I don't know. To create a climate where this level of ethnic cleansing is even considered an option would require a rather different historical path to OTL. Certainly the Dominions would be concerned, though they're at far greater distances and have other concerns. I could see protests but there's not a lot else they could do.
What if the british transfered all the irish catholic population of Northern Ireland to the RoI?
Not a chance, an all Protestant Ulster isn't worth losing the Dominions and probably some of the colonies as well.
Under all of this near ASB talk the actual British aim was to make the problem go away. i.e. get rid of Ireland.
The Republican aim was to unite Ireland but was unable to control a dissident Unionist Ulster if it tried.
No one had the means, nor desire, to make a bad situation far worse. The OTL partition was meant to hide the problem in the vague hope that it would go away and both Westminster and Dublin were guilty of continuing that policy for 50 years and they are still doing so.
The Republican aim was to unite Ireland but was unable to control a dissident Unionist Ulster if it tried.
No one had the means, nor desire, to make a bad situation far worse. The OTL partition was meant to hide the problem in the vague hope that it would go away and both Westminster and Dublin were guilty of continuing that policy for 50 years and they are still doing so.
And that is not the point. The point 8s doing this has no benefits to the UK. It worsens the country's international reputation seriously impacts on the economy and gets a lot 9lof people killed and also dries up a major source of recruits for the British forces What on earth for
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I believe that was aimed more at property owners and the Catholic gentry. Clergy meanwhile were attacked outright and killed on the spot. A total population transfer was not in the cards, as after all, laborers were needed for the new adventurers/merchants who took the land. There were however free-fire zones in 1651-1653 as the main axis of Confederation resistance moved from armies engaging in battle, to fortresses, to bandits in the countryside.
indeed,Catholic gentry were the target as they wanted to steal their land to give to the planters.
It still was a forced movement of people.
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IF Westminster wanted a more ethnically pure statelet of Northern Ireland (which it didn't for all the reasons adduced above)...
It would have drawn the boundary elsewhere rather than go in for ethnic cleansing. Simpler to exclude majority Catholic and Nationalist counties and districts such as South Armagh.
The reason this didn't happen was that the resulting territory would have excluded some rich farmland with significant Protestant landowners and farmers. Also arguably Slash City. (Derry/Londonderry)would have been on the wrong side for Loyalists. Tne Unionists held on to the largest feasible slice of Ireland instead.
It would have drawn the boundary elsewhere rather than go in for ethnic cleansing. Simpler to exclude majority Catholic and Nationalist counties and districts such as South Armagh.
The reason this didn't happen was that the resulting territory would have excluded some rich farmland with significant Protestant landowners and farmers. Also arguably Slash City. (Derry/Londonderry)would have been on the wrong side for Loyalists. Tne Unionists held on to the largest feasible slice of Ireland instead.
County down needed to be part of Ni as the water catchment area for Belfast city was there.
I think Counties Down and Antrim are the irreducible core of Unionism. Along with northern Armagh and parts of County Derry, with or without Slash City. But such a territory as "northern Ireland" might not have been economically viable - though as it would have been funded from Westminster and part of the UK that shouldn't have been a problem.
But I suppose having less than half of the historic province of Ulster would have been a bitter pill to swallow - even losing three counties was a blow but including them would have made the demographic balance unsustainable. Without the forced evictions that Westminster balked at.