Tales of the Decades of Darkness #1: An Old Eagle

Credit for this post goes to Rekjavik, who wrote all of it apart from a few editorial additions.

* * *

25 November 1941
Brugg, Duchy of Aargau
German Empire

Karl Eymer knocked at the rather plain door, and waited patiently for someone to answer it. The time dragged on for longer than he would have expected, but he could wait. Der Adler had carried several of his interviews with famous people; his personal favourite was his revealing chat with the actress Liesa Graebsch.

This, though, was something altogether different. He had never interviewed someone of such importance. A sign of his boss’s trust, he hoped.

After a few moments, he knocked again. This time, a maid came to answer the door. She looked barely thirty, if that. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Karl Eymer. I have an appointment with Herr Schulthess.”

The maid looked coolly at him, as if to say, “And so?”

Eymer cleared his throat. “I’m a reporter from Frankfurt, for Der Adler. Herr Schulthess has agreed to an interview to discuss recent events... and anything else of interest.”

The woman nodded. “Please come with me.” She led Karl through the house.

The décor was much simpler than he had expected for the man who won the greatest war in history and redrew the map of the world. He would have expected that such a man would decorate his house with treasures of conquest, or at least some ornate signs of wealth. Edmund Schulthess was far from a poor man, but his house did not show it. Karl caught glimpses of a few rooms as he passed: a study with a full bookshelf that filled an entire wall; a dining room dominated by a single large table; and a conservatory with large windows that revealed a stunning landscape beyond.

The maid brought him through to the garden. Schulthess sat there, wheelchair-bound, reading a book. The former Chancellor looked to be on – or rather, off – his last legs. Hardly unexpected for the man who led Germany through its darkest days since the Second Napoleonic Wars. The weight of that struggle would have taken its toll on any man. Karl had done his research; he knew that Schulthess was 73 years old. It was a miracle that the man had lived for so long.

When Schulthess slowly raised his head from the pages of his book, he seemed more like a grandfather than a world leader. Yet appearances could so often deceive. This was the man who had overseen the Great War, and in its aftermath founded the Greater European Economic Union and overseen the breakup of France, the ancient enemy. Most infamously, he had signed the Treaty of Warsaw.

“Ah, Herr Eymer, I hope you had a comfortable journey. Fresh air never hurt anyone, and it must be a change from the air you find in Frankfurt these days.”

“A very pleasant journey, thank you, sir. I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”

“Nonsense,” said Schulthess. “These days, I have all the time in the world. Retirement has its privileges. Can you imagine me having time to read anything by Goethe in 1929? Now, I have his whole collected works on my shelves, waiting to be discovered one by one. And many other authors await my pleasure. I’ve only recently discovered Grillparzer’s works. I never found time to read the War of the Clouds in my childhood.”

Schulthess paused, then said, “Anyway, let us begin.”

Karl took out his notebook and pen, ready to write quickly when he needed. Shorthand was so useful. He glanced over at the River Reuss while he collected his thoughts.

“Firstly, I would like to thank you for agreeing to this interview. It is an honour to be here speaking with you, Herr Schulthess.”

“Think nothing of it, Herr Eymer. I have plenty of time on my hands. I welcome the departure from my usual routine.”

Karl said, “I’d like to start with some historical questions. Helps to set the scene, I find. And it’s Adler policy, too.”

Schulthess gestured for him to continue.

Karl said, “People nowadays mostly recognise your actions in the Great War. You led the Reich to victory over the Bouclier, and brought Britain to its knees. But the human toll of the war was without parallel in the history of the world. Over thirty million people died in the war years. How could this happen? Was the Great War inevitable?”

A difficult question, but it had to be asked, and best soonest. The first paragraph of any article needed to capture the reader’s attention. And what better than an answer to one of the world’s more difficult questions? Schulthess had been at the heart of the diplomatic crises in Hungary and Croatia; many historians (though few in Germany) blamed him alone for starting the war.

Schulthess said, “With hindsight... yes, I would have to say that the war was inevitable.”

Karl had not expected that answer, but he knew better than to interrupt.

Schulthess continued, “Envy, it came down to. Britain had grown jealous of Germany and her achievements. When Britain dominated the world, she was happy to let Germany carry on. What mattered was who had the greater power. Britain was happy to use Germany for her own advantage. Take the second war we fought against a Bonaparte. Germany suffered more than any other nation. Britain was content to sit on the sidelines and do the building, while we did the dying.

“When Germany’s full power began to be realised, Britain feared that her throne at the top of the world might be usurped. They could have allowed Germany to blossom, and stood beside us as friends. Yet this was unacceptable in London, for they believed that Britain alone should rule the world. So she spurned the spirit of our alliance, forcing her will upon nations that dared to ask for change. Look at what they did in South Africa! Indeed, Britain’s new temper led to her own humiliation at the Americans’ hands.”

Karl tried to use the lull in the speech to move things closer to 1929. “If Britain had failed once, then why did they keep using imperialistic diplomacy in 1929, when their last experience should have told them the likely outcome?”

“Ah, by then she had gone too far down the path. In 1906, Britain could have curbed her aggression and embraced a more cooperative policy. But London feared looking weak more than they feared defeat. So the British kept on doing what they had, hoping that it would work, despite previous evidence to the contrary. Witness her hypocrisy over Hungary and Croatia. Britain had crushed free will in South Africa before us, and then demanded that we “acknowledge the wishes of the people” in the illegitimate governments in our Verein partners.”

“Why do you think that Britain interfered in the Verein, when it was clearly in our sphere of influence?”

Schulthess sighed. “She still believed that she ruled the world. Britain did not recognise that there were bounds to her power, and interfered in matters of state which was none of her affair. When we would not bow to Britain’s demands, she kept escalating the situation, closing the Suez Canal and starting the war. At the time it was not clear how foolish the British would be, but with hindsight it all comes together.”

Karl wondered whether he fully agreed with that, although it made a strange kind of sense. Britain had been the pre-eminent power of the nineteenth century, and would not accept that its status had changed in the twentieth.

“Well, that explains the origins of the war. What about its conduct? Your government guided Germany through that war, but your critics have said that the Treaty of Warsaw was a major blunder.”

Schulthess sipped tea for a moment, as if contemplating the question. After the pause, he said, “It is always easier to criticise than it is to govern. Critics find it easy to blame others for a decision which they did not have to take. It is another matter entirely if the critic found himself in a situation where he had to make that decision himself.”

“What were your reasons for signing the Warsaw Treaty, then?”

“Signing that treaty was not something I decided easily, but it was a necessary concession. We had more urgent matters to deal with. I regret the loss of Courland and the territory which Poland had to yield, but you cannot deny that what we gained far exceeded what we lost. And above all, we needed a secure eastern border. We had to fight one war at a time.”

“What do you mean?” Karl asked.

“A war on two fronts would have doomed us. Look at the Americans. They tried to fight two wars at once, in South America and in Europe. They could not win either, until they conceded defeat in one war to concentrate on the other. Thanks to the treaty, though, Germany had only one front. That gained us victory over the Bouclier. I think that the results speak for themselves.”

“Indeed they do, Herr Schulthess. But when we relieved Russia of the pressure on their western border, they went on to conquer most of Asia. Some have argued that the Treaty of Warsaw simply removed one power only to replace them with an even more dangerous foe. What do you think about the creation of the Russian Federation?”

Schulthess frowned. “Federation or Empire, what they call themselves does not matter. They have the same desire to dominate the globe which they always had. Their desire for land and conquest cannot be sated. It is only Germany’s clear strength which stops them from striking against us today. However, they were not shooting our soldiers or bombing our cities at the time. Better to make peace with them for a time, so that we could deal with Russia at an occasion of our choosing. I am sure that we will deal with them in due course.”

That last sentence worried Karl more than a little. He had been fortunately too young to fight in the Great War, but his father had fought in Italy and the south of France. While his father did not talk much about what happened there, it did not sound pleasant. If it came to a war with Russia now, Karl might find himself in the frontlines. The devastation that had been wrought on Europe a decade ago might be revisited. He hoped that vom Rath’s new government would avoid war at all costs.

“Let’s move on from the enemy created to the ones we defeated: France and Britain. Britain divided itself, so its fate was in its own hands. France, though, you dismantled. That choice has attracted some criticism.” This included most of the people in the French states, of course, but also some elements within Germany. “It does seem to be quite a... drastic measure, to split France into shards, and to recreate small states which have not existed for centuries.”

Schulthess sat straight up, his agitation clear. “France tried to strangle Germany when our nation first reunited, and she never abandoned her intentions. The Confederation War, the Swiss and Italian War, the Second Napoleonic Wars... Is it any wonder that by the time of the Great War, I could not allow France to remain united? Our nation’s security required nothing less than the break-up of the French state, a move which was in truth long overdue.”

Karl nodded, and moved on to the next question. “What of Britain’s fate, then? Was it in truth worth the cost of the war? We broke their home islands and England, Scotland and Cymru emerged from their ruin. Yet what of their colonies, who ignored the peace settlement we had negotiated with Britain, conquered many of our own colonies, and who now call themselves the Restored Empire? We have not stopped them; witness their recent activities in Rashidi Arabia.”

Schulthess chuckled, but before he could respond more fully, the maid reappeared. He nodded in her direction, then said, “Forgive an old man his habits, but I always take lunch at the same time. But I’d be delighted if you would join me. We could talk about less formal matters.”

“I would be delighted,” Karl said, and followed the maid as she wheeled Schulthess inside.

The lunch turned out to have much in common with Schulthess’s house: pleasant, comfortable, and altogether ordinary. The maid brought soup, bread, cold meat, and a hefty dose of tea.

While they ate, they talked at length about the Alps, Genoa – which both had visited and enjoyed, it turned out – and even at one point about trains, about which Schulthess had developed a recent interest. During the meal, Schulthess steered the conversation away from politics with a simple: “never mix business with pleasure.”

To continue the interview, they went back outside. “What were you asking me about?” Schulthess asked.

“The Restored Empire, and what it means for Germany,” Karl said.

“Ah, yes, that motley collection of disparate states. Their Empire is naught but a doomed experiment. Its constituent members are too varied, separated by geography, language, and heritage. Each has their own interests, which are much too divergent for them to hold together in the longer term. Given time, the Empire will collapse.”

“If that is so, does the same fate await our own Union?”

Schulthess said, “The GEEU has many nationalities, but it is distinct from the Empire. The Union is an economic and mutual defence pact. Its member states work together, but they remain separate states. The Empire, though, wants to be a single country. It is an impossibility to merge so many separate peoples into one state. I knew that when I set up the Union after the war. The Empire’s leaders should have known better, but they will learn their lesson soon enough.”

Karl hurriedly finished writing down Schulthess’s answer, then turned to his next question. “What, then, of our lost colonies? The Orient is lost to us, as is so much of Africa. What do you think that Germany should do about them?”

Schulthess took his time before answering that question. Eventually, he said, “I do not generally like to make statements about Germany should do now. I have already helped Germany with deeds; I have no need to meddle now with words. But I will say this: there is no need to hurry the reacquisition of our sundered colonies. The Empire will fall in time. Germany can address her lost colonies at a time of her choosing.”

Karl nodded, and considered how to phrase the next question. He doubted very much that Schulthess would like it, but it had to be asked. “Germany’s successes in the war are easy to recognise. We won the war in Europe and North Africa. Yet our allies in South America fell to the United States one by one. Even valiant Chile could not hold out forever. Now they are under the American yoke. Should Germany not have done more to save them?”

Schulthess frowned. “The Americans’ methods are deplorable; no civilized nation could endorse them. What other nation would elect a leader who proclaims “There are no innocent civilians”? Fire-squads are their most visible evil, but never forget that they threaten bondage for all the peoples of South America. The Brazilians suffer, the Peruvians are enslaved, the Chileans are persecuted, and the Argentines live in perpetual fear of the day the Americans will invade.”

His voice rose as he kept speaking. “Yet how could we have stopped the Americans? We needed to deal with Britain first, for they were the greater threat to us. We could do nothing to save South America with our homeland threatened with invasion. The blame, if it must be laid anywhere, lies with Britain and France. They made common cause with the Americans. They stopped us from helping our friends.”

Karl tried to calm the other man down. “I’m not questioning what we could do or not do. I was just asking for your thoughts.”

Schulthess took a deep breath, and visibly composed himself. “I understand. It’s just worth remembering that criticising decisions is easier than making them. Carry on, Herr Eymer.”

Karl said, “You’ve already said that you believe the GEEU will endure. But is its fate not bound to the event which created it? As you say, the Union is not an individual nation and does not try to be, but it was created in the aftermath of war, and it still needs soldiers to endure.”

Schulthess said, “Germany paid in blood to secure peace and stability in Europe. We will do whatever we need to do to maintain that peace. We cannot let our actions be dictated to us by terrorists.”

“Is it just terrorists, though? How many people in the former French states still think of themselves as French?”

“The majority, except perhaps for Brittany,” Schulthess said. Karl had to give him credit for honesty, at least.

“From such resentment, will terrorism not always spring? Almost from the moment that France was divided, organisations emerged and proclaimed their goal of French unification. The UMF and SNF are well-known for both their political and military efforts to regain French independence [1]. We had thought that they were the worst, until the Organisation Armée Secrète started bombing Frankfurt itself last year. Even if their bombs have stopped for now, their supporters still plaster their motto, “France is eternal,” on government buildings across the former France. Do you think that these French nationalists can ever be subdued?”

“Herr Eymer, one cannot expect new national identities to form overnight. Given time, people will consider themselves Burgundians, Gascons or Normans, rather than French. When that day comes, those nationalists and terrorists will fade away. They are a problem for now, but a manageable one, not an eternal one.”

Karl nodded. Schulthess had certainty in his beliefs, whatever else might be said of him. That led quite neatly to his next question. “While discussing current difficulties, we can hardly avoid mentioning some more international difficulties. What is your opinion of Germany’s conduct about those situations, particularly about the recent... events in Rashidi Arabia?”

Karl thought he could already guess the answer to this question. Schulthess had rarely spoken publicly, but it was no secret that he had always disagreed with the policies of then-Chancellor Karl-Heinz Blucher. Blucher’s leftist views were a considerable contrast with Schulthess’s, and indeed with the new Chancellor, Werner Wolfgang vom Rath.

Schulthess said, “Arabia can best be described as a fiasco. Blucher’s inability to stand up for German interests cost us dearly.”

Strong words, but not misplaced, Karl thought. The Rashidi Crisis had started with the death of Abdullah bin Hamud, the king of Rashidi Arabia, three years before. With no direct male heirs to his name, a disputed succession was inevitable in a nation so finely balanced between competing power blocs. Rashidi Arabia had been recognised as neutral territory between Germany and Russia after the war, but then neutrality meant very little in a world in the grips of a Silent War. What meant more was that Arabia sat atop the largest reserves of petroleum in the world.

Indeed, Arabian neutrality had been merely an excuse for the Powers to diplome more openly. Within Rashidi Arabia, the pro-German factions had coalesced around Mithab bin Adbul Aziz, while the pro-Restored Empire faction had coalesced around Mohammad bin Bandar. Both of those candidates were nephews of the late king. Mithab was elder, but a son of the king’s youngest brother. Mohammad was younger, but was the son of the elder of the late king’s surviving brothers. It had made for a fine mess, and gave the Powers plenty of scope for diplomatic intervention. Unfortunately, the pro-Empire faction won the struggle and placed Mohammad on the throne, not least thanks to Blucher’s unwillingness to commit German forces to oppose them [2].

Schulthess continued, “Blucher simply refused to give the necessary support to our friends within Arabia. The whole thing finished very badly; Germany should have ended up with a friendlier government there. Blucher lacked the credibility or the will to negotiate effectively with the superpowers. That hindered Germany’s global influence for the remainder of Blucher’s term in office.”

Karl had reached the end of his scripted questions, but he decided that now was the perfect opportunity to ask an unscripted question. Most of his questions had needed the tacit approval of the Der Adler executives, but those were also ones which Schulthess would expect. Perhaps an unexpected question would show more of the man’s character.

“What about the very peculiar diplomacy during the Crisis? At the time – and even since – I found it very strange that America would work with Germany to oppose Russia and Australia. Did you anticipate that would happen?”

Schulthess said, “An unusual situation, certainly, but then great nations do not have friends, only interests. It suited Germany’s priorities to accept O’Brien’s diplomatic assistance, for Russia is a direct threat where the United States is not. America can be dealt with by-and-by, but Russia is the only nation whose armies can threaten Germany’s heartland. As for Australia and her ‘Restored Empire,’ if it does not dissolve of its own accord, Germany can address that matter once Russia has been dealt with.”

Karl nodded. The questions were over now, except for ones about the future. Futurology had never been a successful science, but it would be interesting to hear what Schulthess thought. “I would like to ask one more question before we finish. The times we live in now are perilous, and the world is unpredictable. What do you think the future holds for Germany and the world?”

Schulthess went quiet for a long moment while he considered the question. “The future can never be certain, of course, but I believe that the modern world was shaped by the war. Or, more precisely, how the war ended. The Great War ended with each of the victors – including Germany – achieving their greatest goal, but not all of their goals. Now the superpowers dominate the world, but their ambitions are unsated. So, ever since, we have had the Silent War.”

Schulthess coughed, then continued, “The silence will not last forever, though. Russia has never abandoned its desire to dominate the globe. Germany must remain strong in preparation for that moment. As for the rest of the world, the Restored Empire, as I have said, will take care of itself. And some day, the United States will pay the price for their crimes and the bondage they have inflicted on the nations.”

Karl nodded, rose, and said, “Thank you for your time, Herr Schulthess.”

“It was my pleasure, Herr Eymer.”

Karl bowed, then followed the maid to the front door. It was a pity that the interview had to end, really. The afternoon had been far too brief, and Karl doubted that he would ever have the pleasure of a second interview. Given how old the former Chancellor looked, this interview might even be the last one he ever gave.

He stepped outside onto the road. The road had gone dark quickly, as always happened so close to winter. Karl checked that his briefcase was properly closed, tucked his overcoat close around him, and started to walk to the train station. He had a slight smile on his face, although he was only barely aware of it. He knew that this interview would sell well with the German people, and probably even the whole of Europe. It would certainly be interesting to find out what one of the most important men in history thought.

* * *

[1] The Union Militaire Française and Solidarité Nationale Française are two of the more well-known groups of terrorists (or freedom fighters, depending on who you ask) in France.

[2] The pro-German faction had weaker support within Rashidi Arabia, although neither Schulthess nor Eymer would admit that, even to themselves.

