A British Civil War

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

A British Civil War?

In 1989, Margaret Thatcher made the single most stupid decision of her career and introduced the Poll Tax, a tax that is paid by everyone regardless of how much they earn, to Scotland. Despite widespread protest and civil disobedience – the SNP played a ‘don’t pay’ campaign – she then introduced it to England in 1990, which produced riots and led to her fall from power – to be replaced by John Major.

Basically, the Poll Tax means that everyone pays the same amount to government, therefore, if I earned £10’000 per year, I’d have to pay the government £100. Not too much of a problem, I hear you cry? What if I earned £1000 per year, it’s a bit bigger bite then, because I’d still lose £100.

I should discuss the political situation in the UK now. There are three major parties of importance; the Conservatives, Labour and the Scottish National Party (SNP). The Conservatives won the last general election and so had the dubious privilege of forming the government for four years. Labour, as the second largest party, is the opposition party. Basically, this means that they will make speeches in the House of Commons against the current government polices. The SNP is the joker in the deck.

The SNP is based on a claim of independence for Scotland from the United Kingdom. They have one fatal flaw, and that is that they only contest seats within Scotland itself. Given that Scotland has around 70 seats in the HOC, and England has 400, this is not a directly possible situation. There are not enough other political parties for the 400 English seats to be spread around to allow the Scots a majority, always assuming, of course, that the SNP wins all 70 Scottish seats, an event that has never happened.

What the SNP hopes for is a situation where Labour and the Conservatives each hold roughly an equal number of seats. One party may be ahead by one or two seats and that party would form the government. However, is this situation, the other party could block all of their efforts by allying with the few independents or the SNP. Therefore, the SNP holds the balance scales, allowing them to force concessions out of the government.

The Poll Tax was seen as anti-Scottish and the SNP played that to the hilt. There were protest marches and near riots in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen and many people simply refused to pay.

Now, what if the protest had turned really violent and the SNP ended up leading a revolution, of sorts. This would be nothing like the American Revolution, but there would be a widespread collapse of central authority and control. If the military was called out, the army could split along regional lines and a real civil war could break out. Given that many of Britain’s nuclear weapons were based in Scotland, things could get very nasty indeed. I don’t think that anyone in Scotland or England would be crazy enough to launch nuclear weapons, but the possibility of an accident could not be discounted.

Politically, Thatcher, and the conservative party, would be out the door. Parliament would be divided on what to do, if SNP MPs have parciptitated or incited the revolts; they may be declared traitors to the crown.

What sort of international reaction would there be, perticuly if the conflict continued for more than a week or so? America would be deeply divided on what to do, while The Soviet Union, what’s left of it, may be tempted to exploit the conflict. The coup plotters in Moscow might succeed at a time of increasing international tension. Would the IRA launch attacks while the British Forces were distracted? Would Ireland try to take advantage of the chaos to seize Northern Ireland? Would Argentina be tempted to try to take the Falklands again?

Even if the loyalists do regain control, British politics will be much nastier. The Conservatives will almost certainly lose the next election, with Labour taking most of the seats. I’m not sure what percentage the SNP would get, if they are blamed for the mess or seen as heroes. If they get all the Scottish seats, they will probably try for a declaration of Independence, which Labour would almost certainly grant.

After brainstorming for a few hours, I don’t think this has anything like the potential that I had hoped for a serious AH, although it might make a good story. If you have any comments, please email them to me.

Christopher Nuttall