Yes, people did talk about improving farming efficiency, but largely in the north.
The issue is very different tenancy agreements - the Ulster custom was much more lenient towards the tenant - for instance landlords had no power to evict tenants if they paid their rent, and tenants also had...
To be fair, they were used as a colonial force - they were the ones who settled Ulster, and they really did a number on establishing a British identity there :p.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to portray Catholics as blameless victims, but it's a fact that they suffered a fair degree of repression - gerrymandering, favouritism and workplace discrimination from their colleagues were rampant. I simply view 1969 as the spark that set off a powder...
Actually you had the first Troubles in the 20s, followed by minor IRA campaigns building up into a crescendo of fail in the IRA Border Campaign in the early 1950s. The 1969 Troubles were only the most recent in a long series.
It's simplistic to say that Catholics and Protestants got on before...
... Which is totally why it was the Labour government in the 40's that committed to maintaining Northern Ireland as part of Britain until the majority of the populace wanted otherwise. Y'know, before we had a nuclear deterrent, or boomers. Although, apparently the town I'm from was targeted by...
Wasn't Scotland officially English-speaking at Court from the 12th century? The east coast spoke English almost entirely, it was only the west and highlands that spoke gaelic.
Even with a surviving Danelaw, you've still got pockets of English-speakers in Lothian and the rump-Northumbria.
Protestantism in England isn't just going to disappear if you get rid of Henry's formation of Anglicanism. You're more likely to get a situation like the French Wars of Religion - the richest, most politically important parts of England were already turning Protestant at this time, including...
The point was things *had* started in Ulster, but Craig basically just interned everyone who so much as looked like they might have IRA sympathies, so it fizzled out. You had mortar attacks on troops up in Carnlough for instance, followed by the removal of half its male population to Larne...
... if they get supplies from somewhere. I can imagine the British Army really not fucking about and getting the UVF as a sort of even worse Black and Tans to do their real dirty work. A few hundred rifles, a couple of machine guns and explosives "stolen" from St. Patrick's barracks in Ballymena...
Didn't Michael Collins say that the Treaty was a godsend, as the IRA had less than a week's ammunition left? That and the fact that virtually every IRA man in eastern Ulster was sitting in a prison ship in Larne harbour.
As far as I can remember, the RAF were just about to start deploying...
Possible, maybe. He'd need O'Neill support, and O'Neill of Tyrone would be almost certainly a stronger power than Edward Bruce, even if the latter took the entirety of the English-supporting areas under the Bissetts, Savages and de Mandevilles.
The problem is that establishing Edward as a...
This is the easiest way. Have Franco-English rivalry on the continent flare up slightly earlier, so that Robert the Bruce's renewal of the Auld Alliance in 1326 comes forward a bit. That way, England will be fighting with one arm tied with continental commitments. Although, if this happened, the...