* * *

Thoughts?

Decades of Darkness #190: New Horizons

“Your violent and chaotic society, even when it calls for peace, when it seems to be in a state of calm, still carries war within itself just as the slumbering thunder-cloud contains the storm.”
- Australian ambassador Wiremu Panapa addressing the United States Congress, 1947

* * *

1 September 1932

*

Columbia City, Federal District
United States of America

Senator Plutarco Bautista willed his face to composure. This meeting promised to be one of the least pleasant experiences of his life. He had conducted only one private meeting with Alvar O’Brien in his entire life, and he had never thought that he would need to agree to another.

“Remember, stay calm,” said Faith, his wife. She was not even looking at him; her eyes were focused on the door. After eighteen years of marriage – where had the time gone? – she usually knew what he was thinking without needing to look. As he did with her, come to that. “Too much depends on this choice.”

This choice between the devil and the dragon, Plutarco thought, but he held his peace.

The knock at the door was firm, but not overly loud. Precisely calculated to be just at the right volume, Plutarco thought. Everything about O’Brien was carefully calculated, carefully weighed and planned. A great pity indeed that none of that calculation included listening to the still, small voice of his conscience. He raised his voice. “Come in, General.”

Alvar O’Brien did not formally hold the rank of general any longer, of course. Better to use that title rather than any alternative, though.

O’Brien entered the room in a measured pace. More calculation, of course. He gave a short bow first to Plutarco, then to Faith. Clever of him. He must have known that Plutarco would refuse to shake the hand which had signed the order to enslave white men.

Plutarco had to think for a moment what he wanted to say. He could not say that O’Brien was welcome, since that would be blatant hypocrisy. Only at Faith’s absolute insistence had he agreed to the request for a private meeting, and even then he had demanded that Faith remain as a witness. “Would you like some tea?”

“Thank you, but no,” O’Brien said. “I don’t believe that either of us wants this meeting to last any longer than necessary.”

“It would be a long meeting indeed, for you to convince me to support your bid for the presidential nomination,” Plutarco said. The Unionist delegates met in less than two weeks, and O’Brien was the frontrunner.

“I’m not here to ask for your support,” O’Brien said.

Plutarco raised an eyebrow.

O’Brien said, “I do not ask for your support. I ask only that you agree not to oppose me or speak out against me during the nomination and the election.”

“You expect me to forget what you’ve done?” Plutarco said, but he could understand why O’Brien had made the request. Jefferson Caden, that most notorious backer of the fire-squads, the man who had dragged the United States into the Great War, had effectively won the Democratic nomination. O’Brien had more votes than any other Unionist contender, but not a solid majority. Plutarco was the most senior Unionist Senator not to express his support for any candidate, and many members of the party were waiting for him to commit to a candidate.

“If you speak out against me, you will split the Unionists. That is in your power,” O’Brien said. “HP Long would welcome the excuse to run an independent campaign. You will then hand the presidency to Caden. Do you want that man as president?”

“Do I want you, either?” Plutarco said. “I have not forgotten what you’ve done. I will not back a man who made slaves out of white men.”

O’Brien said, “I know what I’ve done, and I make no apologies for it. I did what I deemed best to save American lives and to protect my country’s interests. But regardless of what you think of me, do you deny that Caden would be worse?”

Plutarco thought about Caden, a man who had endorsed the fire-squads as a legitimate government policy. Indeed, Caden had spoken of them as being useful as a common tool, not even a method of last resort. What would that man do if given control of the United States and ultimate responsibility for subduing South America? Still, he could not make himself say aloud that O’Brien would be a better presidential candidate than anyone.

O’Brien waited for his reply, then eventually said, “I do not ask for your friendship. I do not think that we could ever be friends. I ask only that you agree that I am less of an enemy than Caden.”

Plutarco paused for a long moment, then he eventually nodded. He said, “If you win, expect me to dog your every move as president.”

“Of course. I would expect nothing else,” O’Brien said. “And if I lose, I expect that we will both dog Caden’s every move, if for different reasons.”

*

Federal House
Hartford, Connecticut
Republic of New England

Shane Mullins, President of New England, remembered times of fear in the last war. Times of hiding in dugouts in trenches for days on end, never knowing when an artillery shell would land near enough to bring the end of life. No man could live through those times and not know fear. Yet what he faced now was a different kind of fear. Not quite the same fear of imminent death. Rather, fear that everything he had built in New England was crashing down into ruin.

The war was over. Formal terms had not yet been announced, but they amounted to Yankee soldiers staying in Ireland to protect it, while Germany was left to finish crushing Britain. The peace deal was in effect a return to status quo ante bellum; neither side would demand reparations or anything else. In theory, this war was a draw.

Except that it was a defeat, and he saw no way to portray it otherwise. Not even Terry’s genius at public relations [1] could conceal that. He had led New England into this war expecting a share of the glory and of the rewards of victory, but Russian betrayal and the incompetence of his allies had seen his country cheated of its gains. Now he had spent so much of New England’s blood and treasure, and he had nothing to show for it.

Well, everyone made mistakes, even if he would never admit any of his errors publicly. He needed time to set things right, time to get New England back on track to its proper future. He may have been betrayed once, but he would be ready next time. There would be more opportunities, of that he was sure. Some fools were already speaking of this as the “war to end war,” but he could see the seeds being planted for future conflicts. The United States was trying to hold down South America, Germany was trying to hold down Europe, Russia was trying to hold down Asia, and all of them would want to meddle in Africa. With their inevitable disagreements would come opportunities. Mullins would make sure he was ready for those opportunities.

If he could survive politically, that was. The next few months would be critical. The people were feeling angry, and he had to make sure that they blamed the right people. England deserved its fair share of the blame, for its incompetence and its unconscionable decision to use chemical weapons. Wood should have known better. Russia would get its share of the blame too, for not honouring its alliance with France, although that was old news.

Yes, there were opportunities. Of course, there were decisions to be made too. Foreign players would take their share of the blame, but should he launch a cleansing of some of his own government members? Charges of incompetence would be easy enough to make, and some of them would even be genuine. There were advantages to keeping a few incompetent people around; they would not become a threat, and it meant that they could be removed at the proper time. Was this the proper time to clean house?

No, Mullins decided, after some thought. Removing incompetent people might be popular, but it might also start people thinking that perhaps he should be removed, too, if cleansings were to be made. Besides, the people could be controlled, one way or another. His greatest fear came from his own party, since they controlled the government. If they became too concerned by the cleansings, they might try to remove him out of desperation. Better, for now, to present an image of unity and camaraderie. And then make sure that this image lasted until the next election.

The next presidential election, in fact. That had long been arranged. No meaningful opposition existed, after all, and whichever candidate he named would win. The Constitution forbade him from standing again, but that was easily worked around. He was assured of re-election to the Senate, where he would remain as Majority Leader, and be nominated as President pro tempore. That would make him third in line for presidential succession. Since the new president and vice-president would both be resigning on inauguration day, he would be returned as president in short order.

Yes, he decided, there was still hope to rebuild New England. He would have to be careful for the next few months, and have Ingersoll keep a very close eye on the Army, but the future was not without hope.

* * *

4 March 1933

*

Puerto Covadonga
Antarctic Peninsula

Cold blew the wind, with the hint of ice never far from its breath. Sunlight glimmered above the horizon, but for how long would that last? Colonel William Walker had never been anywhere this far south in his life, and rarely anywhere as cold. The Jaguars could be sent almost anywhere, but given his choice, he would rather have been sent somewhere warm.

Of course, when the President-elect asked for you by name, then you went where you were sent. Besides, this mission was an honour which no other American soldier would ever be granted. Symbolic, of course; the Chileans and Argentines had both made vague claims on this God-forsaken stretch of ice and rock, but neither had bothered to base any military forces here. Yet symbolic or not, sending soldiers here amounted to a claim which would never be forgotten.

Walker unfurled the American flag himself. Other soldiers and sailors stood nearby, but no-one else would share this honour with him. When he planted it into the soil of this land, he claimed it for the United States. Apart from his fellow Americans, only penguins and petrels were around to hear him, but he still enjoyed being able to utter a few words. “America now stretches from Pole to Pole.”

*


Lone Star Vineyards
Near Packer, Washington [Branson, Missouri]
United States of America

The sun beat down in what was unseasonably hot weather for the early days of spring. Amber Jarrett ambled past the rows of grapes toward the great house which had been her childhood home, but which now seemed like a lifetime ago. It had been only three and a half years since she had left home, firstly imitating her brother as a soldier in France, and then living in hiding with distant friends on Cuba until the war was over. She could have come home before, if she had really wanted, but she had wanted to see the world.

The United States was now officially at war only with Chile, some people seemed to think that peace would soon come. Her own father was among them, judging from his last letter. She knew better. Even once the last South American resistance had been subdued, there would be another war. There would always be another war. “There will always be wars, so long as men are men,” she murmured.

* * *

Columbia, Federal District
United States of America

Oliver Bird, Industrial Commissioner, stared once more at the neatly-typed title of the document in front of him. It read: “Application for a Machine to Automate the Picking of Cotton.” Hardly the most imaginative of titles, but then it didn’t need to be. Not if it was genuine.

“You’re going to approve this, I take it,” he said. You’d better be going to approve it, his tone added. His time was too valuable to be wasted with any more of the dozens of failed attempts for mechanical cotton-pickers which had been lodged over the years.

The patent clerk nodded. “I’ve watched his machine. It works, all right. He’ll sell every one he can make, and still have orders for five times the number. Cotton-picking will never be the same again.”

The U.S. economy will never be the same again, you mean, Bird thought. The clerk did not see the implications, or not well enough. No point educating him; there were much bigger things to worry about. Still, a hint wouldn’t go astray. “Might be a good time to sell any slaves you own,” Bird murmured.

“Commissioner?” the clerk asked, obviously not catching his meaning.

“Never mind,” Bird said. His thoughts were elsewhere. A machine to pick cotton had been the holy grail of planters for the better part of a century. Reaping wheat was easy, but cotton had been another matter. Which had been very good news for anyone who owned slaves. Cotton made money, lots of money, and growing it needed slaves. For all the boll weevil had made things more expensive, for all that insecticides were needed now, for all that fertiliser needed to be obtained, for all of the long price decline, cotton had still been a solid way to make money. Solid enough to set the reserve price for slaves; they would only be bought by people who could make comparable money off their labour than those who would be planting cotton. And that limit, in turn, had set peon prices, since peons could not be made to work in cotton, and could not be worked as hard even in other areas... but were still available for other forms of work.

Now, that whole system teetered on the brink. How many slaves would the new cotton-pickers replace? Five? Ten? Twenty? Slave prices would fall, and fall hard. Worse, this came at just the time when America’s latest conquests would start to bring in peons and slaves from South America. How much would be a peon be worth in a year or two?

Despite the warmth of his office, Oliver Bird, architect of the American economy, shivered.

*

Hartford, Connecticut
Republic of New England

James Ingersoll, Secretary of War, should probably have been more concerned by what was about to happen in the United States. A new president was being inaugurated today, one who would write a new chapter on foreign policy in an already troubled world. The ramifications of that would touch New England, as they always had; no matter how much good Yankees tried to forget it, their country was shaped in part by the tides moving from the United States.

Yet he could not make himself care. Much larger things were afoot. Thing set in motion a little over a month ago, when Mullins carried out his plan to make himself the eternal president of New England [2]. The Chief had complied with the letter of the constitution, but Pickering would be turning in his grave.

He glanced up at the clock. Five minutes past eleven. Terry Rundle was due to arrive five minutes before, to discuss what reaction should be taken to events south of the border. Those orders used to come direct from the Chief, but these days Rundle acted as the conduit for most instructions from Mullins. Ingersoll had not been able to work out if the Chief did that to mark Rundle’s elevation in status, or as an implicit demotion by turning him into a messenger boy. It said much about Mullins’ approach to government that it could be both of those things at once; the battle for primacy amongst Mullins’ subordinates was an ongoing one, and the Chief liked to keep people guessing.

“Strange for him to be late,” Ingersoll muttered. Rundle was usually punctual to a fault. One of his many faults. He opened the door to his office. “Mary, have you heard-”

He stopped at the sight before him. Armed soldiers were hardly an uncommon sight in the War Department offices, but armed soldiers with rifles lowered and aimed at people were another story. Five men waited in the lobby. Four soldiers carrying rifles, two guarding the outer door and two waiting for him to leave his office. The fifth man was also a soldier, this one in the uniform of a three-star general.

Lieutenant General William Donovan had a fatherly appearance to him, as he always did. He had recently turned fifty – Ingersoll had been at the celebrations – but he had probably had the same fatherly manner for decades. The pistol resting in his hand looked incongruous with his usual manner, but Donovan knew how to use it.

Ingersoll ventured a small smile. “If you wanted to see me, general, you only needed to ask for an appointment.”

“Your secretary said you were busy,” Donovan said. “But my business was most pressing.”

“Of course it was, but it took you long enough to organise it,” Ingersoll said. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever get around to this... although I did think that you’d come in person, Bill. You always knew that you owed me that much.”

Donovan raised an eyebrow. “You knew this coup was coming?”

Ingersoll shrugged. “Of course I knew it was coming. You think I don’t know what’s happening in my army?”

“My army, now,” the general said, with a slight wave of the pistol. “I think I know bluster when I hear it.”

“You know nothing of the sort,” Ingersoll said coldly. “Do you know how much work I had to do to ensure that all news of your plans was reported to me instead of directly to the Chief?”

“If you knew, you would either have stopped us, or helped us. Don’t think that you can sweet talk me into sparing you.”

Ingersoll said, “Nothing do I expect from you, general, except to turn into the next Blackwood.”

Donovan’s eyes narrowed, and his voice contained a hint of anger for the first time. “Do not mistake me for that power-hungry maniac. I do what I do because I swore an oath to uphold the constitution and defend New England against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.”

“And once the Chief has been deposed, you will be the only one in a position to rule in his place,” Ingersoll said. “As Duvalier has done and Blackwood will do.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Donovan said. “I’ll be handing power back to a civilian government as soon as one is stable enough to stand on its own. Then I’ll be leaving New England, and likely never return.”

“You really plan to just go meekly into exile?” Ingersoll asked.

“That’s the only way I can fulfill my oath to New England,” Donovan said. He sounded sincere. “So long as I live here, no new civilian government will be secure. No-one would feel safe under the rule of law. Our country has reached a place where the regular law has failed us, and I needed to work outside the law for a time, but I want the rule of law to return. Which it will not, while I abide here.”

“I swore an oath, too,” Ingersoll said. “An oath of personal loyalty to the Chief. I would not raise my hand against him. I knew what Mullins was doing to New England, but while I could make myself stand aside, I could not work against him. If that means you kill me... Well, if I have no honour, then I am nothing.”

“For now, you are under arrest. Your ultimate fate will rest with our new government, not with me,” Donovan said.

“And the Chief?”

Donovan’s smile did not reach his eyes.

*

North West River
Labrador Territory
Republic of New England

Leroy Abbard, former Senator, former presidential candidate, former head of the Christian Socialists and then the Socialist Alliance, and current inmate of the badly-misnamed liberty camp of North West River, could not remember the last time he had had a full stomach. Or a taste of true liberty. Imprisoned on manufactured charges, left here to watch while his most valued political ally David Rubin and fellow inmate wasted away into death, he had long felt numb inside. He existed, nothing more; he felt as if all hopes and fears were likewise placed on hold.

So, then, why this summons to the camp commander’s office? Kendall Weston was a thug, nothing more, and he had probably offended someone important in the vitalist hierarchy to be sent here. Although he usually reserved the main demonstrations of his anger for other inmates; he probably feared that overt violence against Abbard would rouse too much anger.

Abbard was escorted into the commander’s office, and the guards withdrew.

Weston did not turn to look; the commander’s gaze was fixed out the window.

Abbard waited for a few moments, then said, “You asked to see me, commander?”

Weston keep staring out the window. “Only thanks to external request.”

“I don’t follow you,” Abbard said.

Weston sighed. “This camp has been surrounded. By soldiers under, well, I’m not sure who their local commander is, but they’re operating under orders of General Donovan. They’ve offered me and my men safe-conduct and transport to Iceland if we surrender peacefully, with certain conditions.”

The sense of numbness returned. For a long moment, Abbard could not gather his thoughts. “You’re leaving this camp?”

“Yes. Leaving it under your personal control. That is one of the conditions for the safe-conduct.”

“The army has risen up?” Abbard said. He’d never dared allow himself to hope for something like that.

“Details have been sketchy, but I know that Donovan’s forces control the streets in Hartford, New York and Boston.”

“And what does the ‘Chief’ have to say about that?”

Weston spoke softly. “Mullins is dead. Shot while resisting arrest, according to the reports.”

Mullins dead? No proper Christian should show glee over a man’s death, but he could not keep the grin from his face.

Abbard settled into the chair so recently occupied by Weston. He remained in the office while Weston left, remained in place while the camp guards evacuated and men in soldiers’ uniforms came into the camp. He remained in place when they came up to the door.

When the soldiers came into the room, they saluted him. Abbard managed to speak, then. “Soldiers shouldn’t salute civilians,” he said.

Their commander, a corporal from his uniform, grinned. “Soldiers should always salute their commander-in-chief... Acting President Abbard.”

* * *

“Think carefully of what you say and do in these chambers. Your task is to shape a new constitution, and a new nation. Our founding fathers wrote a constitution which they hoped would guide our nation forever. It is not our constitution which failed us, nor our founding fathers. It is we as a people who allowed to remain in office those who violated the spirit of the constitution while upholding the letter. It is our solemn duty to write a new constitution which embodies the continued wisdom of our forefathers, but where the spirit and the letter have both been buttressed into a fortress which will protect our nation until the end of days.”

- Acting President Leroy Abbard, as he then was, addressing the opening of the New England constitutional convention, 19 July 1933. Abbard would be elected unopposed as the first Governor-General of the Commonwealth of New England on 4 June of the following year.

* * *

4 March 1933
Columbia City, Federal District
United States of America

How many men and women crowded the ground between the Capitol and the Washington Monument? Half a million? Three-quarters of a million? The President-elect could not tell, and right now it hardly mattered. Celebrations were already underway from Philadelphia to Quito. A new era dawned. The election had been close, but he had never doubted the result.

He placed one hand on the Bible, and placed the other over his heart. He allowed the Chief Justice to speak the words first, and then he repeated them. “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He paused for a moment, then added, “So help me God.”

