland sends surrenders the moment they cross the border and explains that the Taoiseach has gone crazy.
 
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Mike D

The British Army has (off the top of my head) 4x armoured divisions and 1 or 2x regular infantry divisions sitting in the UK and West Germany at this point while the entire tactical side of the RAF is also sitting in their home bases twiddling their thumbs. Even with an absolute bare minimum of the Royal Navy available (since much of the fleet is in the South Atlantic or on the way there), the amount of kit you stick on a few ferries out of Stranraer/Liverpool and land in Belfast is going to be enough to get to Dublin and barely notice the Irish Army as speedbumps as they drive over the top of them.
 

TDM

Charles III Stuart said:
The Falklands War (in 1982) was concurrent with the Troubles. What if Ireland had taken advantage of the British Armed Forces being occupied in the Southern Hemisphere to launch a sneak attack to liberate Ulster and Unite Ireland?

What would happen to the British Protestants in Northern Ireland and the Irish Catholics in Britain (there are many in Liverpool)? Would some Greece/Turkey style population exchange likely result?

Could Ireland have successfully pulled this off? Would the US have come to Ireland's aid? Reagan (US President at the time) was half Irish and apparently sympathized with Ireland.

How would this have effected the EU?
Click to expand...
1) The Irish gov wouldn't do this, they're not stupid or insane
2). The ROI does not have the forces to do this I can't actaully find a figure for 1982 but apparently it's military in it's entirety numbered 13,700 in 1985 (UK's was 334,000 in 1985)
3). Not that many UK ground forces went to the south Atlantic
4). As pointed out doing this wouldn't just reignite factional conflict but dump a drum of kerosene on an already burning fire
5). Some loons like Noraid in the US might beat their plastic Irish chests, but Reagan's not touching this with a 10ft barge pole
 
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Tanc49

The first important bit is that even today, the Republic is very ambivalent on peaceful reunification. It's a West/East Germany scenario, where Northern Ireland is mostly maintained afloat thanks to the UK public sectors and subventions.
The Republic is rich enough for now, but doesn't feel rich enough to compensate. One area in particular is the health service. While the NHS is extremely good, the Irish equivalent is... well, it technically exists. It'd be hell to integrate.

And that's with a post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Ireland in the 80's was an agrarian country with a backward economy. Think Romania today (hope I'm not exagerating too much here one way or the other).
Its army is very much a peacekeeping force, and its use in anything else is still controversial today. The Republic, as far as I can see, mostly want to be left in peace. Reunification is not really part of the day to day debate, and as far as I can see, most politicians are very wary of it. Even Sin Fein doesn't really hype it up that much in Dublin, they talk about housing and income, they don't center their message on reunification.

We can add to those issues the fact that a successful conquest of Northern Ireland with a UK meekly accepting its fate and throwing the towel without a single shot fired, would result with more than 50% of the population of the newly conquered territory ready and willing to resist the invasion. And make no mistake, the Unionists of that time period are armed, trained, and ready for blood, just like the IRA. So you have a 10k soldiers army trying to keep down a population of 1M protestants. If you account for women, children, pacifists, elderly... there's still a good chance you'd get 100k unionists insurgents.

Besides that, the biggest cities of Ireland, Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Wexford... are all coastal. So you'd get a fast repeat of the 1916 Easter Rising with battleships cruising up the Liffey and seizing all key infrastructures.
 

Cryhavoc101

Charles III Stuart said:
The Falklands War (in 1982) was concurrent with the Troubles. What if Ireland had taken advantage of the British Armed Forces being occupied in the Southern Hemisphere to launch a sneak attack to liberate Ulster and Unite Ireland?

What would happen to the British Protestants in Northern Ireland and the Irish Catholics in Britain (there are many in Liverpool)? Would some Greece/Turkey style population exchange likely result?

Could Ireland have successfully pulled this off? Would the US have come to Ireland's aid? Reagan (US President at the time) was half Irish and apparently sympathized with Ireland.

How would this have effected the EU?
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The British sent 2 Brigades of Infantry - 8 Battalions in total down south and did not even withdraw 1 para battalion as it was slated for NI at the time for the duty down south.

At the time this was a relatively small portion of the British army (3 of those Battalions were Royal Marine 'Commandos' battalions)

The only issue would be that the Home Brigade (5th Brigade) was in April 1982 supposed to be the Gurkha Battalion and 2nd and 3rd Para - the last 2 joined the Royal marines to form a 5 Battalion Brigade and then the 5th Brigade was topped up with the Scots and Welsh Guards and then also sent south.

But how big was the Irish military in April 1982?

It was never large and lacked any real heavy equipment - superb with regards to its UN deployments etc but not really a NATO level fighting force.

I suspect that had the Irish leadership suggested such a thing in April/May 1982 there would have been enough sensible heads in the Republic to have stopped it.
 

sparky42

Teiresias said:
Except unlike Britain they actually share a land border with NI, so anyone can just walk across the border to plant a bomb in mainland Ireland. Oh, and there are more Protestants than Catholics in NI, so the insurgency is likely to be a good bit bigger, yet the Irish would have less resources to handle it.

Also, I might be mistaken, but didn't some of the IRA splinter groups not recognize the Irish government as legitimate?

IMO the 'best' result for the Irish is that the leader of whatever expeditionary force Ireland sends surrenders the moment they cross the border and explains that the Taoiseach has gone crazy.
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None of the IRA's or SF for that matter considered the Irish Government as legitimate at that point, though each considered their own "Army Council" as the one true 1916 inheritors.
 

sparky42

The answer would be the same as when the Army was asked about invading during the early height of the Troubles... "Here's how many ways its insane, now excuses us while we leak this to sane people to bring down the government if you order it". Haughey was happy to piss off Thatcher over Ireland's diplomatic position on the War, he wasn't insane, just a crook.
 

sparky42

TDM said:
1) The Irish gov wouldn't do this, they not stupid or insane
2). The ROI does not have the forces to do this I can't actaully find a figure for 1982 but apparently it's military in it's entirety numbered 13,700 in 1985 (UK's was 334,000 in 1985)
3). Not that many UK ground forces went to the south Atlantic
4). As pointed out doing this wouldn't just reignite factional conflict but dump a drum of kerosene on an already burning fire
5). Some loons like Noraid in the US might beat their plastic Irish chests, but Reagan's not touching this with a 10ft barge pole
Click to expand...
Have to go digging but that number seems low for the Troubles, might not include the FCA (though that's not exactly a game changer to put it mildly), but yes there's no way short of an ASB internvention that either A) Dublin would order such an attack, or B) the DF would be in position to carry out such an operation.
 

Ijon Tichy

sparky42 said:
The answer would be the same as when the Army was asked about invading during the early height of the Troubles... "Here's how many ways its insane, now excuses us while we leak this to sane people to bring down the government if you order it". Haughey was happy to piss off Thatcher over Ireland's diplomatic position on the War, he wasn't insane, just a crook.
Click to expand...
There was a report given to the Dublin government at the time (circa 1969) to the effect that the army had the capacity to hold Newry (key border town) for 24 hours while taking massive casualties.
 
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