Free Dislocated to Success by Iain Bowen Page B

mercenary forces in Cork Harbour to try and raise rebellion against the Crown of Ireland. At this point, our relations with the Kingdom of Ireland were at rock bottom; the Ascendancy had finally worked out what was happening with the lands of the absentee and long-dead landlords where we had been issuing judgements and had realised that our arrival meant the effective end of their power. All they had heard from their putative Sovereign was effectively telling them to Naff Off, and they had become frightened men.
     
    The attempt to raise a revolt was reasonably successful - not as successful as other revolts in the long history of Irish peasant revolts had been, but successful enough - and the Kingdom of Ireland was in a terrible military position, with most of its forces having been sent north to deal with the border with Northern Ireland. Needless to say, the politics of that benighted province also came into play - with Catholic paramilitaries trying to intervene against Irish regiments crossing the Boyne, and with that awful man Paisley [42] attempting an invasion in support of the Ascendancy. Happily it all ended in tears for both groups; the INLA were slaughtered, and the Ulstermen collapsed before they got to Drogheda. Pleasingly, it got most of the leadership of the DUP locked up and out of the way for a while; rather more unexpectedly, it led the way for the start of a slow realignment of Catholic politics in the North.
     
    However, in terms of the insurrection, it was reasonably successful - it looked like the forces of rebellion would reach Dublin before the regiments returned from the North. The Government of the Kingdom of Ireland was forced to swallow its considerable pride and ask the UK government for help. I do not want to go into details, as that is much more for those with a more avid interest in military matters; there have been several excellent books produced over the years which cover events in detail. The culmination was a massively one-sided battle near Naas, where the rebel army managed to stand for around five minutes against an air strike followed by a counter-attack by the experimental light-armoured forces of the Pembrokeshire Yeomanry [43] . From that point on the rebellion was essentially over, although it took a week or so to deal with the scattered remaining forces.
     
    Of course, Spain was highly duplicitous in this matter - they had funded the Old Pretender in full, they had supplied the ships to take his forces there, their few cannon were Spanish and a good number of the mercenary troops were of Spanish origin. Whilst our diplomatic contacts were via France or Portugal, their denials were fairly swift to reach us and not at all plausible. It was too late for them; Spain had now been drawn to the attention of the Prime Minister, and any hopes of them regaining Minorca could be forgotten. What was interesting was the reaction of Europe; Europe expected us to take a very harsh line against Spain, whilst we stuck firmly to more modern standards. This also had, I feel, some interesting consequences - I wonder if a swift bombing immediately afterwards would have brought the Spanish to heel quickly. As it was, it added to our growing reputation as a bit of a soft touch.
     
    The Irish action led to the end of the unnatural state of politics in the UK; the Parliamentary Labour Party howled down its leadership and demanded withdrawal from the National Government. Silkin left immediately and Sunny Jim removed himself fairly sharpish as well, although for a couple of years he had occasional quiet meetings with the PM. Neither Doctor Owen or Denis Healey went immediately; both claimed to the PLP that they had some urgent work to finish first.  As it was, the PM was unhappy with Doctor Owen’s performance and it has been long rumoured that when he offered to cross the floor, he was told probably not the best thing . I have no idea of the veracity of that statement and both sides deny it, but it has