The cheers went on for a long, long time. He waited in silence until they subsided, and then stepped up to the podium. He knew he should have a long speech ready, but most of the crowd would not hear it, so why bother? He knew what he wanted to say. He knew what needed to be said. Anything further would have been vanity or insanity.

“Let’s get this country working,” said President Alvar O’Brien.

* * *

[1] Terry Rundle, the New England Secretary for Public Relations (i.e. propaganda).

[2] New England’s presidents are inaugurated on the last Tuesday in January in the year following their election; Mullins was re-inaugurated as president on 31 January 1933. This was a result of the Third Amendment to the New England constitution. Prior to that, New England’s presidents were inaugurated on 4 March, a date which is still maintained in the United States.

* * *

Thoughts?

Jared

P.S. Well, folks, it’s been a long, long time, but the main part of Decades of Darkness is now over. The history of the timeline has reached where I was always planning on stopping it. History goes on, of course, and so any ending is always going to feel incomplete in some respects, but I hope that at least this ending gave a certain sense of closure.

So, is this the end of DoD? Not quite. After allowing a few days for comments, I’ll be taking a sabbatical for a month or so. I need a break. When I get back, well, as I’ve mentioned on some previous occasions, there is some scope for epilogue posts, in a series which I’m planning on calling “Tales of the Decades of Darkness.” This is mostly open to any other contributors who think that they might have tales they want to tell. If you’ve got some ideas along those lines, drop me a line and we can discuss things. For obvious reasons, I need to reserve the final right to approve or decline any proposals for posts.

In the long run, I’m going to do some revision of the main timeline of Decades of Darkness and publish a new version. I’m also working on a novel set in the same universe, and I’ve also started work on a new timeline called Lands of Red and Gold. Those will be completed, well, when they’re finished.

Hope everyone enjoyed this timeline. Writing it has been fun.

Decades of Darkness #189: Shards Of A Broken World

“The greater powers of our time have come to the same place, but they will never stand on the same side.”
- Australian Prime Minister Lane, speaking on the first day of the Dublin Conference

* * *

Taken from: “Wars That Changed The World, Volume 1: The Great War”
(c) 1948 by Prof. Isamu Hayashi and Dr. Berndt Chou
Keio University, Tokyo, Empire of Nippon
English Translation by Kathryn Warner

Chapter 48: Legacy of the Great War

Of the defeated members of the Bouclier, none would be treated more harshly than France. Such was the inheritance of long Franco-German enmity and, paradoxically, the strong sense of French unity. Morocco and Aragon were distant and survived by accepting German overlordship. Britain’s own internal divisions meant it broke apart before it suffered full occupation. While the successor nations to Britain were subject to treaty restrictions and German forces permanently based on their soil, they still retained part of their sovereignty. Italy, the first member of the Bouclier to fall, lacked a strong sense of national unity and dissolved into civil war after military defeat. This meant that while Germany eventually intervened to impose a peace on the feuding factions, they found it more convenient to maintain a partitioned Italy than to sustain a costly occupation [1].

France, however, maintained its internal unity and sense of nationalism throughout the entirety of the Great War. While militarily defeated, the sense of French nationalism had persisted, and continued during the occupation period when Germany divided the former France into military districts. Resistance to German occupation, both violent and peaceful, began almost immediately after the defeat of France, and has continued at a lower intensity to the present day. For these reasons, Germany imposed partition on former France, although the governments of the new states have been plagued by perceptions of illegitimacy and subordinacy to Germany [2]...

* * *

“If I advance, follow me. If I retreat, kill me. If I die, avenge me.”
- Raoul Salan, co-founder of Solidarité Nationale Française, 1933

* * *

Excerpts from: “End of Empires: A Short History of the Great War”
(c) 1951 by Ronald Bunton
Eagle Eye Publishing, Richmond [Brisbane], Kingdom of Australia

The Great War started, in large measure, over Germany’s wish to retain a de facto empire over Central Europe. The question of the future of the Verein was put in abeyance for the duration of hostilities; within Hungary and Croatia themselves, German and allied forces sought simply to maintain order rather than re-establish full political control...

Victory in Europe brought Germany great pride, but it also brought with it great problems. The old Verein could not be restored in anything resembling its present form. The Hungarians and Croatians were willing to continue as friends of Germany, but they had not lost their underlying resentment of German primacy or of its financial systems. Courland had been lost to the Verein, a price which Germany had been willing to pay to buy Russian support, yet the tensions over that bargain would be long remembered. Most troublesome of all, Germany now had to determine how to rule the formerly hostile nations which it had defeated in the war...

There had never been any question that the Verein would continue as a free-trade zone. Too many corporations and people in too many nations relied on the trade links between the nations of Europe for there to be any serious discussion of abandoning the trade barriers. The critical issues in the negotiations were how the restored Verein would set broader fiscal policy, and how the traditional methods of military and political control could be adapted to the changed geopolitical reality of the new Europe.

The result was, inevitably, a compromise. The Grosseuropaische Wirtschaftsverein, the Greater European Economic Union, was formally created on 1 January 1935 and the old Verein dissolved. The name was chosen to represent the supposed Europe-wide structure and economic focus of the new body, but even on the day of its creation, few Europeans had any illusions that the GEEU was as much a military and political body as an economic forum.

From its inception, the GEEU was intended to function as much as a military alliance and vessel for German control of Europe as it was meant to be a free trade region. This was evident from the structure of the two main intergovernmental bodies in the GEEU; the Economic Council and the Security Council. The Economic Council had representatives from member states appointed on a weighted representation of population and economic strength, and had responsibility for co-ordinating economic and other non-security issues of common interest.

Within the Union, however, true power was vested in the Security Council, which had responsibility for common defence and any other matters which were deemed to affect the security of the GEEU or any of its member states. Nowhere was the purpose of the Union made more clear than in the formation of the Security Council. The body had nine seats. Three of those were permanently allocated to Austria, the Netherlands and Prussia, and those representatives also had the right of veto over all motions of the Security Council. The remaining six seats were allocated to all full members of the GEEU on a rotating basis. Four smaller German states [3] were also including in the rotation of seats on the Security Council...

Membership of the GEEU was divided into full and associate membership. Germany had automatic membership as a single nation; while some of its member states had separate representation on the Security Council, their representation on the Economic Council was assigned on a German-wide basis, not divided amongst the member states. The other full founding members of the Union were Poland, Hungary, Croatia, North and South Italy, England, Scotland, Cymru and Denmark. Associate members of the GEEU were part of the free-trade zone, but were not part of the military alliance. Associate members were permitted to send one observer to the Economic Council, who could speak but not vote, but they could not take part in any debates in the Security Council. There were initially three associate members: Albania, Montenegro and Aragon...

* * *

“The War of the Giants has ended; the wars of the pygmies begin.”
- Clement Churchill, describing the chaos of post-war Europe, 15 January 1933

* * *

Taken from “The New Oxford Historical Dictionary”
(c) 1949 New Oxford University,
Liverpool [Melbourne], Kingdom of Australia
Used with permission.

Dublin Conference (1933). The peace conference which is usually considered to mark the end of the Great War, although some sources consider the Great War to have continued until 1935 [4]. Held in Dublin, Ireland between 7 August and 14 November 1933. Attended by the heads of state or government of most of the surviving powers of the war and some nations which had not taken part: Germany, Russia, the United States, Nippon, Australia, South Africa, Ceylon, South China, Palestine, Ireland, Hungary, Croatia, Poland, Albania, Montenegro, England, Scotland, Cymru, Portugal, Aragon, Greece, Serbia, Castile, Abyssinia, Liberia, Sweden, Denmark, and New England.

In many instances, the conference simply ratified the separate peace agreements which had been reached between individual powers in the war. The main areas of contention were the unfinished negotiations between Germany and Nippon and the former British Empire, and the delineation of spheres of influence between Russia and Germany. The German-Allied negotiations were resolved through American mediation, while Russo-German negotiations came close to breaking down but were eventually concluded without the involvement of other parties. Both sets of negotiations saw the establishment of buffer states. Portugal occupied a buffer position in West Africa, while Russia established Syria and Lebanon as protectorates [5], and Palestine and Rashidi Arabia were recognised as neutral territory.

The other main outcome of the Dublin Conference was the establishment of the Council of Nations (q.v.), based in Dublin, as a forum for permanent communication and resolution of disputes between nations. All of the attendees to the conference joined the Council of Nations as founding members, and Rashidi Arabia was also invited as a founding member under German sponsorship. The disagreements between the attending powers meant that the Council of Nations had few specific powers except as a forum for discussion; the Assembly could hold debates and pass motions commenting on any aspect of world affairs, but these motions were not deemed binding on any member state. The Council Charter included a process for mediation on international disputes before either party should declare war, but there was no meaningful way of enforcing this clause...

* * *

“I admire the Council [of Nations], but I do not believe in it.”
- Russian Chief Minister Konstantin Kazimirovich Korovin, 1933

* * *

Taken from: “Wolves At The Gates: The Story of the Great War”
(c) 1951 by Noel Browne
Trinity Publishing: Dublin, Ireland

Russo-German cooperation had always included an element of tension during the war, but these strains became exacerbated during the concluding days of the war. In terms of external affairs, this was reflected in Russian diplomatic leaks of the terms of the Warsaw Accord, particularly the concession of Courland, which weakened German relations with its allies. The increasing tension would later be reflected in Russia retaining the new republics of Syria and Lebanon as protectorates, rather than allowing German control, and in Russian support for Abyssinian occupation of the former German Somaliland.

In internal affairs, the strains between the two emerging superpowers required them to amend their plans for the post-war world. Germany was forced to change the pre-war Verein structure into a new form which addressed the grievances of Hungary and Croatia. The new Union which emerged in Europe still preserved Germany primacy in defence and foreign affairs, but the other European nations were granted a meaningful voice in setting economic policy.

For its part, Russia found it prudent to formalise and extend the federal structure which had been developing before the war. Finland, Courland, Bulgaria, Thrace & Marmara, Bokhara, Khiva, Tuva and Tibet were recognised as ‘states in federation with Russia.’ Individual decrees specified the level of autonomy which each state possessed. Finland and Courland had almost complete control of all foreign affairs, to the point where they could set separate economic and tariff policies if they chose and maintained separate armed forces, while the other states had lesser levels of control. In time, more federated states would be added...

* * *

“Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language, another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand: ‘How many divisions have you?’”
- Werner Wolfgang vom Rath, then German Minister of Industry as part of the NLPP government [6], when attending the Dublin Conference as a member of the German delegation, 1933. (He would be elected German Chancellor in 1941, as the head of the United People’s Party.)

* * *

Taken from: “Wars That Changed The World, Volume 1: The Great War”
(c) 1948 by Prof. Isamu Hayashi and Dr. Berndt Chou
Keio University, Tokyo, Empire of Nippon
English Translation by Kathryn Warner

Chapter 48: Legacy of the Great War

... Like the Council of Nations, the foundations of the Restored Empire were laid during the Dublin Conference, but unlike the Council, the Restored Empire did not formally come into existence until the following year, and most of its membership would not admitted until 1939. The Restored Empire was a creation both symbolic and significant; many of its institutions were given titles and roles to suggest continuity with the vanished British Empire, but at its core it contained the functions needed to ensure that it survived as a meaningful alliance and economic pact.

The driving force behind the formation of the Restored Empire was the desire to maintain existence for the shards of the British Empire and the former German colonies which they had acquired. Australia and South Africa were the two principal powers who founded the Empire, but from its beginning the Empire was intended as a pact amongst equals. As the senior monarchy amongst the founding members, the King of Australia was established as the Restored Emperor, yet this was purely a symbolic office. The re-creation of the rank of emperor was not to give primacy to Australia, but as a symbolic act of defiance against Germany. The further symbolism of the restored imperial office was as justification for the military alliance of the Empire; since every acre of imperial soil was part of the Restored Emperor’s dominions, then an attack on one member state of the Empire was automatically treated as an attack on every member. Another principle which carried over from the old British Empire was for free movement of all imperial subjects within the Empire.

The principal purpose of the Restored Empire was to act as a defensive alliance, and to encourage trade and commerce amongst the member nations. Unlike the GEEU (which is sometimes cited as inspiration), the Empire was not a full free trade zone; member states were free to set their own tariffs and other economic policies, although free trade was encouraged. All member nations retained their national sovereignty, with the right to leave at any time of their choosing. While an Imperial Parliament was created at the founding of the Empire, this institution has largely become a sinecure, not a major forum for discussion between member states. A few initiatives are sometimes started in the Imperial Parliament, but in practice most important negotiations amongst the member states are held in yearly meetings of heads of government...

Most former British and German colonies would eventually opt to join the Restored Empire by the end of the decade. Siam opted to maintain cordial relations rather than become a formal member, Jamaica was never invited due to American attitudes, while South China was likewise never given the opportunity to join [7]. Bharat was far too populous and focused on independence to accept the proposed five-year transition period which had been instituted for other former colonies. Bharat had initially intended to go its own way entirely, although the chaos within the subcontinent would soon force amendments to those plans...

* * *

“Our founders made many wise choices when creating the Empire, but they made one glaring mistake. They chose as our motto ‘one empire, many peoples.’ They should have said, ‘one empire, many arguments.’”
- Attributed to Andrew Kelvin (later Baron Kelvin), junior member for Macquarie in the Imperial Parliament, 1946

* * *

16 November 1933
Providence Military Hospital
Outside Harlow [8], Essex
Kingdom of England

Dr Hans Asperger toured the ward of Providence Hospital, as he had done several times a day for the last month. This time, he had an English counterpart with him, a young medical graduate named Dr Eric Dax who had been assigned as liaison while Asperger treated the sick and injured prisoners of war.

We’ve been far more generous to these English than they deserve, Asperger thought. The treatment of the sick and injured was his life’s work, and he was as glad to treat ill English as ill Germans. Almost as glad, at least. Yet the way the occupation forces treated the English civilian authorities was far too generous, in his opinion. Dr Dax seemed to think that he had more right to be in this hospital than Asperger. The same generous attitude had been carried across to all levels of the occupation, as far as he could tell. That should not be the case. These English were the ones who had bombed defenceless civilians, who had broken the laws of war by using gas, and whose “home defence force” had murdered German prisoners of war during their uprising in support of the late, unlamented Neville Wood. They should be receiving the same treatment which was now being meted out to France.

Still, for all of his arrogance, Dax was astute in matters medical. He followed Asperger through the ward, and his occasional questions were to the point. Asperger came to the rooms set aside for the African recruits. England had used a couple of divisions recruited from their colonies in tropical Africa, and those soldiers had fought well, by all reports. They had honoured the ceasefire, when so many of the local English militias had not. Now they were prisoners of war, waiting for a decision on whether they would return to their homeland, or whether they would be granted citizenship. Some of them still got sick, of course, and Asperger treated them willingly enough, although with some communication difficulties since many of the African soldiers had only limited English.

Asperger paused before entering the first of the Africans’ rooms. “Do you know whether these Africans will be allowed to stay here?” These recruits came mostly from what had been British Equatorial Africa, which was now in Portuguese hands. He doubted that many of them wanted to accept the rule of a country which was the one voluntary Jackal ally.

“If they want to, they should be,” Dax said. “We should not forget those who fought alongside us.”

Asperger bit back a snide remark. The English had forgotten the Scots and the Welsh – Cymry, now, he supposed – who were still fighting alongside them when they abandoned the war. “Good. Let’s find out what maladies they have, then.”

Few of the prisoners of war had injuries sustained from the fighting itself; most of those were long since healed or dead. The occasional injuries he treated were usually the results of accidents. More common were various sicknesses which the prisoners had acquired from one place or another. The prisoners were well-fed, unlike what the English had done to the Boers they took prisoner in South Africa, but they still became sick at times.

They toured the Africans’ rooms in relative silence, asking only brief questions of the patients. No point discussing diagnoses in front of patients, of course. The patients included many who had caught influenza or other sicknesses which were common outside the prison camps, too. Some, though, had more puzzling illnesses.

Once they had left the Africans’ rooms, Asperger said, “What did you notice about those illnesses?”

“Influenza, mostly, and some other sicknesses I’m not sure about,” Dax said.

“Some with tuberculosis, but several other illnesses which aren’t usually seen,” Asperger said. “Quite a few of these African recruits have died of minor maladies, things to which no healthy man should succumb. I’ve conducted some autopsies, and heard about others. Toxoplasmosis, pneumonia caused by a yeast-like fungus which I’ve only seen before in a couple of very young and malnourished children, others with moulds infecting the respiratory tract, and some other illnesses I still don’t recognise.”

“I’ve heard of a couple of cases elsewhere, all amongst Africans,” Dax said. “Not as many has here, though. It’s strange. No one disease seems to be the cause.”

“None at all. There’s a number of distinct infections. I’ll probably find more, too,” Asperger said. “The only common link I can find is that these are all illnesses which should only afflict people who are already unhealthy.”

Dax said, “Odd. These soldiers should all have been in good health, or they would never have been recruited.”

“Indeed. The only possible explanation I can find is that perhaps these Africans have been weakened by living in such an unfamiliar climate.”

Dax looked thoughtful for a moment. “Perhaps, but then the French recruited soldiers from West Africa, too. Some of them fought here and in France, and I’ve heard nothing about similar sicknesses troubling those soldiers.”

“Neither have I,” Asperger said.

Dax added, “Besides that, we had Africans migrate here from the Caribbean a generation before. They had some minor health problems, but nothing like this.”

“This is quite the puzzlement, then,” Asperger said. He shrugged. “Nothing to be figured out for now, though I’ll keep an eye on it.” He started walking to the next room to continue his round of the ward.

* * *

17 November 1933
Dublin
Kingdom of Ireland

Edward Windsor [9] suspected that he would spend the rest of his life with a faint but irremovable sense of guilt for the fall of the United Kingdom. Still, he thought that he could forget it for a time, once he had other things to worry him. Such as now, with the difficulties he had faced residing in Dublin but not being permitted any involvement in the peace conference that had been held here.

Of course, he had occasional consolations. Another exile had recently come to Ireland from Britain-that-was, a man whose acerbic wit and boundless cynicism offered a new perspective on everything. Edward extended his arm, and shook hands with what had to be the least idealistic man alive. “A pleasure to meet you again, Clement.”

“Likewise,” Churchill said. “Here we stand, two exiles from a country which preferred that we grace her with our absence.”

Edward said, “Me for failing the State, you for being a gadfly on the rump of the State.”

Churchill chuckled. “An unexpected turn of phrase, coming from you. I think I’ll borrow that phrase for another time.” He paused, then added, “Of course, I’m glad to be exiled, since I wouldn’t want to live in what England is becoming. The good men of England lie buried under stone in France, while in England the little men have come out from under the stones.”

“Where would you want to live, then?” Edward asked, more to hear how Churchill phrased his reply than for any other reason.

“Anywhere that life calls,” Churchill said. “Perhaps here, perhaps Palestine.”

“Not Australia or South Africa, where so many of our countrymen are fleeing?”

“The safe life is the boring life,” Churchill said. “And where do you want to live, Your Majesty?”

Edward held up a hand. “I’ve renounced that title.” He could still be wearing a crown if he really wished, but the Scots did not really want him to come there, nor did he really want to remain anywhere in Great Britain. Scotland would be too close to England, to close to the memory of the country which had fallen apart. He preferred to let the Scots establish their own commonwealth, as they were calling it – a republic without being a republic, so far as he could tell. All the Celtic nations had to make an accommodation with the new world. Cymru and Scotland were dependents of Germany, Ireland was independent and the Isle of Man its semi-sovereign dependency.

“You could find another. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, but the head that says it wants no crown merely lies.”

Edward considered for a moment, whether he could take Churchill into his confidence. At length, he said, “As it happens, I have another throne in mind. One of the shards of the Empire which needs a new protector. Jamaica.”

Churchill’s eyes narrowed for a moment, then he grinned. Acerbic he might be, but he had never been a fool. “You want to take the crown so that the Americans will treat with you, when they would never speak to the Jamaicans themselves.”

“Precisely.” Jamaica was the one nation where his pursuit of a new crown would do some good. That was the last remaining fragment of the British Empire in the New World, and full of black men who were nothing but slaves in American eyes. As the monarch, he would be someone that even Americans could accept dealing with. “Only that will keep the island safe from the Americans’ depredations. Nothing else will, now that the Germans have won the war.”

Churchill let loose a sound which was as much bark as laughter. “You think that Germany won this war?”

“As much as any nation did,” Edward replied. “No nation got everything they wanted, after all. Germany triumphed in Western Europe and North Africa, even if they lost in the rest of the world. The United States has driven most foreign influence out of the Americans, but they have failed to stop Germany. Russia has obtained sweeping influence in the Middle East, but was checked in India and failed to break Nipponese power in the Far East.”

“Germany did not win,” Churchill said. “They lost the war in the moment they signed an accord with Russia, even if it will take them years to realise that fact.”

“Germany now rules all of Europe west of the Russian border,” Edward said. “I fail to see how you can consider that a loss.”

Churchill said, “Germany has not won anything except an endless quagmire. They have won the responsibility for trying to hold down a hundred million Europeans. They will now need to hold down Europe, while they have all the might of Russia on their eastern border. To match Russia’s strength, they will need to draw on all of Europe’s men and industry. Which they cannot achieve if half their armies are needed to garrison Western Europe. Russia can stir up endless trouble in German-ruled territories, far more than Germany can return the favour. The only way in which Germany will be able to match Russia is to treat all the nations of Europe as equal partners, not as conquered subjects. And if they need to do that, then they have not really won anything from this war, have they?”

* * *

[1] The relatively short-lived Italian Civil War resulted into the division of the country into two new nations. The Republic of Italy consists of the OTL Italian regions of Tuscany, Lazio, Molise, Abruzzo, Marche, and Umbria. It also includes part of the OTL Italian region of Emilia-Romagna; the provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Forlì-Cesena and Rimini are part of the Republic of Italy, while the provinces of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio Emilia and Modena were annexed to Germany. The Kingdom of Italy consists of the OTL Italian regions of Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia, as well as the island of Corsica (in OTL France).

[2] Germany annexed northern and eastern France, roughly everything north of the Seine and east of the Saone until that joins the Rhone, and then all former French territory east of the Rhone until that river reaches the Mediterranean. Paris and its environs were not annexed, but created as the Special Administrative Region of Paris. The remainder of France was divided into a number of puppet states which were based on historical (medieval) divisions of France: Normandy, Brittany, Maine, Anjou, Berry, Poitou, Gascony, Languedoc, Auvergne, and Burgundy. The borders of these new states do not always correspond with the medieval divisions.

[3] Bavaria, Hanover, Baden and Elsass-Lothringen.

[4] This is because the United States remained at war with Chile until 1935.

[5] The division of Syria and Lebanon was conducted for religious reasons; Muslims were the majority in Syria but non-Muslims formed the majority in Lebanon (only because the Russians considered the Druze as non-Muslim).

[6] The NLPP (National Liberal & Peoples Parties) is the main party in what was then Edmund Schulthess’s coalition government.

[7] The members of the Restored Empire aren’t particularly keen on being automatically committed to a war with Russia, particularly for a nation which has such a long and difficult-to-defend land border.

[8] TTL’s town of Harlow is what is called Old Harlow in OTL; the new town was built post-WW2.

[9] Similar to what happened in WW1 in OTL, the British royal family found it prudent to change the name of their dynasty to Windsor during the Great War. In OTL, the British monarchy was of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. ITTL, the British monarchy remained of the House of Hanover (since it continued in the male line instead of through Queen Victoria), but this was still considered too German-sounding a name during the Great War, so Richard IV changed the family name to the House of Windsor shortly before his death.

* * *

Thoughts?

Jared

P.S. The borders of France are too complicated to explain in words, but there will be a map forthcoming on the DoD website which will show the precise borders. They aren’t too far from the medieval borders, though.

Decades of Darkness Interlude #8: Kingdom of the Empty Throne

Credit for this post about the future of England in the DoD timeline goes to Ed Thomas.

* * *

Taken from:
Federal Intelligence Agency: The World Factbook – England (1953 edition)

Introduction

Inhabited since prehistoric times, England has been invaded and settled by a series of peoples, first by Celtic tribes, then by Romans, and finally by Anglo-Saxons. England emerged as a unified state in the 10th century, and emerged as the birthplace of parliamentary democracy. England took control of Cymru in 1282, and in 1707 unified with Scotland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain. As part of Britain, England was the birthplace of the industrial revolution and for most of the nineteenth century was the dominant industrial and maritime power. Eclipsed by the emerging superpowers in the 20th century, troubled by nationalism, and eventually invaded by Germany, the United Kingdom collapsed in 1932. England was re-established as a separate state on 7 December 1932. While England is formally a parliamentary monarchy, since his appointment in December 1932, the Lord High Steward, Field Marshal Sir John BLACKWOOD, has steadily consolidated personal power through semi-constitutional means. England faces a persistent national security crisis due to significant socialist resistance in London and some northern parts of the country. Government restrictions on freedom of speech, of the press and of assembly continue.

Geography

Location: Western Europe, island in the North Atlantic Ocean, east of Ireland, northwest of Germany and north of Brittany and Normandy.

Area (claimed, including inland water): 131,245 sq km

Area - comparative: slightly larger than North Carolina

Land boundaries: 154km with Scotland, 258km with Cymru (disputed)
Note: Although England administers Monmouthshire, its status is disputed with Cymru, which also claims the county [1].

Maritime claims: territorial sea: 12 NM

Climate: temperate maritime; temperate; moderated by prevailing southwest winds over the North Atlantic Current; more than one-half of the days are overcast

Terrain: mostly rolling hills, generally more mountainous in the north and larger areas of flatter land in the south and east.

Elevation extremes:
lowest point: The Fens, -4m
highest point: Scafell Pike, 978m

Natural resources: coal, iron ore, lead, zinc, gold, tin, limestone, salt, clay, chalk, gypsum, potash, silica sand, slate, arable land

Land use: arable land: 23.23%
permanent crops: 0.2%
other: 76.57%

Environment - current issues: water pollution

Geography – note: lies near vital North Atlantic sea lanes; only 35 km from continental Europe and linked by tunnel under the English Channel; because of heavily indented coastline, no location is more than 125 km from tidal waters

People

Population: 37,391,000 (January 1952 est.)

Nationality: noun: Englishman (men), Englishwoman (women), English (collective plural) adjective: English

Racial groups: English, Celtic, Black, East Indian

Religions: Protestant 76.1%, Catholic 19.4%, other 4.5%.

Languages: English (official), Kernewek
English is universally used, Kernewek is spoken by some in Cornwall.

Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 99%
male: 99%
female: 99%

Government

Country name:
Conventional long form: Kingdom of England
Conventional short form: England

Government type: Parliamentary monarchy.
Note: England is officially a kingdom, but in practice the throne is empty and the Lord High Steward rules on behalf of the absent monarch.

Capital: Winchester

Administrative divisions: 41 counties; Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, County Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Isle of Wight, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, County of London, Middlesex, Monmothshire (disputed), Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire.

Independence: 1 January 1933 (from United Kingdom)
National holiday: St George’s Day, 23 April
Legal system: Based on common law tradition with early Roman and modern continental influences
Suffrage: 21 years of age; universal

Executive branch:
Chief of state: This office is notionally held by the monarch, but the throne has been empty since the restoration of England. The effective chief of state is the Lord High Steward, Field Marshal Sir John BLACKWOOD (since 7 December 1932)
Head of government: Prime Minister Edward WILKINSON (since 8 January 1944)
Cabinet: appointed by the steward on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.
Elections: no executive elections, the role of monarch is hereditary, and the Steward’s succession is unspecified by law. Following legislative elections, the head of the majority party is sworn in by the steward.

Legislative branch:
Bicameral Parliament (Witenagemot) consists of the House of Lords (309 hereditary peers, 12 Law Lords, and a varying number of life peers, currently 413) and the House of Commons (410 members elected by popular vote to serve seven-year terms unless the House is dissolved earlier).

Elections: House of Lords – none. House of Commons: last held 14 March 1945.
Election results: House of Commons: National Party 372, Anmódnes [Unity] Party 19, New Liberals 15, Mebyon Kernow [Sons of Cornwall] 2, Independents 2.

Judicial branch:
House of Lords (highest court of appeal; Law Lords are appointed by the Steward for life); High Court of England.
International organisation participation: Greater European Economic Union (founding member)
Diplomatic representation in the USA: Chief of Mission: Ambassador Charles STRICKLAND
Diplomatic representation from the USA: Chief of Mission Ambassador Laurence LOPEZ

Flag description: red cross (St George’s cross) on a white background.

Economy

Economy - overview: England’s economy is in transition from its former position as a leading trading power and world financial centre to its current role as a member of the GEEU. The nation is still a major (although declining) trans-shipment point for many goods between Europe and North America. Over the past two decades the English government has greatly expanded public ownership of companies and has attempted to rationalise industry. Exports remain the primary driver for economic growth, and England is economically dependent on its continued membership of the GEEU.

Labour force: 17.2 million (1952 est.)
Unemployment rate: 6.1% (1952)
Currency: British pound

Military

Military branches: Home Army, Coast Guard, Sky Command
Military service and obligation - 16-33 years of age (officers 17-28) for voluntary military service. Conscription is not permitted under the Geneva Accord.
Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 8,341,440 (1952 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service: males age 15-49: 7,978,235 (1952 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually: males: 357,491 (1952 est.)

* * *

[1] It has long been a matter of dispute whether Monmouthshire is in Wales or England; all Acts applying only to Wales until 1956 referred to “Wales and Monmouthshire.” ITTL, this is more of a pressing issue...

* * *

Thoughts?

Jared

Decades of Darkness #188d: This England

Credit for this post on the history of Britain during the DoD timeline goes to Ed Thomas.

* * *

“It is with deep grief that I watch the breaking down of the British Empire with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind.”
- Clement Churchill, 1933

* * *

Taken from: “Guilty Men”
(c) 1933, ‘Junius’ [1]
Dorell Publications
London, Kingdom of England

It is clear to us now that Neville Wood was one of the most dangerous men to ever reach high office in this country. He was not a bull-headed revolutionary like Arnold Cooper, nor a hidebound, complacent reactionary like the other men in Whitehall who blandly asserted their liberal values while behind them the United Kingdom collapsed through their hopeless neglect. No, Neville Wood was a different beast entirely. For where other men held principles and ideals, however naive and indulgent, Wood did not. He was too intelligent for this, too calculating. The blood of The Prince flowed in his veins - for was he too not the scion of a proud merchant dynasty? In truth, there was only one thing that Neville Wood believed in, and that was Neville Wood...

When war came, it did so without altering a single facet of Wood’s character. That Britain faced a threat even more deadly and immediate than the one it had failed against a generation previously did not disturb the Prime Minister, and why should it have done? For him, German military power merely gave him the chance to trample his rivals using the weapon of national unity. The Germans gave Wood his most precious gift yet, the chance to clasp the Labour leadership even closer to his chest through the so-called ‘National Government’. In the autumn of 1929 Arnold Cooper and his friends did the bidding of their new master just as they had done three years earlier when he manoeuvred them into falling upon their own leader and splitting their movement; now, like a parasite realising that his existing host was almost spent, Wood prepared to latch on to the Labour Party...

* * *

Taken from: “Who Was Who: Prominent figures and important events in British History, 1837-1932”
(c) 1953, Eds Robert Wilkinson and James Berg
Eden University Press
Eden, Kingdom of Australia

FIELD MARSHAL SIR JOHN HENRY LEOFRIC BLACKWOOD, 5TH BARONET (31 July 1872 - 15 June 1953)

English solider and statesman; ruled England as Lord High Steward and Regent from 1932 until his death twenty-one years later. The descendant of Vice Admiral Henry Blackwood, and heir to the Naval Baronetcy [3], Blackwood was educated at Winchester School and Sandhurst. On 9 November 1891 he was commissioned into the East Devonshire Regiment as a second lieutenant. After serving as a junior officer in the Anglo-Philippine and Kingdom Wars, Blackwood spent several years at Camberley Staff College. When the North American War began he commanded a brigade on the New Caledonian front. In September 1906 he was seriously wounded when an unexploded shell detonated near his horst, and the incident left his right arm permanently disabled.

Blackwood returned to active duty in 1916 after spending the intervening years as a lecturer at Camberley. In 1918 he was given a posting to the Indian Northwest frontier, and in 1921 he first gained national attention when he commanded the British forces occupying southern Siam. Promoted to lieutenant general for his success, Blackwood achieved further fame four years later when he led British and Australian troops in defeating the Chinese revolutionary Hu Hanmin. When the Great War began in 1929, Blackwood was Britain’s most celebrated solider.

Blackwood spent the first year of the war in the Asian theatre in which he had first made his mark. Commanding British and Imperial forces, he masterminded the capture of Siam and German Indochina, as well as the Allied landings on Sumatra. Weeks before the invasion of Java, the Russian declaration of war saw him hurriedly recalled to supervise the defence of India, and here his strategy of ‘aggressive defence’ successfully forestalled any Russian advance on the subcontinent [4]. By now wildly popular at home as the one successful British general, Blackwood was a natural choice for the role of commanding the British Expeditionary Force in France, and during the course of 1931 the newly-promoted Field Marshal supervised a brilliant fighting retreat across the country, finally evacuating the Brittany pocket in late October having kept both his and New England forces intact [5].

With his reputation enhanced still further by the successful withdrawal from the Continent, Neville Wood had little choice but to swallow his own personal dislike of Blackwood and appoint him Commander in Chief of the British Home Forces and Chief of the General Staff...

* * *

Taken from: “Wolves At The Gates: The Story of the Great War”
(c) 1951 by Noel Browne
Trinity Publishing: Dublin, Ireland

Blackwood and Wood clashed from the very moment that the Marshal was appointed to coordinate the defence of the British Isles. The Prime Minister, unused to a man who could match his wits and was quite prepared to argue back, saw Blackwood as an arrogant upstart [6]. For his part, Blackwood was shocked both by the Prime Minister’s iron determination to continue the war no matter what and his relaxed attitude to what the Marshal saw as socialist subversion.

Their first dispute occurred just a week after Blackwood’s appointment. The Prime Minister, who had read and been impressed by the writings of Eunuco, pushed for the recruitment of a ‘Home Defence Force’ whereby every able-bodied man would be given a weapon and training on how to use it. The Marshal was appalled, and submitted a detailed memorandum to Wood explaining that ‘All this grossly irresponsible act will achieve will be to train a well-armed worker’s militia [7]. It is military worthless, and politically suicidal’. His misgivings were brushed aside; the Prime Minister tartly remarked that he was surprised that Blackwood was so unimaginative when it came to the defence of the nation, a charge that enraged the Field Marshal. It was a foretaste of things to come...

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

Britain on the eve of Operation Young Iron was a pale shadow of what it had been three years earlier. The war had taken a cruel toll; despite the best efforts of successive Governments to make the country self-sufficient, rationing still had to be introduced in 1930. The loss of the French and American fleets the following year meant that restrictions had to be tightened still further to meet reduced supply and the consequent skyrocketing food prices.

More worryingly, civil order was starting to break down in many parts of the United Kingdom. In the seven months since the creation of the Home Defence Force, the organisation had rapidly expanded. However, just as Marshal Blackwood had warned, the new units were almost exclusively drawn from political gangs, primarily socialists. While theoretically subject to military authority and their own robust command structure, in practice local units selectively disregarded orders from above; instead, they began to supplant the police and other official agencies on the grounds of ‘preserving national security.’

Soon, areas with broad socialist support, such as East London, Clydeside and much of the industrial north, started to become self-governing, as Labour Councils informally expanded their powers and used local HDF units to maintain order. While the majority of the Fyrd usually served in the yeomanry rather than the HDF, similar processes started to happen in Tory-dominated shires. By the summer of 1932, central government authority in the civilian sphere had largely dissipated; in the name of national unity, Neville Wood preferred to leave shire councils to run their own affairs while concentrating central government authority on the military sphere. Local authorities began to form ‘shadow governments’, a process which would accelerate in the six months after Zero Day...

* * *

Taken from: “The Death of Britain”
(c) 1953, Peter Dunn
Kashima Publishing
Cape Town, Kingdom of South Africa

A month after Zero Day, it became clear to British strategists that they faced an impossible dilemma. Despite the withdrawal of New England forces, despite the diminishing strength of the Royal Sky Force, growing rates of desertion and a sense of defeatism in the army, it was clear that the line could be held against the Germans - for now. Yet equally, the British forces lacked the strength to push the invaders back into the sea. On 1 September, Blackwood bluntly told Wood that he had done everything he could. The war had become a campaign of attrition; the Germans would continue making small advances as they were able to move in more supplies, and while the British forces could still hold them off for a considerable time, the best hope was for a diplomatic solution. The Marshal finished his note with a prophetic observation: “In my view it is entirely now a matter of which side loses the political will to fight first. It should not surprise you to know that I have grave doubts that it that side will be the enemy.”

* * *

Taken from: “Guilty Men”
(c) 1933, ‘Junius’
Dorell Publications
London, Kingdom of England

And what of the Prime Minister’s grand directive “No Surrender”? No doubt it was intended as a message of grim resolve against the German menace, but it hinted at a far deeper truth. For Neville Wood could not surrender. It was not in his blood - for in his own view he would never have to. Did not David Lloyd George call him the cleverest politician of his day? Wood thought, even as the Germans advanced on London, that he could find a way to turn things around - that he could use the ‘titanic intellect’ that we were all told about so many times so as to make things right. The answer stared him in the face: Peace, before it was too late! But that was the one thing Wood could not do.

Why? Why did he not make peace in 1930, and save the lives of countless thousands? Why not after the after the fall of France, or even after Zero Day? Wood had it in his power to save Britain and the lives of its inhabitants. It would have been an easy thing for him to do but he refused, because of his monstrous pride. For when did Neville Wood in his whole life ever apologise? Never, for he was never wrong! It was always the fault of lesser men, or circumstances, or bad luck. He could never admit he was wrong, for then he would admit that he was fallible. Neville Wood committed one of the greatest crimes possible. He put his own pride ahead of the millions of people who lived in the country he ruled. He was willing to see Britain burn to avoid having to eat his own words.

The other slogan of those ill-fated days was “You Can Always Take One With You!” But it was not a German that Neville Wood wanted to take down with him. It was the entire country.

* * *

Taken from: “Wolves At The Gates: The Story of the Great War”
(c) 1951 by Noel Browne
Trinity Publishing: Dublin, Ireland

Despite Neville Wood’s increasingly desperate proclamations of endless resistance against the invaders, in reality British morale was close to collapse. The death of King Richard IV in September after a long illness proved for many the final straw; the general public only took a few days to begin calling his young grandson and successor “Edward the Last.” Desertions skyrocketed as troops began to return home to their families, and despite the bitter resistance shown by the defenders, the advance of German troops was governed more by logistical considerations than by the increasingly feeble British counterstrokes. Blackwood and the General Staff warned the Prime Minister that an eventual collapse was inevitable; their predictions were borne out on 26 November, when the British positions around Ipswich finally collapsed and the Germans were able to drive into northern Essex.

By this point, few had any illusions that a German victory was inevitable. Yet to the astonishment and anger of the generals, Wood dismissed any consideration of a cease-fire and instead merely talked of arming the workers in London while the Government retreated to the West Country. Edward Jackson, his Private Secretary, noted how Wood declared that he ‘would not be like Francisco Alvorado or Juan Amero and medise Britain [8].’ That evening, Marshal Blackwood secretly met Cedric Bolingbroke, the War Secretary Adam Stewart and several other members of the Cabinet. A plan was hurriedly agreed; the king would be told to dismiss Wood as prime minister and an emergency Liberal-Conservative government would be installed that could negotiate peace with the Germans. The plotters hoped that the swift removal of Wood and the presence of the army on the streets of London would be enough to prevent any socialist resistance.

From here, events moved swiftly. The king’s permission was quickly obtained and loyal ministers warned. The 1st Westminster Dragoons - a unit of the yeomanry almost entirely comprised of members of the Fyrd - was positioned at the Wellington Barracks near Buckingham Palace in case of trouble. Then, events intervened. At 10 AM on 30 November, Wood signed a directive ordering the renewed use of poison gas against German positions in Essex. Blackwood immediately countermanded the order and decided, without informing the other plotters, that Wood should be taken into ‘protective custody’ immediately...

* * *

30 November 1932
Downing St
London, United Kingdom

Harold Sanderson straightened his uniform, nervously fingered his fob-watch and then opened the staff-horst’s door, watching approvingly as the two lorries behind it disgorged their contents - two sections of dragoons - across the street. The policeman standing outside the famous door stepped forward. “Can I help, sir?” he asked.

Sanderson saluted. “Good afternoon, officer. I have been sent here by Field Marshal Blackwood. I have a verbal message for the Prime Minister. May I come through?”

The policeman nodded. Sanderson turned to his troops. “Guard the entrance to Whitehall. I don’t want anybody to be let into the street. Sykes, Peterson; come with me.”

The three men climbed the staircase. They had just reached the photograph of George Hamilton when a voice came from above. “Mr Sanderson! So good of you to join us.” Neville Wood leant over the balustrade and raised his eyebrow sardonically. “And so thoughtful of Blackwood to send a loyal Tory to see me!”

Sanderson pulled his warrant from his pocket. “Neville Wood, by the order of the king I hereby-”

Wood raised his hand. “I know why you’re here, Sanderson. The defeatists have finally gained the upper hand, and have sent you here to arrest me so that you can treat with Schulthess. Well I’m not going to let you. I have friends of my own, you see. True British patriots, not little Englanders like you. Comrades?”

Three men, dressed in North American War-vintage infantry uniforms with green armbands stepped from behind him. They raised their rifles at Sanderson and his soldiers. The Prime Minister grinned. “I’ve known about your little plan from the start. Luckily the workers, and the brave men of the Home Defence Force won’t stand for it. We will fight to the end, Sanderson. As I have always said: No surrender!”

He stepped out of view; the two men followed him. Outside, the shooting started.

* * *

Taken from: “The Death of Britain”
(c) 1953, Peter Dunn
Kashima Publishing
Cape Town, Kingdom of South Africa

The Army’s failure to arrest Wood was the spark that lit the tinderbox. The British did not have much experience with coups, and this soon showed; by nightfall on 30 November, much of East London was on fire thanks to Socialists outraged by Blackwood’s ‘treachery’. The military’s initial claim that the violence was being perpetrated by French socialists was soon rendered farcical when the rebels began broadcasting to the nation. Nonetheless, by this stage the sobriquet “Communard” had stuck, and violence in Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow soon followed.

As fighting spread across the nation, Marshal Blackwood and his new Government based in Guildford immediately requested a ceasefire with the Germans ‘to enable the rightful authorities in this country to maintain order’. No friend of socialists himself and happy to allow his own forces extra time to build up supplies, Chancellor Schulthess decided to grant the Marshal’s wish. On 4 December at Newmarket Railway Station, an armistice was signed between British and German forces...

* * *

3 December 1932
Chapel of the Royal Grammar School
Guildford, United Kingdom

This is a strange place for a Cabinet Meeting, thought Cedric Bolingbroke, as he watched Marshall Blackwood outline the latest news from the fighting in London. Although it’s not really a proper Cabinet. Neville Wood had finally been captured – thank God – but even almost a week after the first bungled attempt, the men who sat in the choir stalls of the Royal Grammar School’s Chapel could not really call themselves an official government. Nor was there any doubt whatsoever about who was in charged. As he watched the Marshal pace between the stalls, Bolingbroke was reminded of the schoolmasters of his childhood.

Marshall Blackwood turned; he was in the middle of speaking about the situation elsewhere in the United Kingdom. “Let us be frank. It is difficult enough for us to take back London and hold our positions in the north of England. We will not be able to hold down Wales and Scotland. Not without German help.”

Bolingbroke rolled his eyes at the glum faces that stared back at him, and stood to speak. “Then let them hang! Let the Welsh speak their own tongue and have their disestablished church! Let the Hibs [9] have their own little state to do with as they please! We cannot control them, so why try? They’ll only bring us down if we do.” He turned to the other people in the stalls. “Which would you rather, preserve England, or ensure the creation of a Socialistic Republic of Britain?”

There was a moment’s silence. Adam Stewart broke it. “Cedric, I know you Tories always banging on about home rule, but are you really suggesting the dissolution of the United Kingdom?”

Bolingbroke stared at him, his eyes cold and hard. “Britain is dying. The Jackals have abandoned us just as we warned you they would. Mullins has walked away from us - with good reason, if you ask me. The colonies are too far away to be of any help. You’ve seen what the Germans have done in Italy and France. We have to salvage what we can of England. Let Scotland and Wales fight alongside Ireland if they wish.”

He paused, then added, “Think of this, too. The Germans will squeeze us dry, given the opportunity. Reparations, restrictions, bases, as the Jackals did to New England after the last war, only this time England will bear the brunt. But what if we could shift the burden?”

Blackwood raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Bolingbroke toyed with the Seax at his belt. “It is quite simple. Tomorrow, you should make a funk broadcast. Tell the people the truth: the government no longer exists in any meaningful form. The king has fled to Ireland. We have been failed by them both, and so have to seek our own destiny. Announce that England has left the United Kingdom. Let the Empire, the Welsh and the Scots fight a hopeless war if they want. But it will not be on our soil. We shall extend the hand of peace to Germany, not as a defeated power, but as a new nation. The others can go hang.”

Blackwood stared at the other men for a long time. None said a word. Finally, he sighed, then spoke. “We are good Anglo-Saxons. We have been defeated by invaders from the east before, and found that the only way to beat them was to appease them for a time. Very well, Cedric. Danegeld it is.”

* * *

Taken from: “The Death of Britain”
(c) 1953, Peter Dunn
Kashima Publishing
Cape Town, Kingdom of South Africa

On 6 December, the British House of Commons met for the last time. Westminster having been abandoned, the sitting was held in the grand surroundings of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, where many government departments had relocated. Only 127 Members of Parliament were present; all that could be found after the fighting in London and the subsequent flight of most of the Labour MPs into hiding or exile. There was no debate, little ceremony, and no pretence at political balance. The vast majority of MPs present were Tories and Liberals, with a scattering of nationalists and a solitary Labour MP, the imperturbable John Maclaren, who had defied the threat of arrest and sneaked into the auditorium to participate in the vote. That evening, MPs voted 98 to 53 to pass the Emergency Government Act, which granted Marshal Blackwood extraordinary powers until the end of the crisis.

With this final act accomplished, Parliament dispersed forever. Three hours later, the United Kingdom would follow its Parliament. At 2AM on 7 December 1932, Marshal Blackwood signed a document proclaiming England’s withdrawal from the United Kingdom, its establishment as a sovereign state, and declaring the new nation’s friendship to Germany. A few hours later, the king made his own broadcast from Ireland...

* * *

From a funk broadcast made by King Edward VIII on 7 December 1932

At long last I am able to say a few words of my own. I have never wanted to withhold anything, but until now it has not been constitutionally possible for me to speak.

A few hours ago I discharged my last duty as king and emperor. I now lay down my burden and withdraw altogether from public affairs. It may be some time before I return to my native land, but I shall always follow the fortunes of the British race and empire with profound love. If at any time in the future I can be found of service to my people in a private station, I shall not fail. However, filled with an unalterable love for my countrymen I will not, with my person, be a hindrance to their free development.

I acknowledge the decision taken by England to form a separate state. Marshal Blackwood has taken temporary charge of the government. I relinquish all participation in the administration of the state for the time being, and entrust my powers to the Marshal. Likewise I have released the English members of the government from their offices.

I hope with all my heart that the English people now realise happiness and prosperity from the new adjustment. The happiness of my countrymen is, and always has been, my only aim. My warmest wishes are that an internal peace will be able to heal the wounds of this war.

God bless you all.

* * *

29 September 1933
Wardlow Mires
Derbyshire Dales, Kingdom of England

James Clarke gladly took the pint glass offered to him by the barmaid and drank deeply. He noticed the other men in the pub doing the same; most of them looked as hungry and dishevelled as he did. A strange place to conduct a political gathering, he thought; but then shrugged. Few places closer to civilisation were safe these days, so where better than a tiny watering hole in the middle of the Peaks? He drained his glass and smiled. The beer alone made the long journey worthwhile [10]. As he signalled to the barmaid for another, the door opened and the forbidding great-coated man who had been guarding the entrance walked in, followed by a tiny, almost child-like figure. She was dressed as a farm labourer in a headscarf and a dirty tweed jacket, and her trademark fiery red hair was greying, but there was no mistaking the new arrival.

Barbara Wilkinson, former Education Secretary and the infamous ‘Green Lady’ of pre-war politics surveyed the room. The twenty men who had travelled from across the north of England fell silent to stare at her. Clarke saw that famous smile light up her dainty features. “Hello, everyone. I don’t know all of you, and it’s probably best if it stays that way. I don’t want to compromise any of you if I am arrested. Now, listen very carefully. I will only say this once.”

She paused, and Clarke carefully set his new pint on the bar, its contents forgotten for now.

“The reason I have called you here is simple. It is to make sure that even as the class struggle moves into a new phase, the labour movement continues to fight. Things are not good, but it is all as Marx predicted. Parliamentary government has been overthrown. It is the last spasm of the dying aristocratic class, and it will weaken capitalism enough for us to make our own move. We must be honest. Our first attempt failed. But it ensured that there is no doubt as to what opposes us.

Marshal Blackwood’s government is nakedly oppressive. He knows that to give the people their say would allow us to win. Behind him lies the full weight of the German war machine. But we have friends, too. As I speak, two other meetings are taking place in the south between local leaders such as yourselves and the representatives of the National Committee. England has not escaped tyranny, but Scotland and Wales remain free, and we have supporters there, and other friends across the seas. I will discuss the measures we are taking later. But first, I want you to know that there is hope for England. We will prevail.”

She looked around the room; Clarke saw her stare at each of the tough, often malnourished men in turn and smile. Grimly, they smiled back.

“I want you to go you go back to your towns and cities, and prepare for revolution. I can’t give you equipment, or guns. But I can give you words. When I was growing up in Salford, I read a poem that has stayed with me ever since. It sums up everything I fight for. I want to read part of it to you.”

She leant forward and dropped her voice slightly.

“I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land [11].”

Wilkinson continued speaking, but Clarke was no longer listening. He stood, staring at the diminutive revolutionary and the tough, careworn and dirty men who were devoted to her. We can build a New Jerusalem, he thought. It will be hard, and bloody, and painful. But we will succeed. In the end, we shall succeed.

* * *

11 November 1933
Winchester Castle Great Hall
Winchester, Kingdom of England

“Marshall Blackwood will see you now, sir.”

Nodding his thanks to the aide, Harold Sanderson entered the Great Hall. As he did so, he glanced upward at the famous ‘round table’ hanging on the opposite wall. In the centre of the room a small desk had been hastily erected on an incongruously small square of carpet. Its occupant glanced up at the sound of footsteps and put down his pen. The famous voice filled the hall with a bass rumble.

“Harold! Do come in and sit down.”

Marshal Blackwood indicated the chair opposite, and while Sanderson sat, the Marshal casually used his one good hand to open his cigar case, place a cheroot in his mouth and light it with a march. Sandersoon took the opportunity to examine the man who the newspapers - those which remained open, anyway - called ‘the Deliverer of England.’ Even with his half-empty right sleeve, Blackwood had a powerful physical presence; medals covered his immaculate uniform, his pencil-thin moustache and keen, diamond-hard eyes added to the image. Sanderson knew that this was a man who meant business.

The Marshal leaned back in his chair. “Good to see you again. Do you know why I wanted to see you?”

Sanderson inclined his head. “I’d thought maybe something to do with the transfer of government functions to Winchester.”

Blackwood took a drag from his cheroot, then gestured at the map of Britain standing on an easel near his desk. “Not a bad guess, but not quite right. My emergency powers give me the ability so suspend all forms of local government. That is just a stop-gap, though. It will not do for the long term. We need to think about the Reconstruction Effort.” The way Blackwood spoke made the capital letters quite clear.

The Marshal continued, “The pre-war system is inadequate. A miscellany of incompetence. The county and borough councils are full of ditherers and shirkers. Liberals, in other words. And that will not do!” The Marshal’s good hand slammed into his desk.

“How can I help, sir?” Sanderson asked.

Blackwood paused to light another cheroot, then said, “The councils are no longer of any concern to us. I have dissolved them permanently. But the counties need strong, dynamic leadership just as much as the nation. That’s why I’m reforming their governance. The old councils will be replaced with good, patriotic local leaders. Men that I can trust to push on with the reconstruction effort, in other words. You are one of those men, Harold. You’ve been loyal and effective as an MP, now I need you to serve not just Tavistock, but the whole county.”

He stared directly into Sanderson’s eyes. “I want to appoint you Sheriff of Devonshire. You will answer directly to me. You will be delegated most of my powers within the county. What do you think?”

Sanderson did not need to think. “If that’s the best way to serve my country, then yes, I gladly accept.”

The Marshal flashed a tight smile. “I knew I could rely on you... Sheriff. Your first task will be to ensure the dispersal of the items at the experimental firing range on Dartmoor. I won’t let the Greens get their hands on them, and I certainly won’t let the Germans take them back across the Channel. Tell the inspectors that there was an accident. They won’t believe us, of course, but they might think that they’ve disappeared on a boat northwards.”

Sanderson nodded stiffly. “Yes, sir!”

He turned to leave. “Oh, and Harold... Stamp on the Greens, but do not punish the patriots too harshly. We need to retain deniability. Allow the occasional theft of weapons and money, but keep them at arm’s length. We will need such men when the time comes.”

Blackwood stood and stretched out his good arm. “England prevails, Harold.”

Sanderson shook the hand of the Deliverer. “England prevails.”

* * *

[1] ‘Junius’ was the pseudonym of a notorious anonymous polemicist of the eighteenth century. The author (or authors) of this pamphlet has adopted the name to hide their own identity, a sensible move for an English writer in the immediate aftermath of the Great War.

[2] The author is of course referring to Machiavelli at this point, although he neglects to mention that he was not much of a trader himself.

[3] Henry Blackwood was one of the most celebrated Royal Naval commanders of the Napoleonic period, and brought news of Trafalgar back to Britain in 1806. In 1814 he was created ‘Baronet Blackwood of the Navy’.

[4] Essentially Blackwood followed the traditional British strategy of advancing to the ‘scientific frontier’ in Afghanistan and then daring the Russians to attack; unlike many of Blackwood’s campaigns it was not a difficult one, but by this point his fame has grown to make anything seem like a victory of sorts.

[5] The actual evacuation of Brittany did not require any particular military skill on Blackwood’s part; the Germans were willing to let them flee, since at that point they wanted to explore a negotiated peace with Britain, and let the Allied forces withdraw unopposed as a goodwill gesture.

[6] Blackwood and Wood’s working relationship bears many similarities to Alanbrooke and Churchill’s relationship IOTL; however, Wood is not as tolerant of people prepared to answer him back, and so things quickly sour.

[7] OTL, many prominent people (most famously George Orwell), expected the Home Guard to do exactly this. ITTL there is more of a prospect of this because of greater socialist militancy and the fact that there are already organised left-wing street gangs.

[8] Alvorado and Amero were the last Presidents of El Salvador and Colombia respectively, both of whom surrendered their countries to the Americans. Medise is the verb form of TTL’s version of ‘quisling’, based on José María Medina, who was first installed as president of Honduras with the support of American filibusters, and ultimately (under duress) invited U.S. military forces in to support his regime against his own people.

[9] An ATL derogatory term for Scottish Labour, referring to their base of support in Catholic Glasgow.

[10] A reliable source states that this remains the case across timelines, and that even in OTL the Three Stag’s Heads is fantastic.

[11] Blake’s poem of 1804 is not as well known as OTL, mainly as it hasn’t been set to music. (In OTL, it was created into the hymn "Jerusalem" in 1916.)

* * *

Thoughts?

Jared
http://alternatehistory.com/decadesofdarkness/
http://decadesofdarkness.blogspot.com/

Decades of Darkness #188c: Seat of Mars

Credit for this post on the history of Britain during the DoD timeline goes to Ed Thomas.

* * *

“There’s an east wind coming, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind, none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.”
- Sir Arthur Ignatius Doyle, British author, in “The Day The World Stood Still,” 1927. Written on the eve of the Casablanca Crisis, although not published until after the war scare was over (for that year, at least).

* * *

Taken from: “Marching Under The Green Flag: The History of Socialism”
(c) 1952, David Kelvin
Eagle Publishing Company: Sydney. Used with permission.

The Lloyd George administration will be forever marked as the great missed opportunity of British Socialism. For the first time, Labour had achieved office; the Liberal Party was demoralised and defeated, while the Tories were still reduced to a poor third place. Socialists across the country were delighted; even moderates like Daniel James expected ‘the creation of a brave new world’, while the far-left muttered darkly about following the example of Newfoundland. In the event, both groups were sorely disappointed.

Despite the great victory, the Labour Party nonetheless had to confront the practical realities of power. Labour’s test was to prove that it too could be a governing party; that it could balance ideological fervour with pragmatism. The results of this test would not be particularly favourable. The main stumbling block for the ideologues was that although it was the largest party in Parliament, Labour remained several votes short of a majority. Coalition with the Tories, the Liberals or the Scottish Party [1] was politically impossible, and so Lloyd George was forced to look elsewhere for allies. There was only one other option. In June 1923, a prolonged series of negotiations led to the Cymry Nationalists entering the Government. Ioan Jones, the Cymraeg leader, took the new post of Minister for Wales [2], and was given the task of examining the best method by which the Principality could gain Kingdom Status...

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

David Lloyd George was not a revolutionary in the mould of the great Labour rabble-rousers like Arnold Cooper or Tom O’Brien. While capable of fiery speeches and passionate rhetoric about social reform, his views remained rooted in an acceptance of the basic status quo; it was this fact that first enabled his election. However, the chasm between the new Prime Minister and his internal critics was more than political. David Lloyd George was the last of the Labour Party’s founding generation [3]; the formative moments of his political adolescence were the struggles to unionise and the protests against the Kingdom War. He had little in common with the new breed of intensely ideological Socialists who had followed him into parliament after the Great North American War, and saw them as self-indulgent and impractical; for their part, they saw him as a cautious fool, better suited to making grandiloquent speeches than transforming the country. Clement Churchill’s savage judgement of Lloyd George as ‘The Welsh Windbag’ strongly resonated amongst the Left...

The Prime Minister’s opponents, both within the Labour Party and outside it, needed an angle of attack; an Achilles heel which could be ruthlessly targeted. They soon found it; Lloyd George’s weakness was Wales. By autumn 1923, the new Liberal leader Neville Wood was regularly insinuating that the Prime Minister was merely a ‘Trojan Horse’ for Welsh nationalism and his coalition with the Cymry Nationalists would break up the United Kingdom. After all, English was not even his first language [4]!

Lloyd George did little to counter such criticisms, and in fact he almost went as far as to wilfully embrace his own stereotype. His cabinet had several prominent ministers from Scotland and Wales, and he deliberately excluded Arnold Cooper from office, feeding the growing suspicion felt by the ‘King of London’ [5] that Englishmen were being marginalised in the Party. In a dreadful political miscalculation fuelled by the Cymry Nationalists, the Labour Government’s first major piece of legislation was the Welsh Church Act, which separated the Welsh Anglican Church from the Church of England as a first step to disestablishment [6]. The resulting parliamentary debates gave the Liberals and Tories the ideal opportunity to seriously damage the Government’s credibility, and Cedric Bolingbroke famously mocked the Labour Left for their Prime Minister’s lack of a radical Socialist agenda; “I thought you were going to usher in a brave new world? Is the Government all tip and no iceberg?”

The Labour Government did enact some important legislation; it expanded social provision though a new Pensions Act and an Unemployment Act, established the Royal Sky Force as a separate arm of the military and began a major series of public works that would later be resurrected under the Blackwood regime. There were even some nods to radical shibboleths such as the 1925 Citizenship Act, which drastically restricted immigration [7]. Despite these advances however, partly through the ruthless repetition of the ‘Trojan Horse’ slur by the Prime Minister’s critics and partly through Lloyd George’s own quixotry, the ‘Welsh issue’ was never far from the surface of the Labour Government. Finally, in February 1926 David Lloyd George decided to confront the matter head on...

* * *

Taken from: “The Death of Britain”
(c) 1953, Peter Dunn
Kashima Publishing
Cape Town, Kingdom of South Africa

As Parliament returned for the 1925-1926 session, it was becoming obvious to all that the Labour Government was dying. The pressures of coalition, endless squabbles over Welsh issues and the internal split within Labour between Lloyd Georgites and anti-Lloyd Georgites had destroyed any attempt at ‘business as usual’, and the Prime Minister knew that his own position was in severe danger.

The ironies of history can be a cruel thing. David Lloyd George had entered politics in the first place partly in reaction to Hamiltonian Conservatism, wanting to prevent the Conservatives from winning working class support through the cynical promise of welfare and pensions. Now, just as James Hamilton had done forty years before, he decided to confront the issue crippling his government head-on and propose major constitutional reform. The Cochrane Commission, which had been established in 1923 to discuss Welsh Kingdom status, finally gave its report in December 1925, a year late. It recommended an overhaul of Britain’s constitutional arrangements, with the devolution of some powers to England, Wales and Scotland. Amidst growing criticism of the commission, which had increasingly become a running joke for its constant delays and cost-overruns, the Prime Minister decided to raise the stakes; on February 1926 he announced that he rejected the Cochrane Commission’s report and instead favoured Kingdom Status for the Home Nations and the establishment of an Imperial Federation, if agreement could be reached between the nations of the Empire...

* * *

Extract from: The Encyclopaedia Recidivus (3rd edition)
Editor-in-chief Lord Percy Kelvin III
(c) 1949 New Cambridge University Press
Sydney, Kingdom of Australia
Used with permission.

LAMBETH CONFERENCE: Imperial conference called by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1926 as a desperate gambit to stave off the collapse of his government, intended to discuss the creation of an Imperial Federation. The Conference took place between July and October 1926, and brought together the leaders of all the Kingdoms in the British Empire as well as representatives from the colonies.

Although no definitive agreement was ever reached, the conference played an important role in exploring the federative options available to countries within the Empire, and popularised the concept of greater Imperial unity, particularly in South Africa and Ireland. The main product of the debates was the ‘Lambeth Manifesto’, which was published in August by the South African delegation as an attempt to restart negotiations. The Conference was overshadowed by the increasing political difficulties of the British Government, as well as Bharati and Palestinian demands for Kingdom status. On the collapse of the Lloyd George Government it was abandoned entirely. The only point of agreement reached was the decision to grant Kingdom status to Palestine, which was implemented the following year...

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

The novelty of Lloyd George’s gamble at Lambeth staved off the Government’s collapse for nine months, but as negotiations stalled and tempers frayed, it soon became apparent that an agreement was unlikely. By then, the political landscape had shifted. The Prime Minister found himself increasingly close to the nationalists, even the Tories, in trying to push through reform; the Labour Left meanwhile found for the first time that Neville Wood was surprisingly amenable to discussion, a fact that would pave the way for the National Government three years later...

The final straw came in late September; Conservative support for the Prime Minister’s proposals had always enraged the Labour Left, and when it emerged that Cedric Bolingbroke had been invited to Downing St to discuss negotiation tactics, Arnold Cooper decided that he had had enough. A last-ditch attempt to mend the rifts in the Labour movement failed as the relationship between Cooper and the Prime Minister became increasingly bitter. Finally on 30 September, after secret discussions between Cooper and the Liberals, Neville Wood called for a no-confidence motion in the House of Commons, which was then supported by many Labour rebels. A furious Lloyd George found himself unceremoniously dumped by his own party in favour of a minority Government led by Neville Wood. His break with the Labour Party was almost complete...

* * *

Taken from: “Imperial Federation, from the Albany Plan to the Cape Town Declaration”
(c) 1951, Philip Westhead
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

The Lambeth Conference achieved little in immediate terms. The famous ‘manifesto’ was rendered immaterial by the Lloyd George Government’s increasing political woes, and then was repudiated entirely when Neville Wood finally toppled the embattled Labour Prime Minister. The failure of the Federalists seemed complete. By the time 1927 dawned the great ideal of a united Imperial structure, that had persisted since before the American Revolutionary War, appeared to have been killed off by Bharati intransigence, Australian apathy and internal British political squabbling.

Yet despite all appearances, the ideal was not dead. As the conference began, a sceptical Australian Member of Parliament who happened to visiting London decided to attend a speech by the new South African Premier Hofmeyr, extolling the virtues of Imperial Federation. “That speech,” he later recalled, “changed my entire perception of world affairs more than any other single event.” Seven years later, Lane shared a platform with the man who had so impressed him in London, as the Prime Ministers of the two major Kingdoms proclaimed the establishment of the Restored Empire...

* * *

Taken from: “Who Was Who: Prominent figures and important events in British History, 1837-1932”
(c) 1953, Eds Robert Wilkinson and James Berg
Eden University Press
Eden, Kingdom of Australia

NEVILLE STUART MACMILLAN WOOD (22 March 1864 - 30 December 1932)

Last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; held office from October 1926 until his arrest on 29 November 1932. The eldest son of the shipping magnate Stuart Wood, he was educated at Rugby and Trinity College Cambridge. After graduating he joined his father’s firm, and was made a full partner in the business in 1889. Spurred on by a passionate dislike of Tory Hamiltonianism, Wood stood as a Liberal candidate in the Withington Division of Manchester in 1896, a seat he would represent for the rest of his life.

Wood rose rapidly as a Minister in the Spencer-Churchill government, entering the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade in 1913 and then being appointed as Chancellor two years later. His indifferent handling of the financial crisis saw his resignation in 1920, and he languished on the backbenches during the short-lived Pakenham Government. Wood’s taste for plotting and his increasing domination of the Party machine meant that he was well-placed to succeed his former colleague following the Liberal defeat in 1923, and during the Lloyd George premiership he made his reputation as an extremely effective, if dour, champion against Government ‘waste and indulgence.’

On the collapse of the Labour Government in October 1926, Wood was invited by the King to form a minority Liberal administration. Buoyed by the widening splits in the Opposition, he promptly requested the dissolution of Parliament that spring in an opportunistic attempt to obtain a parliamentary majority...

* * *

Taken from: “The Death of Britain”
(c) 1953, Peter Dunn
Kashima Publishing
Cape Town, Kingdom of South Africa

On a cold autumn day in October 1926, the dissolution of the United Kingdom suddenly became a tangible possibility. As Neville Wood, the last Prime Minister, stood to make his first statement as Britain’s premier, David Lloyd George, John Thomas and Dylan Jones entered the Chamber of the House of Commons. Without saying a word, they walked past the Labour benches and sat with the Cymry Nationalists. The Commons erupted with startled cheering from the government and nationalist benches, and incandescent rage from the opposition. The former Prime Minister had called Arnold Cooper’s bluff; four years of taunting from the Left had driven Lloyd George and his friends into the arms of his sole remaining allies. His defection gave Welsh nationalism the boost it needed to break out of the rural north into the valleys, and during Britain’s last general election the Cymry Nationalists doubled their number of seats at Westminster from eight to sixteen...

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

On the surface, Neville Wood’s decision to go to the country had been triumphantly vindicated. His government had been returned with a slim but manageable majority, and the Labour Party had been routed, particularly in Wales. In reality however, the picture was more complex, and held both comforting signs and potential dangers for the Liberals. It was little noted at the time that Wood had disproportionately benefited from the electoral system; while the disparity in seats between the Opposition and Government was huge, this only translated to a tiny absolute Parliamentary majority because the three combined Nationalist parties had won nearly as many seats as Labour had, and had split the Opposition vote. Britain’s last general election saw the Liberals as the only truly national party, being opposed by Labour in the cities and the nationalists in the towns and countryside; few Liberals at the time realised that while their support base was extremely wide, it was also dangerously shallow compared with the geographically limited, but popular alternatives offered by the other parties.

Ironically given the future course of events, almost everyone in Westminster that spring expected the Wood administration to be primarily concerned with economic affairs and the restoration of political stability after the turbulent Lloyd George years. There were some clues that this might not be the case; the signing of the Andorra Pact in January 1927 demonstrated that the new Prime Minister would continue David Lloyd George’s scepticism towards Germany even if he dismissed every other policy decision made by his predecessor. It was only when the Casablanca Crisis erupted that July that the full implications of this stance became clear...

* * *

Taken from “The British Almon”, Volume 278: 29 May - 12 June 1929
The Irish Almon Society
Crown Copyright, Kingdom of Ireland [8]

Column W567, 11 June 1929

Mr Harold Sanderson: Mr Speaker, twenty-four years ago, I sat in this chamber and listened to the then-Prime Minister send us to war. Tonight, the Prime Minister has done the same, albeit in a characteristically less memorable fashion. (Interruption)

Mr Sanderson: The Members opposite jeer, but they were not there! The Prime Minister’s style of address was appropriate, for we are in a less heroic age today. An age that began eighteen months after Mr Disraeli sent us to war as the ‘Trustees of Liberty’, when he signed the Treaty of Washington. His Foreign Secretary, the late Sir Edward Vickers, commented on that day that the ‘world had turned upside-down.’ I wonder, having uttered these words, what Sir Edward would have to say if he could be here today.

For the world is now truly turned on its head! How horrible it is that we sit here now, having declared war on our best ally in conjunction with our oldest foe, because of an obscure quarrel in a far-off country of which we know nothing! The English people care not one bit what happens in the East of Europe! Ever since the Third Congress of Vienna, successive administrations have seen it as thoroughly natural that Germany should have dominance in Eastern Europe to prevent Russian hegemony. What has changed? The small countries of the East need someone to keep them in order. Good luck to that someone- I do not envy them their job.

So why do we not say to Herr Schulthess this? We have no interest whatever in the East of Europe! Your nightmare of encirclement has gone for ever; you will never have to fight against Britain and France on one front and against Russia and any one they can collect on the other front. Encirclement is gone; indeed, it never existed outside the minds of the French!

I will give you one last point of peace to which I have referred already in briefly describing our policy. At long last we say: ‘Mind Britain’s business. Concentrate on the British Empire. Say to the world, as I do to-night, if any nation in the world sets foot across the frontier of British Empire, as one man, we English will fight for Britain. But Britons shall die in no other quarrel.’ I say to you, my friends, from the very depth of my inner knowledge and consciousness to-night, that this policy declared by Britain to Germany, and the world, will bring peace and the friendship of men for our time and beyond our children’s time as well [9].Why not do it? What is the argument against it? I am told that Germany just wants to swallow up one or two little countries in Eastern Europe and then turn round and overthrow the British Empire. I am told that Schulthess wants the whole world. In other words, I am told that Schulthess is mad. What evidence have they got so far that this man, whom the Lord Chancellor memorably described as a friend of this nation [10], has suddenly gone mad?

Do not let my words be misrepresented, Mr Speaker. I am no shirker. I shall serve my country in any way that I can; the King’s enemy is my own. But it does not mean that I do not fear grave disaster. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood...

* * *

[1] TTL’s “Scottish Party” is rather like its OTL 1930s counterpart, being a moderate party full of “Tartan Tories”, rather than a left-of-centre grouping. ITTL there is a Leftist “National Party of Scotland” as well, but this is marginalised and they have no MPs.

[2] As in OTL, until this point Wales is essentially considered an integral part of England. ITTL, the Welsh Office is an earlier invention because of the greater mainstream acceptance of nationalism.

[3] ITTL the Labour movement gets going around a decade earlier than OTL, so the Party coalesces in the 1890s.

[4] This was the case with OTL’s Lloyd George as well, although ITTL this is not as unusual; there are more Welsh speakers thanks to the Celtic revival of the nineteenth century.

[5] Like Herbert Morrison in OTL, Arnold Cooper controls the Labour party machinery in London.

[6] OTL, a similar act was passed in 1914 and proved just as controversial; FE Smith remarked that the bill “shocked the conscience of every Christian community in Europe,” to widespread ridicule.

[7] This Act has many similarities to OTL’s 1971 Immigration Act.

[8] “Almon” is TTL’s version of Hansard, named after the pioneering eighteenth-century parliamentary reporter John Almon.

[9] The Tory position on the war is very similar that that taken by many on the Right in OTL’s WW2; just as OTL, many on the far right and in the British ‘establishment’ see little reason to fight. Unlike OTL, they may have a point, and this is reflected by the fact that the viewpoint has considerably more support.

[10] Derek Haynes, the Lord Chancellor, was at the Foreign Office in 1920 when he negotiated the partition of the Portuguese Empire between Britain and Germany.

* * *

Thoughts?

Jared

Decades of Darkness #188b: Blessed Plot

Credit for this post on the history of Britain during the DoD timeline goes to Ed Thomas.

* * *

“Liberal, n. A statesman enamoured of existing evils, as opposed to a Socialist, who wants to replace them with others.”
- Clement Churchill, “The Heretic’s Dictionary”

* * *

Taken from: “Who Was Who: Prominent figures and important events in British History, 1837-1932”
(c) 1953, Eds Robert Wilkinson and James Berg
Eden University Press
Eden, Kingdom of Australia

CEDRIC RICHARD BEAUCHAMP ST-JOHN, 6th VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE (5 March 1881 - 9 June 1942)

English patriot, politician and nobleman, commonly known as ‘Cedric Bolingbroke’. The son of the 5th Viscount Bolingbroke and Lady Isabella Spencer, he was educated at Eton College in Berkshire and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he matriculated on 23 June 1899. He soon became involved in Conservative politics, and was elected to the safe seat of Chippenham in Wiltshire in 1907. He became increasingly prominent in the Party, which by then had been almost wiped out by the disastrous election in which he had come into Parliament.

In 1912, the disastrous election returns for the Conservatives gave Bolingbroke his opportunity. Ruthlessly engineering an internal coup against the ageing Charles Stafford, Bolingbroke assumed the leadership of the Conservative Party that summer, and quickly began to remake the party in his own image through charismatic speeches, his considerable personal fortune and an absolute intolerance of dissent...

* * *

Taken from: “A History of Nationalism”
(c) 1952 by David Jones
Prifysgol Caerdydd [Cardiff University]
Cardiff, Republic of Cymru
F.W. Norton & Co: Cardiff Edinburgh Dublin Truro

English nationalism bloomed late compared to its Scottish and Cymraeg cousins. As events such as the Eisteddfod became increasingly popular in Cymru, there was no English counterpart; nationalism east of Offa’s Dike retained an almost entirely Unionist character. The first real impetus to any English nationalism came during the ‘Imperial Federation’ controversy of 1894, when James Hamilton’s attempt to create a truly Federal Britain foundered in the face of an intractably Unionist Liberal opposition [1]. The affair was the making of both the Scottish Party and the Cymry Nationalist Party, which both won their first Parliamentary seats in the General Election the following year; in England however, no similar political force emerged. For the first time however the idea of an English Kingdom within the Empire had been mooted, and as the new century dawned several scattered associations had grown up calling for England to have its own political representation...

The nascent English nationalist movement lacked two vital attributes however; an obvious source of national identity, and a political opening to exploit. Both were provided in the years following the North American War. In 19th century Britain, there had been some Romantic interest in the Anglo-Saxon period, particularly within the ‘Craftsman’ movement [2], but this generally restricted itself to isolated examples of art and literature, such as Walter Scott’s classic novel ‘Ivanhoe’, and Carlo Marochetti’s majestic statue of Alfred the Great which dominated the New Palace Yard outside the Houses of Parliament [3]. All this changed in 1908 when the Oxford Academic Arthur Rasbold published his hugely popular ‘Scylding Cycle’ [4]. Rasbold’s masterwork captured the mood of a nation traumatised by war and yearning for escapism and a comforting return to the ideals of a glorious past; within two years of its publication the eccentric press magnate Geoffrey Northcote, Lord Langtree, sponsored the foundation of the Gaderung, an organisation envisioned as an English equivalent to the National Gorsedd of Cymru. The Gaderung sponsored an annual Althing based on the model of the Eisteddfod, the revival of traditional crafts and - an important political issue in the years after the North American War- a general promotion of agricultural self-sufficiency through allotments and communal gardens.

Other organisations followed suit. In 1912 Captain Gerald Allardyce, a veteran of the fighting in the Rocky Mountains, took twenty boys from his local school to the Forest of Dean in order to teach them self-reliance, woodcraft and navigation [5]; the experience inspired him to establish a youth movement, which soon became identified with the Saxon-revival and in 1916 was renamed the Fyrd [6]. Fortified by Northcote’s money, the Fyrd soon transcended its public school origins and became popular in the inner cities, particularly with black children whose parents saw it as a means of integration into society.

The impact of the Anglo-Saxon revival was even to be found in fashion. Attempts by enthusiastic revivalists to popularise traditional Saxon dress generally met with failure, as the woollen gowns and short hose adopted by some at the Althing looked ridiculous and earned them the epithet of ‘blackshort’ from the left-wing press. However the custom of wearing a Seax, a small knife symbolising the individual’s freedom, did catch on, and by the early 1920s even opponents of the revivalist movement found themselves displaying one at their belt...

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

Bolingbroke was a new kind of Tory. Young, charismatic and ruthless, he dominated his party from the day he brutally deposed Charles Stafford in September 1912. In doing so, he revolutionised the Conservative movement from an ageing rump with few political ideas beyond a sentimental attachment to the pre-1905 world into a coherent and distinctive, if at first minor, voice on the British political stage. Alone amongst his contemporaries, he realised that a rich seam of voters were unimpressed by both Labour’s revolutionary Socialism and the Liberal Party’s bland, non-ideological managerialism; to the horror of the traditional remnants of the party, he hurled it towards English Nationalism, racial colour-blindness, and from 1916, Distributivisim...

The Conservative conversion to English Nationalism was an obvious political strategy and one that had been anticipated by some MPs, most notably Hugh Coryton. Imperial Federation was still a highly popular topic amongst the Shire constituencies that formed the Conservatives’ last bastion, and was rapidly returning to its prior prominence in terms of general political discourse. The stance also had financial and publicity benefits, as it allowed the party to be bankrolled by the infamous Lord Langtree. While reluctant to be associated with the Tories at first, the mockery Langtree’s revivalist movement experienced at the hands of Labour politicians drove him towards Bolingbroke, and the Daily Sketch’s [7] triumphant 1917 headline ‘Hurrah for the Blackshorts!’ demonstrated the extent to which Anglo-Saxon revivalist groups and the Conservative Party were increasingly intertwined.

Bolingbroke’s decision to adopt Distributivist policies was similarly shrewd. The call for a ‘National Dividend‘ to redistribute wealth to the lower classes enabled the Tories to appeal to the working-class Conservative votes that had largely abandoned them in 1907, while the idea of price adjustment mechanisms and an expansion of the Credit Union system was designed to appeal to small business-owners and shopkeepers. Emphasising the need for ‘economic freedom and autonomy’ while advocating interventionist, non socialist economic policies, Bolingbroke hoped to forge a path between the two major parties. While he was never wholly electorally successful, his strategy nonetheless served to reposition the Conservatives as a new and distinctive force in British politics...

* * *

22 June 1919
Avebury
Wiltshire, United Kingdom

The sound of music and lusty singing drifted across the ancient stone circle as the Morris Dancers took to the central enclosure. Giggling children ran between tents and women in long woollen gowns moved from place to place with beer and sandwiches. Small groups of men sat around robed instructors demonstrating handicraft techniques. Feeling obscurely self-conscious in his tweeds, Harold Sanderson moved towards a large marquee marked by an Oak-Tree motif. As he did so, the Morris men started to sing.

“Hey nonny no! Men are fools that wish to die!
Is 't not fine to dance and sing When the bells of death do ring?
Is 't not fine to swim in wine, And turn upon the toe,
And sing hey nonny no! When the winds blow and the seas flow?
Hey nonny no! [8]”

Sanderson shivered involuntarily; the song uncomfortably reminded him of a ditty he had heard the troops sing in Manitoba [9].

The interior of the tent was cool and dark after the heat of the day. A group of men turned to see who had come in; one of them looked utterly ridiculous in a woollen tunic and cloak combined with hose and garters that left his lower legs bare. The man re-adjusted his red Phrygian cap and stretched out his hand [10].

“Welcome to our gathering! Or should I say, our gaderung. The eighth annual Althing. Not bad, eh? You would be Harold Sanderson, I take it? Bolingbroke has told me all about you. I am delighted to make your acquaintance. Geoffrey Northcote, at your service.”

Sanderson took his hand and inclined his head. “It is an honour to meet you, Lord Langtree. I do like your outfit. It is Saxon, I assume?”

The publishing magnate beamed. “Why yes, it is! It is quite accurate; the attire of an Earl. Which reminds me, please dispense with the pleasantries! I am Geoffrey to my friends. And anyone who attends the Althing is one of those. Come, join me in the stand!”

Northcote led Sanderson out of the tent, and pushed through the crowd until they reached the roped-off area overlooking the main enclosure. The peer gestured at the throngs of people meandering around the ancient stones. “The Welsh have their Eisteddfod, so why should we not have our own festival? Every year, more and more Englishmen are rediscovering their roots. My theory is that as the Socialists grow ever bolder, more true-born Englishmen return to their true state as free men. Look, here come the Fyrd. So many boys with the love of their country in their hearts!”

A procession of children and young men, all dressed in woollen gowns and hoods, marched into the ring. Many held instruments and drums, while others waved totems topped by owls, skulls or dogs. After circling the ring twice, amidst much cheering, they stopped dead with military precision. “Mægen ac ge-leafa! [11]” they shouted, waving their totems.

Northcote nudged Sanderson. “It’s time for my speech!” he hissed, and then bounded up to a microphone, fishing a thick sheaf of papers from a somewhere about his person. “Ides ac Ceorlmann! [12]” he roared, before continuing his speech in Old English. Sanderson sighed. It was going to be a long afternoon.

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

As the New Year 1920 dawned, Arthur Spencer-Churchill had every reason to look on his thirteen years of power with immense satisfaction. Unchallenged within his party or from any other, the winner of an unprecedented three consecutive General Elections, the Prime Minister had taken office at a dark time for the United Kingdom and had steered his country through the Golden Years, not with any particular flamboyance or panache, but with quiet competence and certainty. His Party was dominant in a way that none in British politics ever had been before. With a three figure parliamentary majority even after the Labour and Tory gains of 1917 [13], the Liberals were seemingly the only political force in Britain with a chance of Government.

However, political supremacy had come at an ideological cost. While the Liberal Party was still ostensibly the laissez-faire, free-trade organisation that Gladstone had bequeathed two generations earlier, thirteen years of massive majorities, pragmatic leadership and the influence of the National Conservatives had left it almost entirely without guiding principles. An exchange in the celebrated playwright Sir Edward Fairfax’s work ‘Tip and Run’ summed up the Party’s public image; when asked by the fearsome Duchess of Sylvania about his political views, the hero replies, ‘I am afraid I really am not at all political. I am a Liberal...’ [14] The Liberals were seen as a party of reasonable, if boring, technocrats, and while this was no bad thing in comparison to the increasingly radical English Nationalism of the Tories and the Socialist rhetoric of Labour, it utterly depended on the perception of competence. From February 1920 and the beginning of the ‘Great Panic’, this perception became increasingly tainted...

* * *

Taken from: “Marching Under The Green Flag: The History of Socialism”
(c) 1952, David Kelvin
Eagle Publishing Company: Sydney. Used with permission.

The Crash of 1920 and the resulting ‘Great Panic’ reinvigorated a Labour Party that had begun to feel the strain of seemingly-permanent opposition. Britain’s boom had never been as spectacular as the USA’s or New England’s and so the consequent bust was equally less dramatic. However, as a trading nation the United Kingdom still felt the effects of the global downturn and the popularity of Labour soared. Ironically, the first major impact that the crash had was to moderate the party; the sudden death of John Marshall in October 1922 saw a leadership contest between the veteran reformist David Lloyd George and the young firebrand Arnold Cooper end in a decisive victory for the former.

Lloyd George was uncomfortably aware of the responsibility that was placed on his shoulders. He led a Labour Party that was closer than ever to power, but at a time when reports of the events in Newfoundland had, in equal measure, excited his party membership and struck fear into the general public. His solution was characteristically brave, and individualist; in his first speech as leader he announced that he would ‘lead from the centre rather than the fringe’, embracing moderate progress to appeal to the voting public while hoping that his famed charisma could take his party with him. In this, the ‘Welsh Wizard’ was only partly successful. Despite his efforts to tone down elements such as the anti-black rhetoric of the party, a viewpoint that he despised, Lloyd George was only capable of ‘sanitising’ the Parliamentary Party. In the streets and factories of Britain, radical sentiment ran as strongly as ever...

* * *

9 March 1922
Finsbury Park
London, United Kingdom

James Clarke led the other men from the factory in a cheer as the man on the soapbox reached his peroration. The man - a Canadian Socialist by all accounts - could not raise his voice enough to cut through the crowd, but it did not particularly matter; Clarke was not here for political speeches. His job was to act as ‘crowd control’, although none of the organisers particularly expected the group of several hundred Socialists to be much of a problem. The risk came from other sources...

A new face stepped onto the soapbox, one that Clarke recognised. Tom O’Brien was a London MP of Irish descent; his speeches were expert exercises in rabble-rousing and he was legendary as a thorn in the side of both the Government and his own Front Bench. As O’Brien began his customary rant at the iniquities of the capitalist system, Clarke’s eyes began to scan the park gates and the road beyond, always alert for anything that looked like trouble. He noted the handful of Policemen looking on, and moved his attention to the crowd; here, his eyes were drawn to a tall youth, dressed more smartly than many of the people surrounding him and glowering at the MP while he spoke.

He looks like trouble, Clarke thought without really knowing why, and his hand moved to his pocket, where he kept a handy piece of lead pipe. As he began to elbow his way through the small crowd, O’Brien paused for breath and the boy started shouting;

“If you love the workers, why did your people smash up my Dad’s shop? You’re just a load of thugs! Thugs! Thugs!”

People started booing; Clarke had just reached the boy when O’Brien stopped his speech and pointed an accusing finger at him. “Thugs? Do you hear what he’s saying? How dare you insult good, hard-working Britons like this? What has your kind ever done but steal the fruits of the hard toil of the Working Man? Fuck off to Palestine, Jewboy! British Jobs for British Workers! British Jobs for British Workers!”

The crowd picked up the chant as Clarke grabbed the boy; perhaps sensing the ugly mood of the crowd, he gave surprisingly little struggle but allowed himself to be led towards the open ground of the park. Clarke threw him to the ground and turned to take up his previous position with his team; as he did so however some instinct made him look up. A large group of men were entering the park; mostly blacks with a few whites and doubtless some Jews too. One of them held aloft a stick topped with an owl; others held truncheons, clubs and snooker cues.

A tight smile crossed Clarke’s face. “Come on boys, the blackshorts are here to play! Let’s show them what the working man can do!”

The crowd cheered; from somewhere behind him, a bottle sailed into the air and smashed in front of the advancing Fyrd. A hail of other objects soon followed. Somebody began singing the “Industrial Song”, and as Clarke hefted his piece of pipe and ran forward, the crowd roared:

“The criminals wave and the officers smile
They're killing all the workers who picked a fight
The fences are high and the battle is lost
Their money is safe whatever the cost

The capitalists spit and the wives are crying,
The workers tell the truth when the funk is lying,
Why won't someone tell me why the government doesn't hear all the warnings?” [15]

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

The Siam Crisis shattered the Liberal Government’s reputation for a steady hand in Foreign Affairs just as the abandonment of the Gold Standard had ruined its reputation for economic competence. With Arthur Spencer-Churchill’s retirement in November 1922, the central architect of that competence also left the stage.

Alexander Pakenham was not a man in the same mould as Spencer-Churchill, a fact he was painfully aware of. The following March, he decided that he had to seek his own mandate rather than reside in the shadow of his illustrious predecessor, and in a campaign marked out by his own timidity and astonishing complacency on the part of his party, he provided his own place in history by narrowly losing office to Britain’s first ever Labour Government...

* * *

[1] With a stronger, and more decentralised British Empire, the concept of Imperial Federation has been far more popular ITTL than in OTL, and the Hamilton Government almost succeeded in enacting it.

[2] The ‘Craftsman Movement’ is TTL’s equivalent of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

[3] Marochetti also contributed a statue to Parliament IOTL; his representation of Richard the Lionheart still stands outside the House of Lords.

[4] Scylding, and Arthur Rasbold, bear some resemblance to the Lord of the Rings and JRR Tolkien respectively. The cycle is more explicitly Anglo-Saxon compared to LOTR; imagine the protagonists as Rohirrim and the story being closer to Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

[5] The expedition was rather similar to Robert Baden Powell’s trip to Brownsea Island in 1907.

[6] IOTL, the Fyrd were the Saxon yeomanry, who were called to serve the King for six month periods.

[7] The Daily Sketch is not the same as OTL’s tabloid of the same name, although it is broadly similar in its populist tone.

[8] This is an actual Morris song and folk tune dating back to Elizabethan times.

[9] ITTL the folk song was taken by troops and turned into a trench anthem; this occurred IOTL during WW1 as well, when the words went; “The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me/And the little devils have a sing-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me/Oh death where is they sting-a-ling-a-ling, oh grave thy victory?/The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me.”

[10] This is more or less the costume of an Anglo-Saxon nobleman.

[11] Literally, “Strength and Faith!”

[12] “Ladies and Gentlemen!”

[13] It should be pointed out that ITTL the Septennial Act is still in force and so General Elections have to be held once every seven years rather than once every five, as in OTL.

[14] IOTL, in The Importance of Being Earnest Jack Worthing uses a similar line when talking about the Liberal Unionists.

[15] Apologies to fans of obscure post-rock indie music of the early 2000s...

* * *

Thoughts?

Jared

Decades of Darkness #188a: Sceptered Isle

Credit for this post on the history of Britain during the DoD timeline goes to Ed Thomas.

* * *

“So long as you have capitalism, you will have war. If our so-called masters want to fight, let the kings, emperors, presidents, tsars, financiers and manufacturers, let them fight it out amongst themselves. The workers have no cause to quarrel; the workers of all countries are brothers. They have one enemy only, that enemy is the parasite, scoundrelly capitalist gang who use them to further their own base and dishonourable ends.”
- Anonymous speaker in Finsbury Park, London, 1931

* * *

30 April 1905
House of Commons
London, Great Britain

“We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. If we do not fight, the future will be represented by the shackles of millions; the men of our Empire shall be the trustees of Liberty.”

The cheers and excited shouting of Members echoed from the ornate fan-vaulted ceiling of the House of Commons [1] as the Prime Minister finished his speech. Harold Sanderson shouted with them, waving his order paper as the Speaker vainly called for order. Soon Members began to stream out of the Chamber; edging along his bench, Sanderson caught the eye of his friend and colleague Hugh Coryton, the Member for Launceston. Coryton raised his top hat sarcastically and grinned.

“Harold! Devil of a speech eh? Young Dizzy’s still not a patch on his old man, but I’d say he’s learning. Much as it tempts me to stay for the adjournment debate, I have a proposal for you. Hang on a minute-” he paused to fish a folded piece of paper from his inside pocket, “here we are. Now, what do you think to this?”

Sanderson took the paper, and unfolded it. Bold capital letters leaped out at him.

“MEN! COME AND JOIN THE WESTMINSTERS! Are YOU going to stay at home while others fight for your homes, families and liberties? ENLIST TODAY!”

A slow smile crept across Sanderson’s face. “Do you think the good electors of Tavistock will mind?” he asked.

Coryton slapped him on the back and gave a bark of laughter. “I expect they will probably insist! Come on, let’s get some lunch in the tea-room and I’ll tell you more. They’re going to set up a recruiting station in New Palace Yard for Members and Staff of the House. Apparently Fatty Jenkinson’s trying to put together a ‘Mace [2] Battalion’. Sounds like an adventure, doesn’t it? We’ll certainly give Johnny Jackal what for, that’s for sure!”

The two men walked into the Members Lobby; behind them, a group of Labour MPs began to sing a rendition of ‘The Green Flag’. At first, a few Tories and Liberals began to boo; then, with much laughter, they realised that the Socialists had modified the lyrics for the occasion and enthusiastically joined in.

“For the Green Flag is our banner,
Taking forth the Workers’ pride;
It is stained with blood of Martyrs,
Who for our righteous cause have died;

Comrades! Onwards with our banner;
Hold it high through shot and shell;
We shall strike the boss and slaver;
Send the Jackals straight to Hell! [3]”

Sanderson inclined his head towards the singers. “Even the Greens are on board- it’ll be nice to see them chucking bombs at the Jackals for a change rather than at the Springers [4].”

Coryton nodded. “We do seem to be having an outbreak of national unity.” He laughed again, spreading his arms to encompass the ornate stone cloister. “Harold, I tell you- we need to go to war more often!”

* * *

13 February 1907
House of Commons
London, United Kingdom

Harold Sanderson wheezed a little as he limped towards the Members’ entrance of the House of Commons. The Palace’s central bell tower tolled a doleful midday as he walked. This was never meant to happen, he thought as he gazed at the Gothic stonework of St Stephen’s Hall, thinking of the bands and singing that sped his departure from London. The policeman at the door tipped his helmet. “Good to see you back, sir; I was very sorry to hear about your brother. And the others.”

Sanderson’s mouth set itself into a tight grimace. The others. Young Thomas, who went down with HMS Colossus at Long Island. Fatty Jenkinson, missing during the desperate fighting at the end of the Rapier offensive. And so many more, from the private who had accidentally been shot during their training at Lossiemouth to the young men who he had seen mown down in their hundreds on the plains of Manitoba, from the doctor whose head had been blown off as he pulled the bullets out of Sanderson’s leg to the poor Grenadians and Trinidadians whose homeland had been snatched away by the Jackals and were now arriving in London by the boatload.

Inside the Palace, small knots of MPs were gathered, whispering furtively to each other. One group broke up as he approached; Hugh Coryton moved over and clasped Sanderson by the hand. “We are older and wiser, Harold. Older and wiser. I was so sorry to hear about Thomas.”

Sanderson gazed at his friend coldly. “Everyone is sorry to hear about Thomas, Hugh. It does not help. We sacrificed thousands of ‘trustees of Liberty’; we failed. And what of the architect of that failure?”

Coryton smiled grimly. “That’s being taken care of. Dizzy is still trying to cling on, but he knows his days are numbered. The trick now is making sure that the King calls for the right replacement.”

Sanderson raised an eyebrow. “McGowan?”

His friend nodded. “He’d be best, although Vickers would do at a pinch. Sir Edward’s unlikely though- too close to Dizzy. The danger is if the ‘wets’ get Drummond in, of course. The man’s practically a Liberal!”

Far above them, the prayer bells began to chime. Sanderson began to shuffle towards the chamber, grimacing at the pain from his leg. “Well, it sounds like there’s about to be a statement in the Chamber- I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

The McGowan administration was an unhappy juncture. It was generally expected that Isaac Disraeli’s resignation would provide the pretext for a General Election, to ‘clear the decks’ as Edward Vickers put it, but the new Prime Minister quickly abandoned any such plans. Philip McGowan had no intention of being one of the shortest-lived Premiers in British history, and in any case had a shrewder idea of the tottering state of the Conservative Party than many of his contemporaries. His hope was that ‘something would come up’ to restore his party’s fortunes and discredit the Liberals, but as his Government limped on it soon became clear that it would have been wiser to seek opposition and rebuild Conservative credibility from there.

The humiliation of the peace merely widened the cracks that were already appearing in the Tory Party. Ever since the Hamilton [5] era, the Party had been divided between a traditionalist, laissez-faire fringe and a paternalist, “New Tory” core. Hamilton’s protégé Disraeli had skilfully bridged this gap with warm words and a clever eye for appointing Ministers; McGowan, an unashamed ‘bully’ [6], had none of this ability. His clumsy attempt to court working-class support with his health insurance proposals merely angered the non-interventionists, and fractured the already shaky Conservative control of the House of Lords, while his decision to coerce the striking workers inflamed an already delicate situation.

A lesser Leader of the Opposition might still have been unable to take full advantage of these mistakes, but unfortunately for the Prime Minister, Arthur Spencer-Churchill was in a different league entirely. A former anti-Hamiltonian Tory himself, Spencer-Churchill had excellent contacts with the Conservative Party, and ruthlessly used them to encourage dissent; his greatest victory came in September 1907 when he succeeded in whipping up Conservative distaste for the coercive Trades Unions Bill to such an extent that the Earl of Derby broke from the Party and sat with his supporters as ‘National Conservatives’, giving the Opposition a majority in the Lords.

McGowan’s skills were simply not up to the task of stemming the flow of ‘Old Tories’ from his Party, and his dogged refusal to resign from the post he had coveted for twenty years amplified the damage still further. On 9 October his Government became a minority administration through the creation of a National Conservative grouping in the Commons; the next day, he lost a vote of no-confidence.

Unlike McGowan, Spencer-Churchill was shrewd enough to press his advantage. Immediately dissolving Parliament and proclaiming a ‘national restoration alliance’ between his own party and his Tory allies, he was able to exploit Conservative divisions to the hilt in a bitter campaign. With the Conservative vote utterly split and demoralised, and the financing of National Conservative candidates in safe Tory seats, there was no contest. When the dust settled, the Liberal-National Conservative ‘ticket’ had won an unprecedented majority, and the Conservatives had been beaten so badly that they had even been overtaken by Labour [7]. The period of Liberal dominance in British politics had begun...

* * *

Taken from: “Rule Britannia! A History of the United Kingdom, 1707-1932”
(c) 1951 by Peter Williams
Imperial Press
Eden, Kingdom of Australia

Even as Britain’s political parties began to fracture and reform themselves, a far more profound change was occurring on the streets of the nation. The United Kingdom had always welcomed immigrants, although never on the same scale as daughter nations such as Canada, New England, Australia or even the United States. Thousands of Huguenots came to England in the 17th century; Germans and Dutchmen flocked across the German Sea [8] over the next few hundred years, while almost as many Irish came eastwards as emigrated to the rest of the world. By 1900 London was a thriving melting-pot boasting Mexicans, Frenchmen, a growing Indian community and even several tens of thousands of Jews [9]...

All this changed in the Washington winter of 1906. Rather than abandon the people of the Caribbean to their fate, the British delegation negotiated a provision which would allow many of their inhabitants to escape. Section II of the Treaty allowed the inhabitants of the former British territories to flee the American occupation. This right of repatriation would expire three years after the date of ratification of this treaty. On suggesting the clause, Edward Vickers assumed that the vast majority of refugees would relocate to Liberia, New England or Jamaica. In fact, with a single stroke of the pen he changed the face of British society forever.

Between early 1907 and December 1909, around 1.4 million people in the Caribbean took the opportunity offered to them and fled the prospect of bondage. The refugees were not merely emigrants from the lands given over to the Americans; 200,000 Trinidadians freed during the war fled the prospect of renewed captivity, while around the same number of Jamaicans left their homeland and for somewhere further from American power. Around a third of the migrants fled to Liberia, as had been originally envisioned, while considerable numbers found themselves in New England, Abyssinia, South Africa and Australia. Many former British subjects confounded the expectations of their former rulers however. On 1 May 1907, the former troop ship Monte Rosa docked at Tilbury in Essex. Its human cargo included 562 Grenadians who had decided to exercise their treaty rights. Over the next three years, more than 650,000 others would join them...

* * *

16 July 1908
Dalton Horst Factory
De Beauvoir Town [10]
London, United Kingdom

James Clarke stared at the piece of paper in his hand, trying to make sense of the note that had neatly been typed underneath the letterhead. “What do you mean, ‘my services are no longer required?’ I’m the bloody foreman! Of course they’re required!”

The man sitting at the desk pointedly fished his pocket-watch from his waistcoat and glanced at it. “I’m so sorry, Mr Clarke. Financial pressures. The transition from wartime production to the demands of peacetime have required some... economies. Armoured Horsts are no longer in demand as they once were, and our civilian models are not being sold in the quantities that we would like. Some men have had to be laid off. That is that I am afraid. You will still be paid for this month’s work, of course. I have tried to minimise the disruption to the workforce, but you have to understand, we are not a charity!”

Clarke glowered at him. “Minimise disruption? By sacking the shop stewards you mean? I see what you’re doing. The men will strike for me- they’ve nearly done so before!”

His former employer raised an eyebrow. “As I said, we are minimising disruption. We are bringing in new blood; workers who are more enthusiastic than you are. And now, I believe our time is up. Good luck to you, Mr Clarke. I mean that sincerely.”

Clarke ignored his proffered hand and moved to leave. As he did so, he caught sight of a dark face waiting outside the door. Curious- although they were becoming more common in London since the end of the war, he had seldom seen a black man before – he gestured to the man. “Who the hell is that?”

The factory manager gave a thin smile. “His name is Derek; he is from Saint Lucia. He used to be an engineer, you know- he could probably run this factory single-handedly, and yet he is willing to work for three-quarters of your wage. I told you we were making economies, Mr Clarke. Goodbye.”

Clarke walked out onto the street; to his surprise and embarrassment, his eyes were pricked with tears, something that had not happened since the death of his mother many years before. He crumpled the redundancy notice in his hand and threw it in a nearby bin; as he did so, he noticed a smartly-dressed black man looking at him with some concern.

“What are you looking at?” Clarke snarled, and stalked towards the pub. This country is going to the dogs, he thought.

* * *

Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

Arthur Spencer-Churchill requested the dissolution of Parliament in May 1912 with the confident expectation of political success. His administration had not accomplished prodigies - Britain had quietly grown instead of booming as the USA had - but, given the widespread anger and political upheaval five years previously, the Prime Minister felt that this was accomplishment enough. The Liberals would campaign under the uninspiring banner of ‘safety first’. Labour responded with a furious stream of invective against the Government. John Marshall castigated the Liberals as pawns of international finance and mindless oppressors of the working class; he condemned the Liberal plans for New Towns and slum clearance as wholly inadequate, instead demanding that native-born Britons were given priority over the occupation of any new construction.

To the surprise of no-one, the Liberal-National Conservative coalition won handsomely. Labour and the Nationalist Parties made some gains, while the remaining Tory MPs were squeezed remorselessly. 1912 confirmed the utter dominance of the Liberal Party in British politics, in financial, organisational and almost every other field. This dominance would breed increasing resentment in both Left and Right as the decade wore on...

* * *

Taken from: “Rule Britannia! A History of the United Kingdom, 1707-1932”
(c) 1951 by Peter Williams
Imperial Press
Eden, Kingdom of Australia

The ‘great migration’ of Caribbean refugees brought serious social change to the United Kingdom, but this was equally matched by political upheaval. At first, the major parties all welcomed the migrants; the feeling of Imperial solidarity engendered by the North American War still persisted in most quarters, and the words of Edward Vickers welcoming ‘our brothers from across the seas’ were approvingly quoted as a means of showing British superiority to American Matthism.

It is fair to say that this honeymoon period lasted exactly as long as it took for the ‘new Britons’ to establish themselves in their new home. By 1912, almost every major city in the United Kingdom had a Caribbean quarter, and the sudden influx of a population nearing the size of Birmingham’s [11] soon caused rent spikes, depressed wages and increased unemployment amongst native-born Britons. The willingness of Black workers to work for lower wages than their White counterparts and their relative resistance to unionisation only emphasised the impact of these shifts, and made them even more unpalatable to working-class Britons. The first race riots took place in Hackney in the Spring of 1911; others occurred in Birmingham later that year, and by 1912 they were a regular occurrence.

The animosity faced towards the ‘new Britons’ gave the Labour Party an invaluable recruiting sergeant. While initially Labour had welcomed the new arrivals as legitimate refugees from American aggression, the sensational victory of the independent ‘British Party’ candidate Henry Ferguson in the 1910 Lambeth by-election first revealed the popular working-class support for an anti-immigrant policy, and as early as the following year, Labour politicians in London and Manchester were speaking out in favour of limited repatriation. In the General Election campaign of 1912 the construction of housing and New Towns became a controversial issue as John Marshall [12] made his famously inflammatory - and inaccurate - speech condemning Arthur Spencer-Churchill’s plans as being ‘Homes for Hottentots’.

The migrants were not without friends however. Black workers were prized by many large manufacturing concerns for their work ethic and non-confrontational approach to industrial relations, and as companies increasingly relocated outside the cities to the New Towns, industrial settlements such as Corby, Runcorn and Wolverton [13] quickly became mostly black in their racial make-up. Although the Liberals took a more arms-length approach governed by the requirements of Government, the new arrivals found political support from the remains of the Conservative Party. At first this connection was largely based on sentiment, as Tories saw the immigrants as good Imperial citizens and in turn the black population felt a considerable degree of gratitude to the Party for the decision to allow them into Britain in the first place. As the 1910s wore on however, economic and political factors deepened the relationship and the 1916 General Election saw a series of Tory MPs returned for constituencies with large black populations...”

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Taken from: “Who Was Who: Prominent figures and important events in British History, 1837-1932”
(c) 1953, Eds Robert Wilkinson and James Berg
Eden University Press
Eden, Kingdom of Australia

HUGH CLIVE CARSWELL (8 January 1864 - 1 April 1941)

Hugh Carswell was born in Seattle in January 1864, the son of Clive Carswell and Linda Howden. Little is known about his early life and training; he probably served an engineering apprenticeship before embarking on a career that took him across Canada in the employ of railways, electric companies and other institutions. In 1904 he was working for the Assiniboia Electric Company, and briefly worked as the Railway Engineer for the Wisconsin Post Office before the outbreak of war.

In the summer of 1906 Carswell was appointed Assistant Manager of the Royal Arlac Manufactory. It was here he noticed that the weekly total costs of goods produced was invariably greater than the sums paid out to workers for wages, salaries and dividends. Troubled by the seeming disconnect between the way money flowed and the objectives of industry ("delivery of goods and services", in his view), Carswell set out to apply engineering methods to the economic system.

Collecting data from over a hundred large British, Canadian and New England businesses, Carswell found that in every case, except that of companies heading for bankruptcy, the sums paid out in salaries, wages and dividends were always less than the total costs of goods and services produced each week, and the workers were not paid enough to buy back what they had made. The reason, he concluded, was that the economic system was organized to maximize profits for those with economic power by creating unnecessary scarcity.

Carswell became convinced that the workers could be freed from this system by bringing purchasing power in line with production. In 1908, he published a book entitled ‘Economic Democracy’. Although his ideas were ignored in Canada, they were widely read in Britain, and became the foundation of the Distributivist [14] movement...

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Taken from: “British Politics; from Gladstone to Blackwood”
(c) 1949 by James Fardale
Picador Press
Richmond, Kingdom of Australia

The 1912 General Election saw the nadir of Tory fortunes. Denuded of their best talent either by defection to the Liberals or electoral failure, reduced to a rump of barely a dozen seats and with little coherent policy or worldview, the Party seemed destined to become the home merely of a few maverick MPs elected by constituents motivated by sentiment and diverse, often contradictory local issues. It is safe to assume that the Party would have disappeared entirely in the following save for a series of factors. The first was the unexpected support the Party gained from the black immigrant community. The second was the popular enthusiasm and English nationalism generated by the Anglo-Saxon revival movement. The third factor was an aristocratic young MP named Cedric St John...”

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[1] The Palace of Westminster is very different ITTL, having been burnt down in the late 1820s rather than in 1834. The change in circumstances means that it is rebuilt in a high-Gothic style by the architect Thomas Hopper rather than by Charles Barry, making it even more ornate then OTL.

[2] Thanks to various butterflies, ITTL the symbol of Parliament isn’t the Portcullis adopted by Pugin and Barry, but rather a stylised Mace, based on one of the symbols of Parliamentary supremacy.

[3] This song bears little resemblance to OTL’s “Red Flag”, but both were written in the late 1880s by Irishmen living in London. TTL’s song takes its tune from the Liverpudlian folk ballad “Johnny Todd”, which some readers may recognise as the theme tune from the 1960’s British Police show “Z-Cars.”

[4] TTL’s British slang for the police, after Thomas Spring Rice, the Home Secretary at the time of the Metropolitan Police Act of 1830.

[5] James Hamilton was Prime Minister from 1886-1894, and took the Conservatives in a far more interventionist direction than OTL. This caused a general-re-alignment of the parties relatively similar to OTL’s Home Rule and Tariff Reform Crises, although with a very different outcome; British politics is divided between a protectionist Tory Party and a laissez-faire Liberal Party.

[6] ITTL the word ‘bully’ is used rather as the same period would use ‘jingo’; it also specifically denotes a Nationalist, interventionist Tory.

[7] This result bears some resemblances both to the Liberal wipe-out in 1918 and also the Labour catastrophe in 1931. Both cases saw the party vote split, leading to a disproportionately harsh result for the losing party. Similar mechanics are at work ITTL.

[8] “German Sea” was a popular term for the North Sea until WW1 OTL, when for obvious reasons it fell into disuse. ITTL it becomes the accepted term after the Great War.

[9] There are far fewer Jews in London ITTL, mainly because the more liberal Russian regime from the 1880s has not prompted as much emigration, and many of those who have fled Russia have gone instead to Germany or the United States, two nations with a reputation for being very friendly to Jews.

[10] ITTL the geography of East London is rather different compared with OTL, mainly because in the 1820s the property developer William Rhodes went ahead with his plan to build ‘De Beauvoir Town’ north of the Regent’s Canal.

[11] Just as in OTL, in ITTL Birmingham had a population of around 700,000 by 1910.

[12] John Marshall is one of the leaders of the Labour Party in the period; he has more in common with James Maxton than Keir Hardie, as befits the generally more radical tone of the British Labour movement ITTL.

[13] Corby and Runcorn were both New Towns IOTL, although ITTL the sudden arrival of half a million immigrants has brought forward their development. The same can be said for Wolverton, which OTL was one of the many small villages swallowed up by the creation of Milton Keynes.

[14] Hugh Carswell is a very close analogue of Clifford Douglas, the originator of Social Credit. Distributivism is largely similar to Social Credit, although there are some minor differences. IOTL Douglas' theories became popular in Canada but were largely ignored in his native Britain; ITTL the reverse is true.

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Thoughts?

Jared